Posts from — May 2009

Hi Friends,

As Memorial Day kicks off the first phase of Summer, hopefully this article may be of use to someone kicking off your first Fibromyalgia information.  It’s very simple get to first base Fibromyalgia basics:

What is Fibromyalgia?

Fibromyalgia is a disorder that has been studied from as early as the 1800s. It has been referred by various names in different medical literatures like rheumatism and fibrositis. There are various symptoms that point out to the fact that the patient might be suffering from this disease. It includes the following:

• Chronic and wide spread pain that spreads throughout the body. The body becomes very sensitive and the patient feels pain even when touched.
• There is constant fatigue and lack of stamina in the patients.
• Patients suffering from this condition might also suffer from allodynia i.e. they feel extreme pain even when they are touched (skin becomes hypersensitive).
• Tingling of the skin, a constant ache in the muscles followed by spasms is a common fixture.
• Patients also complain about weakness in limbs and severe nerve pain. They may also develop severe muscle spasms frequently.
• Patients suffer from sleep disturbances where their deep sleep is punctuated with sudden phases of wakefulness. Chronic sleep disturbances are very common among patients suffering from fibromyalgia.
• Under extreme situations, patients find it hard to concentrate on any particular activity; some of them also suffer from short term memory loss. This is caused by the disturbances in sleep and that makes the patient even more fatigued.
• The aforesaid symptoms seem to get aggravated or rather heightened when the patient falls sick to certain other illness. Changes of weather can also trigger off these reactions.
• Increased psychosocial stress can also trigger off or may aggravate the condition in the patients. Other factors include changes in barometric pressure and humidity. Excessive physical exertion can also lead to the reappearance of the symptoms.

So what are the causes or rather the factors behind this disease? The answer is debated among doctors and researchers working in this field. Most researchers are of this opinion that this is a type of comorbid disease. A comorbid disease is a kind of illness that occurs in tandem with some other illness. So fibromyalgia is believed to occur in combination with some other disorder of the human body. There is a lot of speculation among the scientists regarding the type of disease that triggers fibromyalgia. One possible triggering disease is the irritability of bowel.

Most of the researchers in this field have found that people suffering from fibromyalgia have been or are suffering from irritability of bowel for a long time. Most of the researchers are also of the opinion that some other disorder occurs first, and fibromyalgia follows as a consequence of the other disorder. Most of the times the original disorder may get cured by clinical treatment but the condition of fibromyalgia persist. For example people who suffer from surgery related trauma acquire fibromyalgia as well. Although the trauma of surgery may abate after a few months, the condition of fibromyalgia still persists.

There is no universally acclaimed cure to this disease but there are a plethora of complementary and alternative drugs available that claim to provide temporary relief. There are pain relief tablets and pills that give temporary relief but no medicine provides long term benefit and cure.

Read my other posts for more indepth and helpful info to aid in improving your daily  quality of life.

Your fibro/cfs Friend,

Cheryl

Greeting Fibro and CFS Friends,

I was provided the following information regarding Fibromyalgia and pain receptors.   Cause is still unknown but I lean toward this theory as one reason our pain is so disabling.  The tender points around my right knee have been screaming with the intensity of “a truck just drove over my right leg type pain! J I observed if I push down on the points it does relieve the some pain the following day. It also leaves a 5” X 5” deep black and blue bruise!  Oh well, hope you enjoy the article as it makes sense to me.

“It is important to understand that a single cause is unknown.  However, with in-depth medical research, a number of sound theories have been developed, which is encouraging.  We know that people living with Fibromyalgia deal with levels of intense pain to the joints, ligaments, and muscles.  Many researchers and doctors believe that these individuals actually have a lower pain tolerance due to the brain having a much higher than normal sensitivity to pain signals being received.  Over the years, a number of nerve stimulation tests have been conducted on with people with Fibromyalgia, showing abnormal increase in some neurons or pain receptors.

These neurons work by receiving signals coming from neurotransmitters.  Although it is not quite known how, these receptors are capable of developing pain memory, which ultimately, makes them overreact, becoming much more sensitive to pain.  Because of this, pain that a healthy individual would feel is much less intense than it would be to the person with Fibromyalgia.  While this theory has been studied, appearing to be ironclad, the challenge is that the thing initiating the process has yet to be identified.”

Your Friend,

Cheryl