Dr. Murphree brings together an eclectic group of alternative health practitioners in his next iteration of the “Freedom From Fibromyalgia Summit”.
Dr. Rodger Murphree’s “Freedom From Fibromyalgia” online summit is back (May 23rd-30th) with a new slate of speakers. If you don’t know Dr. Murphree, he’s a well-known fibromyalgia doctor who takes an alternative medicine approach to FM and ME/CFS and has authored several books on it.
I think this is Murphree’s 4th free “Freedom from Fibromyalgia Online Summit“, and every year he brings in new presenters; this year is no exception. Amongst the usual talks (e.g. “no grain no-pain”) and familiar faces (Dr. Teitelbaum, Dr. Murphree, Ashok Gupta, Terry Wahls) are an eclectic and interesting group of speakers. About 50 speakers on virtually every corner of FM (nutrition, sleep, gut, mold, infections, etc.) are presenting – too many to cover here.
Below are some of the presenters that I’m interested in. Note how many of the presenters came to the alternative health field because it helped them solve their ME/CFS/FM or other conditions.
Dr. Rob Vanbergen PhD will speak on a hot, if sometimes confusing, topic in the pain world – how to use electric microcurrents to improve vagus nerve functioning, reduce pain and anxiety and improve health. Vanbergen knows of what he speaks. He grew up with a painful and anxiety-producing scoliosis which microcurrents helped dramatically with. He ended up doing his Ph.D. on non-invasive microcurrent vagus nerve stimulation.
Ken Swartz is the founder and chief science officer of C60 Purple Power, a health and wellness company that produces C60 otherwise known as carbon 60 or fullerene. It’s a different form of carbon that apparently has antioxidant/anti-inflammatory properties.
Ari Whitten – who has spoken to just about everybody possible on his busy podcast – will talk on his “Energy Blueprint” program I did a talk with Whitten and he said that the Energy Blueprint program had helped return many people with ME/CFS to health. His website states that he has:
“Helped over 10,000 of our premier members transform their energy levels and their health destiny — in many cases, going from severe debilitating chronic fatigue to getting their life back. And in many cases, feeling better than they did in their 20s.”
Whitten will speak on the mitochondria, asking, “Are your mitochondria in war mode or energy mode?”, and explain how stress can deplete our mitochondria.
Laura Frontiero FN-P BC is a nurse practitioner turned functional medicine specialist after she cured her gut, fatigue, weight, and migraine problems using functional medicine. She will talk on mitochondrial health.
Dr. Stein recovered from ME/CFS/FM and MCS using neuroplasticity.
Eleanor Stein MD – it was great to see Eleanor Stein MD. Eleanor’s story with ME/CFS/FM and MCS is an eye-opening one. After Eleanor returned to complete health – after decades of illness and trying everything under the sun – using mostly mind/body techniques, she’s made it her mission to dig into neuroplastic techniques that help you rewire your brain, calm your nervous system and improve your health and well-being.
Kevin Ellis, otherwise known as “the bone coach” will speak on something new to me – osteoporosis and FM. A large 2022 study found that people with fibromyalgia have a significantly increased risk of osteoporosis (!). (Who knew?) In osteoporosis, your bones become thin and brittle, leaving you at an increased risk of breaking or fracturing a bone (ouch!).
Ellis actually came down with osteoporosis in his mid-30s and developed a 3-step process to help people improve their bone health. Among other things, Ellis will explain about getting a osteoporosis diagnosis and give healthy tips for building healthy bones.
Deanna Hansen – was an athletic therapist who struggled with weight gain, depression, anxiety, and pain, who went on a voyage of self-discovery that ultimately ended up in her creating a new kind of therapy called “Fluid Isometrics Block Therapy” that combines meditation, exercise, and therapy. She’ll be talking about that and the role the fascia play in causing pain.
Dr. Yoni Whitten is a kinesiologist, chiropractor, and movement specialist whose 8-week Pain Fix Protocol combines “concepts from the fields of natural movement, evolutionary health, nutrition, spinal hygiene, self-care, and human performance”. None other than the Vice President of Morgan Stanley wrote “just work with him for two weeks and I know you too will be convinced that Dr. Whitten’s process is life-changing.”
![No Grain, No Pain: A 30-Day Diet for Eliminating the Root Cause of Chronic Pain by [Peter Osborne]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51X5GqEiODL.jpg)
Peter Osborne DC might seem to be presenting a rather old and tired topic, “No grains, No pain”, focused on gluten and pain. At least that’s what I would have thought a couple of months ago until I realized that the wheat in my diet – which I had convinced myself was no problem and had fully incorporated into my diet – was actually causing me enormous amounts of pain. After I removed gluten from my diet, my pain levels went down markedly.
You’re certainly getting the goods with Osborne. He’s the founder of Gluten Free Society, the creator of The Glutenology Health Matrix, and the author of the best-selling book, “No Grain No Pain” which, surprise, surprise, was turned into a PBS special.
Kelly McCann, MD is going to look at an important, but possibly under-appreciated, topic in fibromyalgia – mast cell activation. It’s the only talk on MCAS (hmm), but it looks like a good one. McCann is another one who apparently can’t stop learning. She has an MD, a Master’s degree in Public Health (MPH), a Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology, is board-certified in Integrative Medicine, is a Board Member of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, and “lectures internationally on various topics, including mold and mycotoxin illness, Lyme and chronic infections, mast cell activation, and related conditions and environmental medicine.”
Rest…Did you know that seven types of rest exist – which suggests that you and I might be missing one or two (or three or four)? Real rest can only be helpful in diseases that feature problems in both stress response systems.
Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith, the author of “Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity“, and the creator of the free rest quiz will speak on the seven different types of rest. Her TED talk has received over 500,000 views.
Cort Johnson – I am “presenting” as well; i.e. in a kind of wide-ranging talk, Dr. Murphree and I talked about fibromyalgia, what’s going on in the field, the hope that long COVID may bring, etc.
Viewing the Online Summit
The Summit occurs from May 23rd-30th and includes about 50 presentations. Each day’s presentations are free to view that day or you can buy a package and download the whole kit-and-kaboodle and watch them at your leisure. Registration also allows you to download several ebooks from Dr. Murphree on mold, thyroid, and increasing your energy.
Check the Summit out and Register for it Here.
Health Rising is an affiliate
Some of the proceeds from the sale of the package will go to HR.
And if you sign up you’ll get spammed on a daily basis! You can’t send it to spam because they change the URL on a regular basis. Hope you have a junk email address address because you’ll regret it if you don’t. 🙁
I think your suggestion of using a separate email adress for these kinds of events is good advice.
I had a similar problem with another one of these free summits (the Kelly McCann one), where I kept receiving ad emails that I could not remember having subscribed for, the unsubscribe function in these emails did not work, and the contact email adress on her homepage produced only failure notices. It took me unsubscribing 3 or 4 times until it seems to have stopped.
Though these summits have interesting information for patients, to me as a German who is used to not paying for most of their public healthcare, they also seem like commercial health trade fairs, where private or alternative health service providers present their health services, and the “virtual venue” often seems to be provided by commercial organisers of such events. Thus the sending of ad emails I guess.
It is mostly a big advertising promotion and the info provided is often of questionable quality. Anyone can proclaim themselves an “expert” and personally I believe the info coming from Europe and even (in the past) Russia/China as more reliable than the US medical system which as been bought and paid for by Big Pharma! Everyone should take what they hear on any of these talks with a big grain of salt. Cort excluded of course! 😉
Actually, if you check out the credentials of the speakers – some of which I reported – they are often quite impressive. I’m kind of the odd man out in that way 🙂
Don’t sell yourself short 🙂
Thanks. Actually, I do have a very hard won MS which they keep forgetting to put up there. Our talk was a bit different – lots of talk on research and stuff like that – if I remember correctly.
I agree that there are several highly qualified speakers and I’d like to hear them but I’m not sure is the amount of spam emails (that you can’t stop!) is worth it. I trust that you’ll fill us in on anything new that you hear. 🙂 And, you aren’t selling anything which is a huge factor in weighing the quality of the info presented. Your credentials are in a different category but they should still present them. I have several “big” names on my Lyme “potential quack” list from when I first was diagnosed 7 years ago and most are still there (or disappeared or are quacks). I’m not saying people’s personal experiences aren’t valuable but when you are selling your own “private brand cures” you just dropped down a notch in my rating system. Just my highly skeptical nature from a lot of experience. Have fun and take good notes. 🙂
In the US almost all of us have to pay out of pocket to see alternative health doctors and try their treatments. Health insurance doesn’t pay for them. It’s a different world.
Not entirely though – in Germany, conventional treatment is paid for by the public health system (apart from some that is classified as private, such as over-the-counter allergy medications), but alternative health care is out-of-own-pocket too and expensive. Maybe such summits exist in Germany for the alternative health sector, too.
As I always feel that in the altenative health care sector here, it’s difficult to check as a patient which providers are reliable and which are (at times ideologically) over-convinced of their own treatments, I think it’s helpful that you’re sharing your thoughts about the speakers in this blog.
I am not saying the probably also marketing-related nature of these events means that the information included in them is not good, just that it does not hurt as a patient to be aware of that aspect too; and get that separate email adress because you don’t want to be spammed when in a crash you can hardly process regular emails.
Well said!
In Europe it is the same Cort, we have to pay out out of pocket to see alternative doctors too 🙂
I will communicate that to Dr. Murphree
I’m really surprised and disappointed that you are advertising so much snake oil woowoo. To mention just two – diets are not cures and chiropracty is pseudoscience. Very disappointing indeed.
If you’re not into alternative health practices then this will seem like woo-woo and that’s fine. It’s not for you. I agree that diets are not cures (except in the rare cases where they are :)) but I noted in the blog how helpful it was for me to get off wheat. For most of my time with ME/CFS I’ve avoided it but decided all that gluten stuff didn’t apply to me and started to regularly eat wheat – and my pain levels went up dramatically!
That notion came out of the alternative health field – my primary care doctor would never have suggested it – so thank god for it! I was in tremendous pain.
I went off wheat and sugar since mid February. My stomach feels so much better but my pain and exhaustion are still really bad.
I also wonder why people such as Whitney Dafoe haven’t improved drastically trying different regimes. Perhaps there’s something quite different between ME and FM? I have both.
I do believe in alternative medicine but unfortunately although I’ve tried so many nothing changed my symptoms. Vagal nerve exercises help somewhat.
I agree with you informing on alternative healthcare too, because I take it the aim of this site is to inform on everything that patients have found to help them.
But I also agree with the opinion that by advertising this summit on your blog, you are kind of indirectly advertising treatment providers. There might a difference between presenting recovery stories where patients themselves relate what made them better, and a summit like this where treatment providers say what will make patients better (though sometimes based on their own recovery stories).
This is a bit at odds with the other parts of the blog where you apply rigorous scientific standards to the ME/CFS and FM scientific studies you present. But for example, I don’t think you could make an informed statement whether say Ken Swartz’ C60 is worth its money.
Also let’s say a new doctor would be recommended to HealthRising looking for your science blogs, but find an uncritical presentation of a commercial alternative health care summit first, this might deter them from reading further.
There are things like gluten that surely help many, but alternative healthcare can be rather outlandish too (I read of a German one who treats photographs of horses to cure them of infections ;)….), and I think that it goes along with basing a business model off of your own recovery story that you need to be convinced enough of it, and some providers may be convinced enough to regard it as a cure-all-method when it’s not.
But maybe as a solution for this, when you inform about a commercial event like this, you could think about maybe adding a headline “alternative healthcare” and about putting an extra disclaimer on top of the article where you make it clear that while Health Rising informs about this semi-commercial event taking place, Health Rising is not advertising or making any guarantees with regard to the quality of information or treatments presented and patients are asked to apply their own discretion, or something like this.
Looking forward to the summit … as time allows. I’ve enjoyed listening to Dr. Murphree over the last year on his Wednesday evening programs about Fibromyalgia.
Thanks for your great summaries Cort!
Good luck getting off his mailing list!
Thanks!
I have had ME/CFS since 1984 and figured out wheat was a problem long before it became “a thing”. But, strangely, I could eat wheat on trips to other countries without any adverse effects. My current doctor is a ND who practices with his father, also an ND. Gluten would make his father’s hands swell up. Then they discovered 00 flour from Italy. You can buy it on Amazon and I can bake with it without having typical gluten reactions. There may be two reasons for this: a different variety of wheat is being grown in other countries and fewer chemicals are used on these crops.
I have also discovered the best chewable enzyme I have ever found: Ther-biotic Chewable Enzymes. I found this on a Lyme Disease site. Chewing two of these tablets with each meal has helped with many digestive issues. This is also available on Amazon.
I tried to sign up for this. The site took my email and name, but then refused to give me free access or any of the “sign up” bonuses. Do we know for sure that this is not a scam? Their website eventually locked up my browser & I had to reset. 🙁
I don’t know what happened but this is not a scam. I’ve been promoting Dr. Murphree’s online summits for years…I don’t know about the bonus gifts – I assumed they were given upon registration – I could be wrong but since the Summit hasn’t started there’s no access to anything now. You’ll have access to the talks when they begin on May 23rd.
The bonus gifts are usually available as soon as you register. Something to do while you wait for the programs to start and a way to get you to give everyone your email address so some of them can spam you forever. You may want to discuss this with Dr Murphree. I’d be happy to send him a list of people who are still spamming me a year after the last program, including him!
The osteoporosis problem associated with FM may be that often the person with FM had previously existing collagen deficiency related to Ehlers Danlos. I have two females in my family that had FM and both were hyperflexible. Ehlers Danlos associated with early osteopenia and osteoporosis. I have ME/CFS and so does my daughter (disabled since age 18 after and life of dance and gymnastics) and we are both obviously Ehlers Danlos of the hyperflexible variety. It’s worth studying because it also affects the whole body wherever collagen is part of the makeup of the organ/body part. Years ago when my daughter first became nonfunctional, I read and article about what a doctor had seen with many of his young patients–able to do flexibility “tricks”. Just saw that many did–and published about it. Also mast cells in our trifecta of underlying stuff!
Twice I have taken Collagen “Vital Protein” and twice I ended in a crash. Is that one of the side effects? I do have Osteoporosis. Need help here.
I’m sorry I don’t know the answers for you. Taking collagen as a supplement doesn’t work per the info I’ve read on this. Can’t change the genetic problem with more collagen as anything rebuilt will still have the same genetic formation (?) There are some other supplements recommended but I don’t know that any of that protocol works overall. I’ve tried some. Still deciding if it helps with my problems, so won’t recommend on my own trials.
thank you. have a blessed day.
i want research. not someboddy says something. if it is alternative or not. good double blinded placebo controlled research, done by others to, with the same outcome on large groups and large control groups. the alternative ones never do…
Agree
I have signed up for these summits in the past. One problem I have with them is the presenters spend so much time with hyping and wasted talk that I am exhausted just to listen to the whole lecture. Sure, there are helpful nuggets within these talks, but having to listen to all that non-essential talk just wastes my limited energy–and makes me not want to sign up for them ever again.
Presenters, if you are reading these comments, please just get to the point! I’m confident you can give most of the information in 10 or 15 minutes. If you need to sell something more, just post your website later.
Now, those of you who see Dr. Bonilla, once again I have been given ketotifen–which didn’t do much the first time. Then the plan is to try Arava (leflunomide) a medication for RA. Have any of you tried either?
I get the feeling that Bonilla just throws a drug out there and has patients keep taking it–until it ‘works’. I had bad side effects from Abilify but Bonilla wanted me to continue, claiming that for some, it could take up to a year for positive results. Personally I think he said this is because if I dropped out of his study I became an unhelpful statistic and ruined his research results. Each time I meet with him I get frustrated because the man just doesn’t listen and his smiley face questionnaire is meaningless and a sloppy way to gather data. How can I quantify my symptoms since they are so variable?
Sorry for the rant. Hope some of you find positive information at the summit. And Cort, I’ll bet your lecture will be the best–succinct and to the point! Just the ‘gist’!
I’m so sorry you have to deal with being “used” on top of everything else! It is so hard to find a good Dr. Your description definitely makes me want to want to tell you to run away quickly but it’s hard to find someone to run too. 🙁 All I can suggest is do your own research and see if anyone else is using the same protocol with any success and if it doesn’t feel right to you and you get answers than, run! And yes, I’ll miss Cort’s presentation but I can’t deal with the spam anymore.
I love your blog, the science based research, and your interpretations of it all. I do have a huge issue with this chiropractor Rodger Murphree. This Murphree guy has no business in this community. Chiropractors are not viewed as science based. They’re viewed in the medical community as quacks. He’s a snake oil salesman offering solutions that don’t work just to enrich himself. He leans heavily into the Dr on all of his websites. His email is even “yourfibrodoctor”. Too bad earning a doctorate degree in chiropractor school doesn’t qualify you for any of the programs or hes pushing. Much less act like or have the knowledge of the as a medical doctor. Of course he sells courses and supplements. If you want to prey on a vulnerable population like us, these are the obvious products. The supplements are unregulated and often don’t contain what’s listed on the bottle. He’s making claims that aren’t evaluated by the FDA on all of his supplements. I view him as a greedy person preying on vulnerable people at their worst. I hope people in our position can see through people like this. They disgust me.
Well, Michael – this is not the online summit for you! It’s really for people who are interested in an alternative health approach to FM and that usually include supplements and different diets, etc. With regard to chiropractors I’ve seen a few; one was obviously out to make as much money as possible, the other was thoughtful and helpful.
Although I’ve been critical in my comments, I really don’t agree with a blanket rejection of all chiropractors because “medical community views them as quacks”. (Probably most of medical community also still views Drs who treat ME/CFS as quacks and many ME/CFS hypotheses like latent infection have I think been part of the alternative health domain before nowadays being confimed by research).
As far as I’ve been told, Chiropractors who manually treat the back study for many years to earn the Dr. title (In Germany we have the distinction between few true chiropractors who have studied many years in America or Switzerland earning a Dr’s degree, and “Chiropraktiker” which is basically an orthopaedic doctor with a few chiropractic add-on courses. I’ve had the pleasure of getting manual treatment from a Chiropractor who greatly helped with my back pain and wasn’t even expensive. He is one of those who is really competent and has honed his art over many years. But once when he was on holiday, I saw another chiropractor who had totally different manual treatment style which I did not like.
As far as I now, Also Dr. Kharrazian, who has published a well-known holistic medicine thyroid health book that is science-based and reputable enough that my regular thyroid doc knew about it and has a long science literature appendix, is I think a doctor of chiropractic.
As far as I understand, while chiropractics is a manual method, I assume studies of chiropractics include many other aspects of holistic medicine, which is why some Drs of Chiropractics go into a non-manual direction I assume.
While calling my Dr. of Chiropractics a quack would be grossly unfair, of course I’d expect there can be bad eggs in the basket of chiropractors, too.
I’m glad they’re talking to Ari Whitten. I have his book “The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy” but the book is on his website The Energy Blueprint, if you want to read it. He must be making a lot of money by charging subscribers for his advice because he used to be listed as “doctoral candidate” (in clinical psychology) but that has disappeared. Now it says M.S. Why finish your dissertation and get a crappy entry level academic position when you can do all your work online and get a lot more money? I once lost a brilliant and dedicated nurse practitioner from my NP program faculty because a group of physicians hired her to see all of their nursing home patients; a career that she had apparently dreamed of since nursing school. Next time I saw her she looked great and was wearing very expensive clothes and driving a high end vehicle. Much better than what I could afford on the department head salary.
I followed the recommendations in Whitten’s book, but it took me a year at 10 minutes twice a day to see any results. At first, I couldn’t stand even one minute at three feet away because I’d get a headache and muscle aches. But I persevered and now I stand six inches from the light using 5 minutes on the front of me, and 5 minutes on the back. I do this twice a day and it has helped a lot. Aches, pains and over-exertion are significantly reduced. The lights are expensive, but worth it, IMO.
Thank for sharing your success with red light therapy and the book info. I bought a red light (led) pad used for horses that has really helped heal many injuries and cranky joints. I’d love to know which red light you’re using as I recently bought a red light device and would like to compare the specs. TIA
Margaret:
I also started with a red light for animals. The red and low infrared frequencies are supposed to be non-pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory. The light that I use on my dachshund who has IVDD reduced the swelling of the broken discs in her spine so she could walk again, without having to resort to neurosurgery as I had to do the first time she had an episode (the space inside the spine to hold the spinal cord is much reduced in dogs, compared to people. That’s why just a little reduction in the inflammation has such a miraculous effect on dogs with IVDD).
I then decided to try it on myself after reading about dog and horse owners who used the light on themselves and found relief. I bought the BioMax 900:
https://platinumtherapylights.com
My husband uses it too. He mounted it on the wall behind a door in the spare bedroom. You turn it on and stand in front of it without clothes on, starting at one minute front and one minute on your back at 3 feet from the light. Then work up to 5 minutes front and 5 minutes on the back at 6 inches from the light. If you get a mild headache that lasts half an hour or so, you have increased the time or distance by too much. Back off and give it another week. Do not go above 10 minutes twice a day. The benefits are dose-dependent and fall off after 10 minutes. Too little does nothing. Too much does nothing. Keep it in that time frame.
Most people do this once a day. Some say do it in the morning because it charges you up. Some say do it in the evening because it calms you down. I do it when I get up in the morning and again at 3 pm. Cover your eyes with the glasses they send to you with the light. Cheaper versions of these lights are weak and do not work well.
You will see the wavelengths of this light on the website. It has 5 different wavelengths in the red and low infrared range.
Good luck! I would never be without mine.
Thank you so much for this detailed reply. I am copying it to refer to as i plod along the learning curve with red light therapy. I have hypermobile tendons and ligaments and def find red lights very helpful. Loved the info on IVDD on dogs as a friend of mine is trying to help her afflicted pup so I will pass your comments on to her. Very grateful to you for all this info!
Hi again Margaret:
The best light for a dog with IVDD is the Red Rush 360 Classic:
https://redtherapy.co/products/redrush-360-light
IVDD strikes all breeds of dogs with the combination of dwarfing genes like dachshund, corgi, Jack Russel terrier, beagle, pekinese and others. The dwarfing genes cause the discs in the spine to prematurely age and develop cracks and/or splits that allow the jelly-like insides to squeeze out and press on the spinal cord. This causes great pain and can also cause paralysis.
The Red Rush 360 classic is the right size for my standard dachshund. I lay her down on the floor on her side, right side in the morning, left side at 3pm. Put the light down on the floor lengthwise against the spine. Push it toward the dog until it presses on the fur on the back from neck to tail. She lies very still for this, but I don’t know how other dogs would respond. Turn on both the red and the near infrared lights and leave them on for 3 minutes. I do this twice a day and to be honest I think she likes it! No need to work up to this treatment, you can start on day 1 with three minutes right on the back because dogs have fur and we don’t. Good luck and tell me how it works for the poor pupper.
Knock em dead Cort! (but don’t break a leg!). 🙂
It is always strange to promote alternative medicine on a website full of scientific research progress.
I understand that given our primary focus but we do in our recovery stories and elsewhere (oxalacetate, mitochondrial treatment blogs, gut blogs, etc.) focus on supplements, diets, and things like that. Basically Health Rising is dedicated to helping however it can and we’re pretty agnostic about the form that takes. We have plenty of recovery stories from people who found their way to health using alternative medicine
I’m not surprised by people turning to unverified alternative health practices given the dearth of treatments you can find at your local doctor. Note that Dr. Klimas’s Institute of Neuroimmune Studies at NovaSoutheastern University – and all the heavy duty scientific work that she-s doing with her supercomputers – has firmly embraced alternative approaches to ME/CFS, FM and GWI in their clinic.
so