People who have fibromyalgia know how painful and debilitating the symptoms can be. However, you can learn to control the severity of your fibromyalgia symptoms using different techniques. As science and medicine progress, new breakthrough methods for treating fibromyalgia are being uncovered daily.

Let us now take a look at few methods which can be quite effective in helping you regulate your symptoms and live a better life. It is important to maintain a healthy balance between relaxation and activities. This will help you better control the fatigue and pain associated with fibromyalgia. Don't keep working till you are almost ready to collapse. Set up a schedule for your daily activities and keep some fixed time for resting in-between different activities at fixed intervals. Stick to the plan and don't get ahead of yourself by trying to sneak in additional activities to your regular tasks.

Many people with fibromyalgia experience a string of bad days when their symptoms flare up and they stay in pain all day long. This is followed sometimes by one or more 'good' days where their symptoms seem to subside and they feel better. It is a natural tendency to try to hurry up and do all the activities you missed during those painful days. This is a grave mistake.

What happens when you try to get the most out of a good day? You try to get all your chores done. You try and finish all your shopping, or catch up on cooking or whatever it is you were unable to do because of the pain. You keep on doing all the tasks until finally you crash. Then the next few days you may not even feel like getting out of bed. There must be a better way to manage your FMS symptoms and still live your life.

The first step to getting a balance between work and rest is start timing your activities. Invest in a stop watch. Before you begin an activity set the stopwatch to say 10 minutes and make sure when the stop watch hits the mark, you stop whatever it is you are doing and take rest. It is easy to get carried away and lose track of time once you start doing anything. By using a stop watch you will learn to pace your activities. Soon you will no longer need the stopwatch. You will develop a mental timer which will notify you every time you overdo any task.

Separate your tasks into groups and order them based on priority. Space out the really tiring tasks so you get enough rest in between.

Take care of the foods you eat. Note down all the types of food you eat and find out which foods seem to make your symptoms worse. Avoid these foods completely. If you are on the heavier side, start to lose weight. Fibromyalgia pain symptoms are worse for overweight people compared to those with ideal weight. Talk to your doctor and draw up an ideal nutrition plan to help you lose fat without starving yourself. Fibromyalgia can seem a miserable condition but careful planning and treatment can help you live a normal life.

Every 15 minutes or so, change the position or angle in which you are standing or sitting. This will prevent any muscle from tightening up. Once in every hour, get up and walk a few steps. Do some stretching to loosen up the tense muscles in your body. Stretch out your hands to both sides. Stretch out your legs. Flex your back a little. Do these exercises gently taking care you do not overstretch any muscle.