Tuesday's Treasures: Today is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day!

~My Faithful Fibro Companion, Arwen~

May 12 is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, thank you for visiting! My Etsy store is donating 5% of the total sales before taxes and shipping to Fibromyalgia Awareness charities this month in honor of this day. Please visit to see some great items, and feel good for helping a great cause at the same time!
Here is some very important information about fibromyalgia:
Government Data confirms that Canadians with Fibromyalgia are very disadvantaged

The following information was extracted by the National ME/FM Action Network from the Statistics Canada datafile for the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey.
An estimated 390,000 Canadians have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Over half were between the ages of 45 and 64. Roughly a quarter were younger than 45 and 20% were 65 years old or older. Over 80% were female.

Canadians with Fibromyalgia showed a high degree of activity limitation:
*Need help with preparing meals:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 16%, Canadians in General: 3%
*Need help with getting to appointments and running errands:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 28%, Canadians in General: 5%
*Need help – doing housework:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 35%, Canadians in General: 5%
*Need help with heavy household chores (such as spring cleaning or yard work):
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 57%, Canadians in General: 12%
*Need help with personal care:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 7%, Canadians in General: 2%
*Need help moving about inside the house:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 8%, Canadians in General: 1%

Canadians with Fibromyalgia also experienced socio-economic disadvantage:
*Permanently unable to work (ages 15-74):
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 14%, Canadians in General: 2%
*Annual personal income less than $15,000 (ages 15+):
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 43%, Canadians in General: 29%
*Food insecure:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 11%, Canadians in General: 5%
*Very weak sense of belonging to local community
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 13%, Canadians in General: 10%

There are gaps in service to Canadians with Fibromyalgia:
*Unmet health care needs over the previous 12 months:
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 26%, Canadians in General: 11%
*Unmet home care needs over the previous 12 months (ages 18+):
Canadians with Fibromyalgia: 11%, Canadians in General: 2%

The National ME/FM Action Network has being telling government health officials for years that:
• Fibromyalgia is a very disabling illness,
• the illness has substantial impact on people's lives
• there are significant gaps in health care delivery.
Now Canadian government data confirms what we have been saying.
Please share this important information with others. Help to make this information as widely known as possible.
About the Canadian Community Health Survey:
The Canadian Community Health Survey is a major survey designed by Canadian health authorities to identify and monitor health issues affecting Canadians aged 12 and up. There were 27,100,000 Canadians in scope for the survey. Over 130,000 Canadians were interviewed.
About the National ME/FM Action Network:
The National ME/FM Action Network is a registered charity working on behalf of Canadians with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. Please visit www.mefmaction.net.

****These tables were compiled by Ms Margaret Parlor, President, National ME/FM Action Network. Ms Parlor recently retired from a 30 year public service career where she worked as a statistician, policy analyst and manager.

Excerpted from an email from:
Lydia E. Neilson, M.S.M., National ME/FM Action Network
Tel. (613) 829-6667

Thanks for reading! I hope you learned a little bit of our struggles, and many of our triumphs! We are getting recognition for our disease - more and more reputable medical clinics are now doing trials and testing and soon we may have a cure or totally effective treatment for our disease :)