If you are struggling with the symptoms of fibromyalgia, such as pain and soreness throughout the muscles and joints, and widespread and trouble sleeping, then you’ll want to consult with a doctor. The problem is that you may have to undergo months or even years of doctor visits and physical tests before being diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Very few doctors are experts or even experienced in fibromyalgia for that matter. Just under five percent of the American population suffers from fibromyalgia, the majority of those people middle aged women. It also occurs in men and children, but not nearly as much. Fibromyalgia is also not a specific illness, as many of the symptoms for it could also mean that you have another medical condition or disease. It is very difficult to diagnose fibromyalgia…let alone treat it.
Drugs for Treating Fibromyalgia
If you are finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia, then you will be treated with numerous pain medicines, anti-depressant medicines, and muscle relaxants. While these medicines and drugs will usually decrease the pain levels and symptoms that you feel, they usually will not be able to stop fibromyalgia all together.
Some common drugs that doctors will prescribe you are Cymbalta, Lyrica, and Savella. These drugs will reduce the pain that you feel from the fibromyalgia symptoms, but what’s mysterious is that we don’t exactly know why these drugs work to treat fibromyalgia the way they do.
Cymbalta is usually used to treat depression and anxiety, and as such is also a useful drug treatment for fibromyalgia. However, as with any drug, it does come with a number of side effects, including sweating, dry mouth, and a decreased appetite. . You should also consult with your doctor to see if you might have any allergic reactions to Cymbalta.
Lyrica is a drug primarily used to treat seizures and pain in the nerves. As a result, it is also approved to treat fibromyalgia as well. The most common side effects of Lyrica are sleepiness, dizziness, a gain in weight, difficult concentrating, swelling of the hands, and dry mouth. In addition, some people also may have an allergic reaction to Lyrica, so you should talk to your doctor before use.
Savella is actually probably a more effective choice than either Cymbalta or Lyrica, although that will vary by person. Unlike the other two, Savella wasn’t first used to fight another disease before being approved to also treat fibromyalgia. It is the first drug that was made to treat fibromyalgia in the first place (at least in the United States). The primary side effects of savella are nausea, sweating, vomiting and/or diahhrea, dry mouth, an increased heart rate, and higher levels of blood pressure.
Now that we have gone over the most common drugs used to treat fibromyalgia, it’s important that we go over the downside to taking approved drugs for treating fibromyalgia. Of course, every drug has its pros and cons. All of the drugs listed and discussed above have proven to lower the pain and symptoms of fibromyalgia, despite the potential side effects that could occur as well. People’s lived can be turned completely upside down just because of the symptoms of fibromyalgia alone, and these approved drugs for treating fibromyalgia will be sure to lower those symptoms, even if you accept the risk of the potential side effects. Many people with fibromyalgia are forced to spend most of their days in bed, due to the pain.
The symptoms of Fibromyalgia can be experienced anywhere in the body, but especially in the muscles and joints of the neck, back, shoulders, hips, legs and arms. But it’s not just the pain and fatigue that hurt people; it’s the difficulty to do anything. Feeling powerful pain and excessive sleepiness is enough to want to keep you in bed, but you also may feel numbing in the sensitive parts of your body, a difficulty remembering things and incoherent thinking, and all of this may eventually lead to depression. So while taking approved drugs for fibromyalgia may be a good idea to bring down these symptoms, you should still consult with your doctor first to decide on the right one to take.
What Is the Root Cause of Fibromyalgia?
The unfortunate truth is that we still don’t exactly know what the real cause, or causes, of fibromyalgia are. This is one reason why approved drugs can’t completely cure fibromyalgia, since we don’t even know what the real cause of it is. Scientists do believe that developing fibromyalgia has something to do with our genes, but we don’t yet know what specific gene that is yet.
Even becoming diagnosed with fibromyalgia alone is a challenge. You may go months or even years of enduring the pain and symptoms of fibromyalgia before finding out if you have been diagnosed with it or not. This is because many doctors are not exactly experts in the field of fibromyalgia, and therefore cannot properly diagnose or treat you. Many other doctors have very limited experience in the field of fibromyalgia.
You may feel that no one is truly caring about you if you go from doctor to doctor without the right answers. But if you are eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia (and hopefully from an experienced doctor), then you may start to feel better as your doctor and you work together to treat your symptoms. The approved drugs that we have talked about may be a great place to start.
The doctors who usually treat fibromyalgia are physicians and rheumatologists, even though there is not yet a specific diagnostic test for diagnosing fibromyalgia. Doctors will usually perform physical tests and evaluate your symptoms and slowly but gradually cross out other possibilities on your list to narrow down the list. Eventually, they may determine that you have or haven’t been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but again, this is a very long and expensive process.
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