Fibromyalgia can seem to lead to a lot of weird symptoms. Ask anyone with fibromyalgia and they’ll tell you that condition involves a lot more than just pain and fatigue. People with the condition report everything from chronic itching to bladder problems. It seems like there’s a huge list of conditions that people with fibromyalgia experience that you’d never imagine were related.
For instance, many people with fibromyalgia experience something called orthostatic hypotension. So, what is orthostatic hypotension? Why does it seem to affect people with fibromyalgia? And what can you do to manage it?
What Is Orthostatic Hypotension?
Have you ever suddenly gotten dizzy after standing up from a chair? If so, you’ve experienced orthostatic hypotension. Basically, it’s a condition where the blood pressure drops after you change your posture.
Normally, your nervous system sends a signal to your heart to pump more blood after you stand up. Your heart actually has small collections of cells called baroreceptor cells inside the chambers. When you stand up, gravity pulls blood into your legs, which naturally results in a drop in blood pressure. The baroreceptor cells can detect this small change in blood pressure. They then send a signal to the nervous system, which triggers your heart to pump more blood to counteract the gravity.
But when you have an episode of hypotension, this signal breaks down and the heart doesn’t pump enough blood. This produces symptoms like dizziness, blurry vision, or even a loss of consciousness as your brain struggles to function without enough oxygen.
In most cases, the condition isn’t dangerous. The most serious complication is usually an injury caused by someone falling after an incident of hypotension. But it can obviously be an unpleasant condition to live with. And for older people or people with osteoporosis, the possibility of falling can lead to serious problems like broken bones.
The most common reason that someone suffers from hypotension is dehydration. But it can also be a result of certain medications. Anyone with anemia, which is a condition that limits the ability of the blood to carry oxygen, is at risk of hypotension. And finally, for reasons we don’t quite understand, there seems to be a relationship between hypotension and fibromyalgia.
How Is It Related To Fibromyalgia?
Like so many things with fibromyalgia, we just don’t fully understand why there seems to be a link between hypotension and fibromyalgia. But there are a few interesting connections between the conditions that are worth mentioning. And they may provide some possible insight into why people with fibromyalgia might experience hypotension.
Orthostatic hypotension is caused by the baroreceptor system not functioning properly. And there seems to be a link between fibromyalgia and the baroreceptor cells. A recent study found that people with fibromyalgia tend to have impaired function in the baroreceptor cells.
Not only that, but it also found that the worse a patient’s fibromyalgia symptoms were, the worse the performance of their baroreceptor system was.
The baroreceptor system is tied to the nervous system. And we know that there’s a link between problems with the nervous system and fibromyalgia. People with fibromyalgia experience a wide range of neurological symptoms. And the pain of fibromyalgia itself may be rooted in the nervous system. It could be that the same issues with the nervous system that cause fibromyalgia symptoms could explain why people with fibromyalgia experience hypotension.
Until we have a better understanding of fibromyalgia, all we can do is speculate. Luckily, whatever the reason, there are things you can do to manage the condition.
How Is It Treated?
Treating hypotension usually depends on identifying the underlying condition that causes it. Always consult a doctor if you’re experiencing hypotension. Your symptoms may actually be the result of another, unrelated condition that needs treatment.
But if you’re suffering from hypotension that’s linked to fibromyalgia, treating the condition is a bit more difficult. There’s really not many good options other than trying to prevent any injuries from falling. The best way to treat hypotension related to fibromyalgia is to take a few basic precautions. Make sure to stay hydrated, as dehydration can make hypotension much worse.
In addition, be sure to take it slowly when standing up. Give your body a chance to adjust before moving too far away from the chair. Not only will this make your hypotension symptoms less noticeable, but it will help prevent injuries.
You may also want to move furniture to reduce the odds of hitting anything if you happen to fall or consider putting soft padding on the floor. This can help reduce the chance of life-threatening injuries.
So, what do you think? Do you suffer from hypotension? Is it related to fibromyalgia? Let us know in the comments.
One life-changing day in July 1992 I was in too much pain and fatigue to get out of bed. The days turned into weeks, then months, then years. A good day was when I could sit up and read. Some days I would will myself to get dressed–then go back to bed.
Medical science says my symptoms were (and are) characteristic of fibromyalgia (FM) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), stress-related disorders that frequently occur together. “Co-morbid” is the medical term for this package deal.
FM and CFS are marked by pain, fatigue, sleep problems, memory lapses, brain fog, numbness and tingling, depression and anxiety. What most notably may set FM apart is pain in nine pairs of points in the body, for eighteen points of pain.
In 1990 the American College of Rheumatology identified the eighteen points of pain as nine paired points: two in the front and back of the neck, two in the hips, one in the elbows, one in the knees, one in the chest, and two in the back and shoulder areas. If you experience tenderness and soreness in those areas (eighteen points of pain in all) you’re a candidate for a diagnosis of FM.
Image: Shutterstock
Conditions that last indefinitely, that never go away, are termed “chronic” as opposed to “acute.” Whether a medical professional diagnoses my chronic condition as FM or something else, the fact is that it forces me to live with nagging pain and disabling fatigue.
My fatigue so great if affects vision, speech, and memory. It’s not about good days, it’s about good hours and minutes. At my best I’m no more tired than if I was out all night at a rock concert, and I stagger through the day. At my worst I lay in bed, dead to the world, in a semi-vegetative state.
Think about the worst fatigue you’ve ever felt. Maybe you went on a ten-mile mountain hike when you normally don’t walk anywhere. Maybe you insisted on trying everything in an advanced aerobics class even though you’d never been to a gym before. Maybe you ran a marathon and gave out. Now imagine that crushing level of fatigue is your “normal” state, no matter what.
I’ve adjusted to working with my fatigue instead of against it. My bad semi-vegetative days tend to happen on Sunday. I’ve trained my body to give me six days of semi-function and one day of shut-down.
Even my mother has had to learn that I’m simply not available on weekends. That’s my personal time for rest. I do a few household chores on Saturday but nothing that taxes my head, because my brain fog can’t handle anything complicated. I often stay in bed all day Sunday, allowing my brain fog to take its course.
On weekdays, I now typically get up at eight or nine in the morning and go to bed at eight or nine at night. That means I get about twelve hours of life while others get sixteen. I take a morning and afternoon nap. I’ve curtailed my activities—no late nights, no early mornings. When I say, “I’m not up for that,” I mean it.
So please don’t say about my fatigue, “I’m tired all the time, too.”
Besides the fatigue and brain fog, there are my nine paired points of FM pain, eighteen points of pain in all. For so many years I’ve endured the throbbing in my neck, my arms, my legs—I don’t remember what it was like to be pain-free. I walk around in pain, sit in pain, sleep in pain. For pain management over many years I’ve consumed thousands of pain pills: aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen sodium (not all at the same time, of course) with occasional forays into homeopathic and herbal concoctions. I’ve frequently sought out physical therapy as well, including chiropractic, massage, backrubs, and osteopathy.
I meet the Social Security Administration standards for disabled. Prying fibromyalgia disability payments out of the SSA took nine years, several lawyers, several doctors, and countless pieces of paper. It all depended on how much I’d paid in and when I filed. That’s another article.
In 1992 I worked hard, the way most people do: eight-hour days, forty-hour weeks. Now I do freelance writing when my health permits. It supplements my disability checks. My medical expenses are handled by Medicare and Medi-Cal. (I reside in California.) I get enough to pay my rent, buy groceries, and keep my car running. Everything else just has to wait until my pain and fatigue allow it.
Sleep apnea and fibromyalgia seem to go together hand to hand for a lot of people. And both seem like they almost make the other worse. The difficulty sleeping that comes with sleep apnea makes it harder than it usually is to get a good night’s sleep with fibromyalgia. And a lack of sleep is one of the worst things for fibromyalgia.
It’s a trigger for flare-ups and makes your painful symptoms even worse. But what exactly is sleep apnea? And how are sleep apnea and fibromyalgia related?
What Is Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea is a surprisingly common disorder that makes sleeping difficult. Basically, people with sleep apnea have tissue closing their throat which causes them to stop breathing a few times every hour. As a result, they wake up in the middle of the REM stage of sleep. That means they don’t realize they woke up, but still feel tired the next morning.
It usually affects people who are overweight. The excess weight on their neck is usually what’s pressing down on their throat, blocking the flow of air. But anyone can be affected by sleep apnea.
People with sleep apnea often find that they wake up feeling like they haven’t slept at all because they basically haven’t. They wake up so many times when their breathing stops that the sleep they get isn’t restful.
Left untreated, sleep apnea can cause a lot of different problems. It leads to raised blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes. And the lack of sleep can leave you with difficulty functioning during the day.
How Do Sleep Apnea And Fibromyalgia Affect Each Other?
The most important relationship between sleep apnea and fibromyalgia is the fact that both are conditions that make it difficult to get a restful sleep.
Fibromyalgia causes constant pain and also causes a sense of fatigue. Both of which are conditions that make it hard to get enough rest.
So when you combine sleep apnea and fibromyalgia, you end up feeling chronically exhausted. And fibromyalgia gets much worse when you can’t get enough sleep. So sleep apnea makes fibromyalgia much harder to live with and also makes the symptoms progressively worse.
The lack of sleep also leads to a slower metabolism, which leads to obesity. And obesity is the largest contributing factor to sleep apnea. So having sleep apnea and fibromyalgia creates a situation where you can’t get enough sleep and it starts a vicious cycle that makes both conditions worse.
Luckily, there are ways to treat the condition.
Are There Ways To Treat Sleep Apnea?
The best thing you can do if you have both sleep apnea and fibromyalgia is to begin treating your sleep apnea. While fibromyalgia is difficult to treat effectively, you can resolve your sleep apnea problems fairly easily. The key is to get a sleep apnea diagnosis as soon as possible. But this can actually be pretty difficult. Most people with sleep apnea have no idea since the symptoms only present themselves while they’re asleep.
And this is especially true when you have sleep apnea and fibromyalgia. The most obvious sign of sleep apnea is constantly feeling tired, but obviously, that’s also a symptom of fibromyalgia, which makes knowing that you have sleep apnea difficult. The easiest way is if you have a partner who can pick up on some of the other signs of sleep apnea like heavy, loud snoring, and frequently interrupted breathing.
Either way, if you feel like you’re even more tired than you should be with fibromyalgia, it might be worth trying to get a diagnosis for sleep apnea.
First, see a doctor and talk to them about your concerns. They’ll schedule you for a sleep study, which is where you sleep in a lab so that your breathing can be monitored.
If it turns out that you have sleep apnea, there are a few things you can do for treatment. First, and easiest, is a CPAP machine, which is a mask that blows air down your airway while you’re sleeping to keep your throat open. Most people with sleep apnea find that a CPAP machine is all they really need to treat their condition effectively. But for people who find it doesn’t work, there are also surgical options.
Either way, it’s important to get your sleep apnea treated as soon as you can. Anything you can do to get better sleep when you have fibromyalgia is extremely useful for managing your symptoms. And breaking the cycle of sleep apnea and obesity will help prevent your symptoms from getting worse.
Just be proactive about managing your symptoms. And be on the lookout for signs that you have sleep apnea. You can’t get treatment until you realize you have it.
You’ve probably heard by now that obesity has become one of the greatest public health issues in many countries. Poor diets and a sedentary lifestyle have made obesity a serious health risk in many developed countries. In fact, one in three Americans is classified as obese.
And you may also have heard the term “adiposity” used in the debate around this epidemic. And that might have left you scratching your head. It’s not a term that you hear being used as often as “obesity.” But put simply, adiposity is the state of having excess fat.
And when you have fibromyalgia, you can be at serious risk of developing adiposity. And this condition can have a number of serious side effects, some of them even life-threatening. So, let’s talk about adiposity, how it’s related to fibromyalgia, and what you can do about it.
What Is Adiposity?
Fat is composed of something called adipose tissue. This tissue plays a number of important roles in the body. It protects and insulates your internal organs, for instance. But it’s most important role is storing energy.
Every time you exert energy, your body needs to replace it. And the natural process of your cells replicating requires energy as well. So without enough energy, your cells can’t replace themselves as they die. Fat is the way your body stores extra energy. Humans evolved with a less reliable food supply than we have today and didn’t always know if they would have to go long periods without eating.
So, fat is an evolutionary adaptation that helps make sure you can get the energy you need when there’s less food available. But these days, food is much more available and often has more calories. As a result, our bodies store that excess energy as fat. And the state of having that extra body fat is called adiposity.
Where your body tends to accumulate fat seems to depend on your genetics. Researchers have identified several genetic markers that determine if you’re more or less likely to accumulate fat around your waist. This fat around the torso is probably what we think of most when it comes to obesity.
While fat is important to staying healthy, too much fat can cause serious problems. It leads to conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and life-threatening cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes. This makes adiposity a serious health concern, and unfortunately, it’s very common for people with fibromyalgia.
Adiposity And Fibromyalgia
Adiposity is very common, but people with fibromyalgia seem to be especially vulnerable to being overweight. The most obvious link between the two conditions is that having fibromyalgia makes it very difficult to exercise. And with constant fatigue and pain, it’s hard to find the energy or time to eat as well as you should.
But there’s also evidence that disturbed sleeping patterns contribute to obesity, as does chronic depression. And we know that people with fibromyalgia tend to suffer from both of these conditions. The truth is probably that all of these things contribute to making obesity so common in people with fibromyalgia.
And being overweight can actually make your fibromyalgia symptoms much worse. There seems to be a direct link between your BMI and how intense the pain of fibromyalgia is. So, losing weight is an important part of managing fibromyalgia. Of course, that’s difficult when you have a condition that causes constant pain and fatigue. But there are still things you can do.
How Can You Treat It?
Weight loss is simple, but of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s simple in the sense that you gain weight when you eat more calories than your body uses for energy and lose weight when you use more energy than you eat. For a good rule of thumb, every 3,500 calories you eat without burning them off equals about a pound of fat.
Your body naturally burns a certain number of calories a day, even if you don’t move at all. This is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR varies based on age, gender, and weight, but generally, it’s around 1,200-2,000 calories.
So, the key to losing weight is to know how many calories you’re burning through your BMR and movement and know how many calories you’re consuming through your diet. Then, try to make sure that you’re running a deficit of calories every day until you hit your target weight. Your doctor can help you with this and give you a good idea of what your BMR is. And on a daily basis, there are tons of great apps out there that can help you keep track of your exercise and diet.
Obviously, exercising is difficult for people with fibromyalgia. But studies have shown that just 45 minutes of moderate exercise a day, 5 days a week, can have a lot of benefits for weight loss and overall health.
And ultimately, while exercise is important for your health, diet is probably more important than exercise when it comes to losing weight. Ideally, you should aim to do both to create a life-long, healthy lifestyle.
So, what do you think? Do you have any advice about losing weight when you have fibromyalgia? Let us know in the comments.
Who diagnoses fibromyalgia? While fibromyalgia has been around for centuries, but has only gained recognition as a bona fide medical condition in the last few years, thanks to new research linking the condition to actual disease processes instead of obscure complaints.
According to the National Fibromyalgia Syndrome Association, about 12 million to 20 million people in the USA suffer from fibromyalgia, which today is classified as a rheumatologic neurologic disease. About 90 percent of fibromyalgia patients in the USA are women, and most patients develop the disease later in life, although it can develop during the teenage years.
Fibromyalgia has not always been considered a disease, but has been labeled as depression or as a psychological problem, and treated as such. Many times addictive medications such as opioids are prescribed along with anti-depressants, leading some to speculate that fibromyalgia was a mental illness.
Symptoms of the disease include fatigue, waking unrefreshed, memory or thought problems, and no other health problems that could explain the symptoms. Also suspect are pain points that last longer than a week in several of 18 parts of the body.
Even though in the 1800s a Scottish surgeon, William Balfour, discovered nodules on connective tissue and theorized that inflammation was the cause of these pain points, the disease was not recognized as valid or physically significant until relatively recently.
By 1880 an American neurologist, George William Beard, introduced terms such as myelasthenia and neurasthenia to describe overall pain coupled with extreme fatigue and coping problems, but still the condition was not classified under a single umbrella.
Even until 1975 terms such as fibrosis, muscle hardening and myogelosis were used to describe conditions now accepted as part of the fibromyalgia family of pain symptoms. As of 1968 studies began to show that the disease was more common in women who complained about general stiffness and fatigue, headaches, colitis and, of course as a side effect to pain and poor sleep, leading to the assumption that mainly women suffer from it. Singular symptoms meant a patient would be treated by specialists in the areas where the symptoms were most problematic.
As a result of these various conditions, a number of specialty physicians were involved in the diagnosis of the disease, from those working in connective tissue problems to osteo problems to psychological problems to colorectal diseases.
And because of the connective tissue discomfort, fibromyalgia was lumped in with chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, and patients frequently were referred to these specialists when they were attempting to be diagnosed.
Major progress in recognizing fibromyalgia as condition to itself was made in 1990 when the American College of Rheumatology established official criteria to be used to diagnose the newly named condition that includes widespread pain and tenderness in 11 out of 18 specific tender points.
Then, in 2014 a paper was published in the online edition of the National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain web site written by Bruce S. Gillis, MD, MPH, a medical research physician who was a part of a team at the University of Illinois College of medicine in Chicago.
Gillis was able to prove that fibromyalgia patients suffer from a depressed immune system. He did this by using the American College of Rheumatology 1990 diagnostic criteria. Through the use of that test, he and his team were able to prove that there is a specific pathway in fibromyalgia that defines it as an immunologic medical disorder that relates to the production of protein molecules called cytokines.
Cytokines can be found in a blood test called the FM/a® Test. Cytokine are a category of small proteins that are important in cell signaling. They have an impact on the immune system and on other surrounding cells.
So, who can diagnose the condition today?
The creation of the FM/a® Test paired with the 1990 list of criteria has enabled doctors to perform tests that are capable of making an accurate fibromyalgia diagnosis.
Today, even general practitioners can diagnose with accuracy whether a patient is suffering from fibromyalgia or another disease. They can look at a patient’s relevant symptoms instead of relying on purely pain points during a physical examination, follow the 1990 guidelines and conduct the blood test.
Doctors can also order X-rays to rule out other health problems.
Other diseases that can look like fibromyalgia include hypothyroidism, polymyalgia rheumatica, rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.
Doctors of diverse specialties may also look for family histories of fibromyalgia to aid them in their diagnosis.
What does fibromyalgia feel like? It’s a question you might be asking for a number of reasons. Maybe a loved one has just been diagnosed, and you’re trying to understand a little bit of what their life is like now. Or maybe you think you might have it yourself and want to know what to look for. And maybe you just want to understand what fibromyalgia is like for the many people who suffer it every day.
Either way, when asking the question “what does fibromyalgia feel like,” be prepared to get a lot of different answers. No one’s fibromyalgia is the same, and the pain it causes isn’t just physical.
What Does Fibromyalgia Feel Like
For starters, fibromyalgia pain is both severe and long-lasting. But the type of pain people with fibromyalgia feel can be very different. Generally, the pain is located along 18 specific points on your body. These are usually near the joints on both sides of your body.
And this often feels like joint pain, where the joints have a sort of dull ache. Usually, in fibromyalgia, those points hurt more when you press on them. But in addition to joint pain, the muscles also ache. This usually feels like a kind of dull ache as well, as though the muscles had been subjected to strenuous exercise. And occasionally, the muscles will spasm uncontrollably.
But, fibromyalgia pain can also feel like sharper, like someone was shoving a knife into your muscles. In the worst cases of fibromyalgia, people can feel like the muscles are almost being pulled off of the bone. Fibromyalgia can be an extremely painful disease, which makes it easy to see why living with fibromyalgia is so difficult.
What Is Life With Fibromyalgia Like
In addition to the physical pain, which can make things like just walking around the room extremely difficult, fibromyalgia makes life hard in other ways. For example, there’s the constant fatigue. Fibromyalgia makes it difficult to sleep, partly because of the constant pain and partly because it seems to trigger insomnia.
That means that people with fibromyalgia can go years without getting a goodnight’s sleep. This makes it difficult to handle everyday life since they constantly feel too tired to accomplish basic tasks. And combined with the loss of mental clarity, called “fibro-fog,” people with fibromyalgia have problems with short-term memory.
So not only are people with fibromyalgia in constant pain, but it is difficult for them to focus mentally. That means that things like going to work are hard for people with fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia can get so bad that it becomes impossible to do normal things like go to work because it’s impossible to get out of bed. And even things you take for granted, like walking, become impossible.
In that sense, life with fibromyalgia is extremely difficult and the emotional toll it takes is even worse.
What Does Fibromyalgia Feel Like Emotionally?
Of course, the worst thing about fibromyalgia is not the pain for many people. It is the way their condition shuts them off from the rest of the world. People with fibromyalgia often find that the people around them have a hard time relating to them once their fibromyalgia becomes severe.
Whereas before they may have been vibrant and full of life, people with severe fibromyalgia are stuck in bed most days, unable to even get up. This makes it hard for the people around them to continue including them in their lives. Or they get tired of having to support them emotionally and physically. Eventually, all but the most committed friends and relatives drift away. So fibromyalgia can get extremely lonely and isolating. That can be the hardest part of the disease to live with.
So when you’re asking “what does fibromyalgia feel like,” it’s worth remembering that there is an emotional toll that the disease takes as well as a physical one. And the emotional toll is so serious that people with fibromyalgia are significantly more likely to commit suicide. The constant pain and loneliness, as well as the feeling that they will never be able to live a normal life again, drives many people with fibromyalgia to take their own lives.
So in short, fibromyalgia feels so bad that people who have it feel like they want to kill themselves. To bring it back to the beginning, when you’re asking “what does fibromyalgia feel like,” the answer is “terrible.” It’s a disabling disease that causes terrible pain. Keep that in mind when you’re with people who have it. They need support and understanding most of all. And asking that basic question is a great way to start giving it to them.
But let us know, what does fibromyalgia feel like to you? Let us know in the comments.
What if a cute, cuddly dog is the Rx you need to help reduce fibromyalgia pain even more than your current therapies? It could just very well be! Fibromyalgia therapy dogs are gaining in popularity as a treatment.
Pain researchers who have studied the use of pet therapy for fibromyalgia have found that brief visits from fibromyalgia therapy dogs may be a “valuable complementary therapy” for fibromyalgia outpatients (and there are hints from researchers that a permanent therapy dog can help too!). The study “Impact of Animal-Assisted Therapy for Outpatients with Fibromyalgia,” published in Pain Medicine, found a pain severity reduction by 2 or more pain points (on a scale of 0–10) in fibromyalgia patients after a visit with a certified therapy dog that lasted 10 or more minutes. Only 4% of patients who waited in a waiting room without a visit from a therapy dog reported a reduction in pain compared to 34% of patients after the therapy dog visit.
Gianna Casini, MD, a pain fellow who works alongside study author Cheryl Bernstein, MD, discusses the study further:
“Visiting the doctor inherently is a stressful experience for most patients; this is especially significant for chronic pain patients. This can be attributed to the fact that more-often-than-not, chronic pain patients don’t have significant improvements in their pain state from visit to visit, thus they have increased emotion and frustration, which can manifest itself in increased pain.”
Pros and Cons of Fibromyalgia Therapy Dogs
While the study was on brief therapy dog visits, Dr. Casini acknowledges that there could be benefits of having a permanent certified therapy dog, but that it would depend on the patient and his or her situation. “Some of our fibromyalgia patients express difficulty taking care of their own daily needs and would likely see a dog as a burden or source of anxiety rather than a therapeutic agent. This in turn, could exacerbate their pain state,” says Dr. Casini.
On the flip side, there are a lot of pros of having a therapy dog. “Though our study didn’t specifically seek to identify mechanisms for why animal presence improves pain scores in fibromyalgia patients, there is literature to support that animal-related pain improvement is secondary to reduction in stress hormones like epinephrine and norepinephrine. Further, anti-stress hormone levels, namely oxytocin and endorphins, are elevated following therapy dog visits,” explains Dr. Casini.
Another consideration when looking at the pros and cons of a trained therapy dog is your whole health state, so discuss it with your team of doctors. A recent article on pet therapy published in the November 1, 2016, American Family Physician notes that while pet therapy has shown positive effects for some, it might not be a good idea for people with allergies or a fear of animals, or people at risk of animal-transmitted infections (the immunocompromised). There is also some risk of bites and scratches.
Assistance Dogs or Fibromyalgia Therapy Dogs?
There are several types of dogs. Service dogs (or assistance dogs) can help people with disabilities who may need assistance with everyday tasks. Psychiatric service dogs (not the same as emotional support dogs, though they can also provide emotional support) assist with mitigating the effects of a psychiatric disability (e.g., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD], severe depression, panic attacks). Therapy dogs are trained to provide therapeutic support. Emotional support dogs, sometimes called comfort dogs, can provide companionship as well as help relieve depression, anxiety and loneliness. Besides dogs, cats, birds and other animals can provide therapy through places like Pet Partners.
Some fibromyalgia therapy dogs live with people to help them and some dogs just visit a person at home, a hospital, or elsewhere.
Paws with a Cause (PAWS) Community Outreach Manager Deb Davis says that people with fibromyalgia “could most certainly benefit from an assistance dog.” What is an assistance dog?
“Assistance dog is an umbrella term for any dog that provides a direct service to mitigate a person’s disability, such as a service dog, hearing dog or guide dog.”
Davis says that dogs can help people conserve energy by opening doors, retrieving a phone or dropped object, pulling laundry baskets, and doing other tasks; this can help people from getting too fatigued by daily living skills.
“Depending on the severity of a person’s fibromyalgia, and their symptoms, a service dog could help them retrieve dropped objects when their fibromyalgia might be causing them the inability to get up and get around. Things that the client might not be able to use their fingers/dexterity for, due to their fibromyalgia, a service dog could help [with]. Additionally, if a client experiences the tingling, or numbness often associated with fibromyalgia, their grasp might not be as strong as it could be and they, therefore, wouldn’t be able to do something like pull a sweater around their shoulders or remove gloves from their hands; a service dog could be trained to do these tasks for them,” says Davis.
If applying for an assistance dog, your medical provider will need to provide information on your diagnosis/prognosis. Dr. Casini says if a patient seeks a dog (e.g., therapy, service or emotional), she would help. “I would write a letter in support of my patient pursuing a therapy dog for improvement of their pain state, as our paper has proven. Meta-analysis studies have been performed and support our data that animal-assisted therapies are effective adjuvants to other established therapies (i.e., medications, physical therapy, counseling). There are dogs that are trained for therapy, emotional or service. This would be specific to each patient’s particular needs.”
If you don’t qualify for an assistance dog, a therapy dog could be beneficial. Fibromyalgia therapy dogs are trained to provide a therapeutic benefit, but they don’t mitigate disabilities, says Davis. “Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), any assistance animal may accompany their owner into any public facilities or grounds; a therapy dog cannot accompany their owner without permission from the property’s owner. Comfort dogs are the same as far as no public access.”
Davis says that the cost of a dog varies across organizations that provide them. She adds that PAWS has placed trained dogs worth $30,000 for free with clients.
Besides Paws with a Cause (PAWS), Assistance Dogs International, American Kennel Club, Therapy Dogs International, and Canine Companions for Independence, are some of the other organizations that provide information on trained assistance or therapy dogs.
Fibromyalgia and impaired memory. If you or a loved one has fibromyalgia, then you might be familiar with something this: forgetting what the inside of your house looks like, struggling to find common words, or even forgetting what it was you were thinking about in the first place. Maybe you had to withdraw from school because you couldn’t remember what you read. Don’t panic! This isn’t necessarily indicative of early onset Alzheimer’s or dementia. Rather, if you’re dealing with fibromyalgia, there’s a good chance you’re suffering from impaired memory, concentration, and overall cognitive function. In fact, according to the National Fibromyalgia Research Association, 46% of fibro patients suffer from both fibromyalgia and impaired memory.
Some fibromyalgia patients have found that their cognitive function seems to get more impaired as time goes on. Apparently, some people don’t often have that symptom during the early years of fibro. Rather, it kind of comes with time. And not in terms of impairment that comes with aging. This is different. The National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association explains, “…we have found that FM patients perform more poorly than age- and education-matched controls on tests of several different types of cognitive function.” Ok, so there is something distinctly abnormal, a serious problem happening with the cognition of fibro patients, right? Well then, what exactly is happening and what can be done about it?
Theories about fibromyalgia and impaired memory
One study from Korea, published in 2012, concluded “that the working memory deficit found in FM patients may be attributable to differences in neural activation of the frontoparietal memory network and may result from both pain itself and depression and anxiety associated with pain.” In other words, fibromyalgia includes pain, depression, and anxiety that individually and collectively cause the brain to behave abnormally. Indeed, the study went on to add that “memory and concentration problems in FM patients were related to impairments in their ability to organize and plan ahead, express themselves, respond quickly to questions, and to drive.”
Sometimes we refer to these cognitive problems in fibromyalgia patients as “brain fog.” And if you deal with this, then you know chronic fatigue and disturbances in your sleep seem to make it worse. In fact, some physicians tackle the impaired memory and concentration issue in fibro patients by addressing sleep itself.
Another study showed that fibromyalgia patients are not receiving enough oxygen to different parts of their brain. The Arthritis Foundation speculates that a possible reason for this could be that a fibro patient’s central nervous system is off kilter which leads to changes in the brain’s blood vessels. Thus, impaired cognitive function.
Ways to deal with fibromyalgia and impaired memory
In essence, no one is certain what exactly causes the coexistence of fibromyalgia and impaired memory within patients. Indeed, there are still more theories. Of course, understanding the cause contributes largely to understanding how to treat it. But since we can’t nail that down specifically, we can at least look at treatments that have been successful for others. One method is to keep your brain active with word puzzles, reading, brain teasers, or games that stimulate concentration. However, a more common method is quite the opposite. It involves using meditation and relaxation to improve memory and concentration. Think about it like this: when you are in a stressful situation, it is often difficult to think clearly anyway, whether you have fibromyalgia or not. But when you calm down, rest, and clear your mind, suddenly all the things you were trying to think of before rush into your mind and your thinking is clear and rather succinct. So ultimately, you are aiming to minimize anxiety and clear your mind.
You can also look at the above mentioned studies and approaches and tackle it from there. For example, if pain indeed profoundly impacts the brain’s function, then finding ways to minimize pain could be a big step in clear thinking and concentration. And we all know how sleeplessness effects our pain levels and inability to think clearly. And it’s usually the pain that’s keeping us up at night anyway, right? So talking to your doctor about ways to minimize pain in order to sleep better can also be an effective approach. Although, that is so much easier said than done.
Ultimately, it will probably take some trial and error, not to mention several discussions with your healthcare practitioner. It’s a journey and we are all in it together. If you have found a particular method or technique that has helped your ability to think past the brain fog of fibromyalgia and impaired memory, to concentrate better and to remember more often, please share it. Everyone is different and your tip might be just the thing that helps even one person!
Around half of the women with fibromyalgia report experiencing breast pain. Breast pain, or mastalgia, is something most women experience at some point in their lives, but women with fibromyalgia seem to experience the symptoms more intensely. And one of the most common causes of breast pain is something called fibrocystic breast disease.
Fibrocystic breast disease is quite common in women with fibromyalgia. And many people have suggested that there might be a link between the two conditions.
So, what is fibrocystic breast disease? Is it related to fibromyalgia? And what can you do to treat it?
What Is Fibrocystic Breast Disease?
Fibrocystic breast disease is a condition where the tissue of the breasts changes. The fibers begin to form cysts. And the cysts can change the way the breasts look and feel.
Often, fibrocystic breast disease doesn’t cause any noticeable symptoms. But some women with the condition notice pain or tenderness in the breast. In addition, they may be able to feel the cysts under the tissue. They may even notice a dark-colored discharge from the nipple.
The cysts can swell with the monthly menstrual cycle, which can make the symptoms worse. So, breast pain that gets worse during menstruation is a good sign of fibrocystic breast disease.
The condition is extremely common. And more than half of all women will experience it at some point in their lives. In fact, it’s so common that many doctors don’t consider it a disease, but rather a natural change that happens in some women’s bodies. For that reason, many prefer the term fibrocystic breasts instead of fibrocystic breast disease.
Besides the pain, the condition isn’t really serious. Having fibrocystic breasts doesn’t increase your risk of breast disease. And it doesn’t lead to severe complications. But it can be an unpleasant condition to live with, especially if you’re already struggling with fibromyalgia.
Is It Related To Fibromyalgia?
A large number of women with fibromyalgia experience fibrocystic breast changes. And with a condition like fibromyalgia, which seems to be linked to so many other conditions, it’s easy to imagine that the two conditions might be linked.
But there’s actually not a lot of hard, scientific evidence that tie the two conditions together. Fibrocystic breast disease is most likely tied to hormonal changes in the body. For instance, women in postmenopause rarely develop the condition, which strongly implies that hormones like estrogen play a role.
We also think that fibromyalgia might be linked to sex hormones. The vast majority of people with fibromyalgia are women. That implies that there may be a role for hormones like estrogen in the condition since otherwise there’s no obvious explanation for the difference in the rate of the condition among the genders.
But studies of women with fibromyalgia don’t seem to suggest that they have higher levels of estrogen than women who don’t have the condition. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t a link between fibromyalgia and elevated levels of estrogen. But the studies that have been done so far simply haven’t established that there is.
More importantly, fibrocystic breasts are very common. And simply because many women with fibromyalgia have the condition doesn’t mean that fibromyalgia leads to fibrocystic breasts. If women with fibromyalgia were more likely to have fibrocystic breasts, then it might be a sign that there was a link, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Fibrocystic breasts are simply very common, which explains why so many women with fibromyalgia have the condition. The good news is that there are things you can do to treat the condition.
How Is It Treated?
In most cases, treatment for the condition isn’t necessary. But if you’re experiencing severe pain, which is often the case in women who suffer from fibromyalgia, you may want to seek treatment to reduce the pain.
Usually, basic, over-the-counter painkillers can help treat the pain from the condition. If the pain is especially bad, a doctor may be able to prescribe something stronger.
In addition, birth control medication can help manage the hormonal cycle that causes the breasts to swell.
Doctors can also help resolve this problem by lancing the cysts with a very fine needle, allowing the fluid inside to drain out. In rare cases, surgery may be necessary to remove the cysts. But this is usually only necessary with repeated cysts that can’t be managed by draining.
The good news is that with good treatment and management, fibrocystic breasts don’t have to seriously impact your quality of life.
So, have you suffered from fibrocystic breasts? Do you think it’s related to fibromyalgia? Let us know in the comments.
According to the National Fibromyalgia Research Association, 52% of fibromyalgia patients experience fibromyalgia with numbness and tingling. Another report found that as many as 84% of fibro patients experienced these symptoms as well. While the numbness and tingling primarily occur in the legs and feet, it is can also be present in arms and hands. Sometimes it’s so severe, that waking in the morning and getting from the bed to the bathroom might take extreme effort. That’s because the numbness and tingling can be downright debilitating and may even include stiffness and throbbing. Sleeping at night is supposed to be rejuvenating, right? But when you have fibromyalgia, you don’t often get much sleep. Part of the reason is likely related to the numbness and tingling you feel in your legs throughout the night and upon waking. It can keep you up at night. You may be dealing with restless leg syndrome, which, when treated, can minimize your fibromyalgia symptoms considerably due to improved sleep. But what about the numbness and tingling itself? What is it and what causes it?
Paresthesia
You know that prickly or “pins and needles” feeling you get a nerve is pinched in arm or leg? For example, if you’ve ever woken in the middle of the night with a numb arm from where you’d been sleeping on it for an extended length of time. It’s the sensation that we experience when we say something like “my arm fell asleep.” That uncomfortable and even sometimes painful feeling that accompanies that is called paresthesia. It may feel like your skin is burning, itching, or “crawling.” It can actually be a very painful symptom of fibromyalgia.
Paresthesia in general can have many different sources. For example, nerve damage, diabetes, or sciatica to name a few. But when it comes to fibromyalgia, researchers still aren’t sure what causes paresthesia. In fact, fibromyalgia with numbness and tingling can come and go for fibro patients without any explanation at all.
Treatment options for fibromyalgia with numbness and tingling
Treating paresthesia on its own is one thing. Treating it when you have fibromyalgia with numbness and tingling is another. Again, they still can’t determine just what the cause of paresthesia is with fibromyalgia patients, so it’s a whole different ball of wax, as they say. But proactive treatment seems to be helpful. For example, many fibro patients have benefited from physical therapy specifically to treat paresthesia. The therapist will often manipulate the neck and back in an effort to relieve the pain associated with paresthesia.
Sometimes monitoring oneself and making lifestyle changes are beneficial to minimizing the numbness and tingling. Apparently, many fibromyalgia patients experience an increase in these symptoms when anxiety is worse. In other words, changing circumstances in order to reduce anxiety can often lead to less numbness and tingling in fibromyalgia patients. Have you noticed a difference with that?
Other fibro patients have found relieve from paresthesia from massage, vitamin supplements such as B-12, serotonin, and magnesium, and even acupuncture. Of course, these options tend to be helpful to many fibromyalgia symptoms anyway. But it certainly depends on the person and the circumstances. You can also try aquatic therapies which are a gentle way to develop muscle and increase cardiovascular endurance. And let’s not forget heat and cold therapy. The heat is relaxing to the muscles because it increases blood flow. And cold actually decreases blood flow, thereby reducing any possible inflammation.
One more note regarding magnesium: my chiropractor put me on an easily absorbable magnesium supplement because he said that nearly everyone in America has a magnesium deficiency. This can have a profound impact on our overall well-being, our cardiovascular health, and our ability to recover. That is why fibromyalgia patients may find a great deal of relief from their numbness and tingling symptoms by soaking their feet or body’s in Epsom salt. It is full of magnesium, which raises blood circulation and can possibly prevent the sensations from coming back.
Please Share!
Identifying the right treatment for your fibromyalgia with numbness and tingling may require some trial and error. But talking with your healthcare practitioner is the first place to begin. Have you already found any one or combination of treatments that have been effective for numbness and tingling? Please share it with us. Since dealing with fibromyalgia also means dealing with so much unknown information, it’s important to share as much as possible. And, of course, what works for one, may not work for the next. But that’s why it’s even more important to share methods and treatments. So tell us what has worked for you!
The American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics published the results of a study in 2013 called “Pain and Ethnicity” which highlighted the disparities that patients of color experience when seeking healthcare for their pain. This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read our series on the differences in the ways that men and women experience pain, which showed that women are more sensitive to pain than men, and yet were treated as though their pain was not as bad. It should come as no surprise that African Americans are also treated differently by their doctors.
African American Patients Experience More (and More Severe) Pain Than White Patients
And yet, even if you were expecting a difference, some of the findings of the study are indeed shocking. The study, which focused on chronic pain (and African Americans with fibromyalgia would surely have been included) found that:
27% of African Americans over the age of 50 experience severe pain most of the time (compared with just 17% of white patients)
African Americans were found to have lower pain thresholds than whites for cold, heat, pressure, and ischemia
African Americans were more likely than non-Hispanic whites to underreport pain unpleasantness in the clinical setting, especially if the healthcare provider was perceived to be of a higher social status
African Americans were more likely to attribute pain to personal inadequacies and to use “passive” coping strategies, such as prayer than were non-Hispanic whites
Part of the discrepancies may be due to cultural misconceptions, as African Americans with fibromyalgia may use different language than white patients to describe the intensity and duration of their pain. They may underreport due to a greater stigmatization of pain in their community. Doctors need to be educated in these differences in order to serve the populations they’re treating.
African American Patients are Less Likely to Abuse Opioids but are Less Likely to Have Them Prescribed
Another interesting finding is that African Americans are less likely to abuse opioid pain medication than whites because they were more afraid of becoming addicted. And yet, despite these findings, African American patients are far less likely to have pain treated effectively than white patients. In fact, white patients receive more and better care than African American patients:
Even when they report higher pain scores, African American patients are less likely to be prescribed pain medication, and when they do receive prescriptions, they are given lower doses than white patients
African American patients have longer wait times in emergency to receive pain medication than white patients
African American patients with low back pain reported greater pain and higher levels of disability than whites but were rated by their clinicians as having less severe pain
African American veterans with osteoarthritis received fewer days’ supply of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) than white veterans did
What all of these findings point to, the study concludes, is that based on doctors’ misconceptions, African American patients are perceived to be at more likely to abuse prescription pain medication than white patients, when the opposite is true.
You are Your Own Best Advocate When it Comes to Your Healthcare
So, armed with this information, what is an African American patient with fibromyalgia supposed to do? First, it’s good for any patient to make a list of symptoms, severity, duration, and frequency before you go see a doctor. There are some good fibromyalgia questionnaires you can fill out beforehand and take with you (here’s a printable PDF version you can download and take with you to your appointment).
You can also familiarize yourself with the experiences that other patients have had, like Sabrina Dudley Johnson, AKA the fibrocop, who has had pharmacists refuse to fill her prescriptions. The internet is full of great resources, including BlackDoctor.com, which has a section on fibromyalgia.
Finally, don’t be afraid to speak up about your pain and suffering. You are your own best advocate. Fibromyalgia is already an invisible illness, and the taboos around pain and race prevent patients from getting their best care. You know your body better than anyone, so take ownership of it.
What is your experience as a person of color dealing with healthcare providers? Let us know in the comments.
Restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia have a surprisingly close relationship. And if you have a fibromyalgia, there’s a good chance you have restless leg syndrome (or RLS) as well.
But maybe you’ve just been diagnosed with one of these diseases and you want to know about restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia. In which case, some good, basic information will really help you out when it comes to learning how to deal with your symptoms. So let’s look at what each condition is and how restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia are related.
What Is Restless Leg Syndrome?
Basically, restless leg syndrome is a disorder in your brain that causes a feeling of itching or stinging in your limbs. Often it shows up in the legs, causing people with the disorder to constantly twitch their legs looking for some relief, and thus “restless legs.”
But because this feeling is usually worse when the body is at rest, people with restless leg syndrome have trouble sleeping since it’s difficult to drift off when your legs are twitching. In the worst cases, this can make it close to impossible to sleep, leaving people with severe RLS with chronic fatigue and all the complications associated with it.
What Is Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia is a disease that causes your body to feel a constant sense of pain. This pain is located along 18 points in your body that are tender to the touch. In addition to the pain, people with fibromyalgia feel a constant fatigue and mental fog.
No one is sure what exactly causes fibromyalgia, but theories range from a neurological disorder to food allergy, to it being an autoimmune disease. Either way, people with fibromyalgia find that their pain can get so severe that they are effectively disabled, making it a horrible disease to live with.
How Do Restless Leg Syndrome And Fibro Affect Each Other?
There seems to be a definite correlation between people who suffer from restless leg syndrome and fibro. In studies conducted on the subject, doctors have found that 33% of people with fibro also had restless leg syndrome, compared to just 3% of people who didn’t.
So people with fibro are more than ten times as likely to develop RLS, but no one is sure why.
One thing that restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia have in common is that no one knows what causes either condition. Some doctors believe that genetics plays a role in determining whether you get RLS and others think a deficiency in iron in the brain could be behind it.
But the biggest, and the most troubling, relation between restless leg syndrome and fibromyaglia is that both make it hard to sleep. Fibromyalgia patients already suffer from chronic fatigue, and the pain they feel at night makes getting a decent rest very difficult.
RLS, meanwhile, also makes it hard to sleep since it’s symptoms are worst during rest. So if you have both restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia, the odds of you getting a good night’s sleep are pretty low. Even if you can sleep through the pain of fibromyalgia, the restless legs make laying still so you can sleep difficult.
And that’s a serious problem because not getting enough sleep can kill you. You see, not getting enough sleep is linked to everything from car accidents to heart attacks. And extended periods of sleep deprivation can even result in vivid hallucinations.
So when you consider that, these two diseases are a much bigger deal than “just not getting enough sleep.” They are a set of related and often concurrent disorders that can make your every waking hour a zombified slog through daily tasks. And taken together they can wreck your health to the point that you are far more likely to end up in an early grave.
Restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia are both diseases that are poorly understood and don’t have effective cures at the moment. But there are treatments available. If you have persistent trouble sleeping with these disorders, see a competent doctor as soon as possible. They can prescribe a number of medications that can actually help you fight your symptoms.
There’s a wide range of dopamine agonist drugs doctors use to treat the restless leg syndrome. And it turns out that even just some basic lifestyle changes like exercise and eliminating nicotine and caffeine can really help with RLS. The same is true of fibromyalgia. And new treatments are being invented all the time.
Just remember that the worst thing you can do is give up. It’s tempting after you’ve been to what feels like a hundred doctors and gotten no relief to just give up on any hope of sleeping again. But hope that there is something out there, or will be one day, that can help you live a normal life again is one thing you can’t give up.
So tell us, do you have restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia? Does anything help you sleep? Tell us in the comments.
Got fibromyalgia? Chances are you have fibromyalgia and insomnia. At the very least you probably deal with really crappy sleep. Insomnia for fibro patients means sleepless nights, tossing and turning, sometimes due to pain or discomfort. On other nights it’s due to racing thoughts. You probably also have problems simply falling asleep or even waking in the middle of the night, but unable to go back to sleep. And, of course, when you “wake” in the morning, you’re exhausted.
Maybe it’s because you have restless leg syndrome (RLS), which is very common among fibromyalgia patients. In fact, for some people, it appears that insomnia came first and then led to fibromyalgia. But there is so much mystery with fibromyalgia due in large part to the inconsistencies. That is to say, everyone’s fibro experience is different. And so is the reason they developed it in the first place. With that in mind, your insomnia probably looks different than mine, but it nevertheless effects 86% of fibromyalgia patients.
What causes insomnia when you have fibromyalgia?
Well, that’s a good question. Partly because it’s possible that insomnia can actually lead to fibromyalgia for some people. Furthermore, there are so many symptoms and conditions associated with fibromyalgia, that it’s almost impossible to determine the actual cause.
The National Sleep Foundation attributes the comorbidity of fibromyalgia and insomnia in patients to pain. “For people with fibromyalgia, the combination of pain and sleep disturbance is a double-edged sword: the pain makes sleep more difficult and sleep deprivation exacerbates pain. The good news is that reduction in sleep disturbance is usually followed by improvement in pain symptoms. This also highlights the importance of healthy sleep and to find a sleep professional in treating this disease.”
They reference a study consisting of deliberately sleep-deprived middle-aged women. Over the course of three days, their pain tolerance decreased while their pain and fatigue increased, “suggesting that such sleep disruption may play an important role in the development of fibromyalgia symptoms.” Many studies have been conducted to examine the connection between fibromyalgia and insomnia, as well as a myriad of other symptoms and related conditions. But nothing is conclusive. Again, we are back to the mystery.
What can I do for my fibromyalgia and insomnia?
The first thing you need to do it is have your sleep history thoroughly evaluated. You may be experiencing sleep disturbances without realizing the source. For example, for some reason sleep apnea affects many fibromyalgia patients, causing them to wake constantly because they aren’t breathing. Additionally, RLS is so disturbing to sleep that it is actually considered a sleep disorder.
Another issue to get checked for is verifying whether you have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. Or, worse yet…. both. In fact, you may be dealing with something else entirely, like hypothyroidism or other endocrine disorders. These will be treated in a very different way than fibromyalgia and that’s why it is important to officially rule them out.
Medications may be an option, but keep in mind that sleeping pills are not meant for chronic insomnia. A clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep specialist at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Mary Rose, explains that sleeping pills are only meant for short-term relief, often to get your sleep cycle back on track. Dr. Rose adds that she cautions her fibromyalgia patients struggling with good sleep against napping. Taking a nap during the day robs you of sleep at night.
Of course, there are other options that include making sleep a priority in your life. Dr. Natalie Dautovich of the National Sleep Foundation says that “making sleep a real priority can help you get more out of it.” She offers four tips to do this:
Limit or avoid caffeine all together
Limit alcohol, especially at night
Use medications when needed (Talk to your doctor about how and when to use them.)
When I was 19 years old, I developed insomnia and that led to excruciating headaches. To make matters worse, I am highly sensitive and didn’t know it. All of this is likely tied to my fibro symptoms. I spent years trying various options to help me sleep. Of them all, the two that have worked most consistently for me are calcium (combined with magnesium for absorption) and valerian root. As long as I take one or the other, I usually have a relatively decent night of sleep. If I skip more than two nights of taking it, I’m awake for hours and hours. And I feel like death the next day. Have you found something that works especially well for you? Tell us about it, please!
Cachexia: The Wasting Disease Associated With Chronic Illness
Written By: Wyatt Redd
admin
Cachexia is a devastating condition that causes the body to essentially waste away. And a number of conditions that often affect people with fibromyalgia can lead to cachexia. If you’re suffering from some of these related conditions, it’s probably a good idea to be aware of the risk. So, let’s cover what you need to know about the condition, how it can be related to conditions common in people with fibromyalgia, and what you can do to treat it.
What Is Cachexia?
We aren’t entirely sure what causes the condition, but the best theory we have at the moment is that it’s related to something called cytokines. Cytokines are a type of protein that helps tell your cells what to do. And they play an especially important role in controlling the immune system.
When you have a condition that leads to cachexia, these cells multiply too rapidly and trigger the body to start losing weight.
But many people with the condition also seem to have unbalanced levels of hormones like testosterone. That suggests that the hormonal system might play a role in the condition as well. But the exact way this works isn’t well understood.
The most obvious symptom of cachexia is a sudden loss of body mass. Both fat and muscle tissue seem to waste away. A loss of more than 5% of your body weight with no explanation is generally a sign that the patient is suffering from cachexia. Over time, this loss of body mass can cause serious complications.
Your body needs a certain amount of fat to function properly. Fat plays some important roles in the body, like protecting vital organs and helping your body process vitamins. When you suffer from cachexia, these processes break down. Eventually, this can be fatal.
Cachexia And Fibromyalgia-related Conditions
There are a number of conditions that can lead to cachexia. The condition is especially common in people suffering from end-stage cancer. Cancer cachexia can seriously complicate treatment since it reduces the body’s ability to respond to normal cancer treatments. And there’s evidence that the tumors themselves are releasing the cytokines that cause the condition, which makes it hard to treat.
But cachexia can often result from autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. That makes it of special concern for people with fibromyalgia since there seems to be a link between fibromyalgia and autoimmune disease.
These autoimmune conditions cause widespread inflammation in the body as the immune cells attack the body’s tissue. Over time, this inflammation seems to trigger the release of extra cytokines. This might explain the link between cachexia and autoimmune conditions.
That’s why it’s important to manage conditions like rheumatoid arthritis with medication to reduce swelling. If not, there’s a risk of serious complications like cachexia.
Treatment
Managing autoimmune conditions is usually done with anti-inflammatory drugs. One of the most common types of these medications is non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. This category includes things like aspirin and work by blocking the production of enzymes that trigger inflammation.
In addition, doctors often prescribe corticosteroids. Corticosteroids are a form of hormone that the body releases naturally to reduce inflammation. But doctors can give you artificial corticosteroids to help the body’s natural response.
When it comes to treating cachexia itself, the treatment depends on the underlying cause. Doctors can usually prescribe drugs to help block the production of cytokines. But it’s also important for the patient to eat enough to regain some of the lost body mass.
This can be difficult since many of the conditions that cause cachexia also reduce the appetite. So, doctors usually recommend appetite stimulants. Corticosteroids often have the side effect of increasing the appetite, but interestingly, medical marijuana is often a good option.
If you’ve ever tried marijuana, you might have noticed that it makes you really hungry. Regular marijuana users have long known about this particular side effect, usually calling it the “munchies.” Recently, we’ve discovered that some of the chemicals in marijuana, cannabinoids, are actually similar to the chemicals that your body produces to regulate hunger.
When you use marijuana, these chemicals bind to the same receptors in the brain that control hunger and trigger the desire to eat. So, while that might be a little annoying for marijuana enthusiasts, it actually makes the drug very useful for people who struggle with cachexia.
Depending on how much the muscles have wasted, someone with cachexia may also need long-term physical therapy to repair the damage. If you’re worried that you suffer from cachexia, or notice a sudden drop in body mass, you should see a doctor. Sudden weight loss is often a sign of a serious medical condition.
So, have you ever suffered from cachexia? Do you think it might have been tied to fibromyalgia? Let us know in the comments.
Have you ever tried looking up your fibromyalgia symptoms online? Did you notice a lot of conflicting information? Everyone is an expert, right? One group says this, another says that. Well, I don’t claim to be an expert, but I know what I experience. I recently discovered that 72% of FM patients suffer from joint pain with fibromyalgia. But when I tried to find the reasons why, I immediately came across conflicting information. I know fibromyalgia is loaded with mystery, but the uncertainty really makes it hard to figure out how to treat this thing. So what exactly is the deal here? What is causing the joint pain?
The Rheumatic Camp
Some researchers and physicians say that fibromyalgia is a rheumatic disease. So let’s look at what that even means. The American College of Rheumatology describes rheumatic conditions as musculoskeletal and systemic autoimmune diseases. “Autoimmune conditions occur when the immune system sends inflammation to areas of the body when it is not needed causing damage/symptoms. These diseases can also affect the eyes, skin, nervous system and internal organs…. Common diseases treated by rheumatologists include osteoarthritis, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic back pain, tendinitis, and lupus.”
These conditions inevitably effect the joints. Experts in this camp say that fibromyalgia is a rheumatic disease that attacks muscles and tendons that support joints. This leads to stiffness and pain, not to mention disturbances in sleep. Rheumatic diseases actually cause damage and/or inflammation to the joints, muscles, or tissues. So that’s why you experience joint pain with fibromyalgia. But is that what’s happening with fibromyalgia?
The Non-Rheumatic Camp
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases disagrees. They explicitly state that “inflammation is not a symptom of fibromyalgia.” In fact, it is not listed as a symptom with the National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association, the Mayo Clinic, or the National Fibromyalgia Association.
Ok, so what’s really going on here then? Well, again, I’m not expert, but my own symptoms have led me to so much research on this condition. One thing I have found is a lot of overlap with fibromyalgia and other conditions. Experts are certain of this one: fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis definitely produce some similar symptoms. In particular, are muscle pain, morning stiffness, fatigue, and loss of mobility and range of motion. Indeed, both conditions even experience flares wherein symptoms may be more exacerbated, as opposed to other times when they are virtually non-existent. The similarities are often so close for certain patients, that it usually takes a rheumatologist to make an accurate diagnosis of one condition or the other. And fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis are treated quite differently so an accurate diagnosis is essential to effective treatment.
Then What’s Causing the Joint Pain with Fibromyalgia?
Many people with fibromyalgia swear that their joints are swollen, yet there is no physical evidence of inflammation as is the case with arthritis. In some cases, it’s very possible and somewhat likely that you are experiencing another condition all together. For example, many fibromyalgia patients have TMJ syndrome which produces facial and jaw pain or tenderness. In fact, if you are actually experiencing visible swelling in your joints, then it’s possible you are dealing with rheumatoid arthritis as well as fibromyalgia. Lupus and osteoarthritis are also possibilities in this case. There is another disease called ankylosing spondylitis that is a chronic, progressive, and inflammatory disease of the spinal joints.
In other words, when you have fibromyalgia, it may feel like your joints are swollen and filled with pain. However, if there is no sign of inflammation (e.g., swelling and/or redness), then you are not likely dealing with a rheumatic disease that causes damage and potential deformation. It apparently is just part of some of the unknowns surrounding fibromyalgia.
You probably want to shoot me right now, don’t you? I mean I haven’t exactly answered the question of what is causing joint pain with fibromyalgia. The answers are all over the place, frankly. Remember that when you look into this question, you too will find very specific answers as to why joint pain is occurring. But if you keep looking, you will find the complete opposite answers. The bottom line is that it’s happening, with or without a reason. Your best bet is to go to a doctor, especially a rheumatologist, neurologist, or osteopath. Even though fibromyalgia probably doesn’t qualify as a rheumatic disease, a rheumatologist is exposed to fibromyalgia on a regular basis. A neurologist will often point to the central nervous system as the culprit and with good reason. An osteopath will look at the whole person and evaluate the big picture rather than honing in on one or two symptoms. Any of these are excellent physician choices for treating fibromyalgia.
Do you experience joint pain with fibromyalgia? What does your health care professional say is the reason? Do you agree? Why or why not?
One of the strangest things about fibromyalgia is the way it can lead to symptoms you would never think could be related. For instance, a lot of people with fibromyalgia notice that they feel an overpowering need to urinate frequently. Others notice an uncomfortable itching all over the body. And did you know that fibromyalgia may actually affect your menstrual cycle?
Amenorrhea, or an absence of periods, is something that a lot of women with fibromyalgia experience. So, what do you need to know about this condition, and how is it related to fibromyalgia?
What Is Amenorrhea?
In a basic sense, Amenorrhea is just a break in the menstrual cycle that lasts longer than three months. There are a lot of different things that can cause it. Obviously, pregnancy and menopause cause your menstrual cycle to stop. But it can also be caused by a number of different medications, very low body fat, too much exercise, and stress.
There are also physical problems that might cause it. For instance, tumors near the hormonal glands can cause an imbalance in hormones that lead to it. And conditions that cause scar tissue to build up in the ovaries can also stop periods.
Amenorrhea is obviously not dangerous, and it’s just a sign of other conditions. But those conditions can be dangerous and lead to serious complications depending on what’s causing your amenorrhea. But the only complication is that it makes it impossible to get pregnant.
The symptoms will also vary depending on the underlying condition. Most of the physical symptoms are related to the hormonal changes that can cause amenorrhea, including:
Milky discharge from the nipples
Hair loss
Headache
Excess facial hair
Pelvic pain
Acne
If you’re suffering from these symptoms, it’s a good idea to see a doctor. A doctor can run some tests to figure out what’s causing them. Usually, they’ll start by checking to see if you’re pregnant or in menopause. Then, they’ll check your hormone levels to see if they’re out of balance.
Finally, if those don’t explain the symptoms, they’ll use an ultrasound to examine the uterus. This test will help them spot any physical conditions that might be to blame.
There are a few risk factors for the condition. Those include lifestyle issues like stress or diet. The condition can also run in families, so your doctor may ask about your family medical history. But it really can affect any woman.
But while it can affect anyone, it’s common for women who have fibromyalgia. So, what’s the connection?
How Is It Related To Fibromyalgia?
It seems like stress is usually behind most of the unusual symptoms associated with fibromyalgia. And this is probably the case when it comes to amenorrhea. The stress of living with fibromyalgia is obviously significant. People with fibromyalgia live in constant pain and have to deal with a medical establishment that just doesn’t know much about how to deal with them.
Add the family and relationship problems that often occur as a result of fibromyalgia, and it’s easy to see why stress would be a huge part of someone with fibromyalgia’s life. But that stress takes a toll on the hormonal system, and the imbalance in hormones can lead to amenorrhea.
High levels of stress cause your body to produce something called cortisol. This cortisol then decreases the amount of hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). GnRH is a hormone that is produced in the pituitary gland and controls the functions of the ovary. Without, your periods no longer function normally.
So, in most cases, people with fibromyalgia and amenorrhea are probably suffering from stress-related complications. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t suffering from another more serious condition that’s causing theirs. You should always get checked out by a doctor, as it can be a sign of serious conditions.
But if stress is to blame, you can help treat it by reducing stress. Obviously, that’s easier said than done. Consider visiting a therapist who specializes in people with fibromyalgia. They can help you find ways to handle and reduce stress.
Otherwise, moderate exercise like yoga has been proven to help reduce stress and the severity of fibromyalgia symptoms. So, you may want to consider working moderate exercise into your daily routine if you can.
When it comes to stress-induced amenorrhea, all you can really do is try to reduce your stress. It’s always a good idea to see a medical professional and follow their recommendations if you’re suffering from it.
So, have you had amenorrhea with your fibromyalgia? What helps? Let us know in the comments.
Fibromyalgia is a difficult disease to live with. It causes chronic fatigue and pain all over the body. And people who have fibromyalgia often find it hard to find a treatment that works for them. That’s why it’s important to get a diagnosis early so you can get an effective treatment as soon as possible. There are a few early signs of fibromyalgia that you should look for to tell if you have fibromyalgia.
What Are The Early Signs Of Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia can be difficult to diagnose. And in the early stages, the first signs of fibromyalgia can be very different for different people. One of the best symptoms to look for early on is chronic fatigue. People with fibromyalgia often feel like they can’t seem to get a good rest no matter how much they sleep. And to make things worse, sleeping can be very difficult by itself.
Just feeling tired all the time is probably worth a trip to your doctor, as chronic fatigue is a symptom of many different conditions.
In addition, the most obvious symptom, and the one that doctors use to diagnose you is the widespread pain. Fibromyalgia pain is located along 18 different points on the body. These are usually in the joints of the limbs and back. A doctor will test you to see if you have pain in 11 of these points, which sufficient to prove that you have fibromyalgia.
This pain is typically what causes fibromyalgia patients to visit a doctor, as it is difficult to manage.
What Should You Do If You Think You Have Fibromyalgia?
If you have these early signs of fibromyalgia, it’s important to see a doctor as soon as possible. If possible, it’s best to see a doctor who specializes in fibromyalgia. You can contact the National Fibromyalgia Research Association for a list of fibromyalgia specialists in your area. And a doctor who treats fibromyalgia regularly will be more aware of the early signs of fibromyalgia and better equipped to recommend an effective treatment.
Be honest and thorough when describing your symptoms as it will help the doctor make the best diagnosis possible.
What Are Some Treatments For Fibromyalgia?
There are a number of drugs that doctors prescribe to treat fibromyalgia. Often these are anti-depressants, like Lyrica and Cymbalta, that increase the levels of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin helps calm the nerve pain associated with fibromyalgia.
But there are also other drugs that are new when it comes to treating fibromyalgia but show promise. Drugs like naltrexone offer new hope to people with treatment-resistant fibromyalgia.
And doctors are rapidly testing new drugs and making advancements in the study of what causes fibromyalgia. Meanwhile, many find that the standard treatments are at least partially effective.
It’s important to remember that you should be careful about paying attentions to possible early signs of fibromyalgia and seek medical help as soon as possible. Whenever you feel weak or tired and experience pain, it’s always worth a trip to the doctor. But let us know, how did you know you had fibromyalgia, and what did you do about it? Let us know in the comments.
Dealing with fibromyalgia can get pretty lonely. People who used to be your friends can sort of drop out of your life after the chronic pain and fatigue you experience make staying connected difficult. Luckily, where human friends can let you down, having a pet can really help when it comes to dealing with the pain of fibromyalgia.
Not only will a furry friend give you some companionship, but it turns out that pet therapy can actually be a pretty effective way of dealing with fibromyalgia pain. Here’s how it works.
What Is Pet Therapy?
Pet therapy, also known as animal-assisted therapy, is a slightly unconventional approach to dealing with chronic pain. Basically, it involves using specially trained animals to provide comfort to people who suffer from diseases like fibromyalgia. The animals provide companionship while the patient pets or plays with them, reducing the amount of stress and pain they feel.
Pet therapy is also used frequently for people who are in hospice care. Many find the presence of an animal to be reassuring in what is a very stressful situation. In addition, kids who might be nervous about undergoing a surgical procedure also benefit from pet therapy since it can help them feel calmer.
The biggest concern when it comes to pet therapy is making sure that the animals are well-trained and vaccinated. Because pet therapy is often done in hospitals, doctors want to be sure that a dog won’t get loose and run around contaminating the area.
With that being said, pet therapy, when done by a professional, is perfectly safe and can be very effective for treating fibromyalgia pain.
How Can Pet Therapy Ease Fibromyalgia Pain?
While the idea that simply petting a cat or dog can actually help your fibromyalgia pain seems a little far-fetched, there’s some basic science that backs it up. You see, petting an animal has been shown to cause your body to release lower levels of cortisol, which is the hormone linked to stress. And cortisol levels are directly linked to the amount of pain people with fibromyalgia feel.
And in addition to helping deal with your fibromyalgia pain, pet therapy also has other benefits. Depression and anxiety are both common among people with fibromyalgia, and it turns out that pet therapy can also help significantly with those symptoms. People who engage in pet therapy report consistently lower levels of stress and anxiety than people who don’t. There’s something about stroking a companion animal that lends a level of comfort to people who are suffering.
And taking care of an animal also helps people with fibromyalgia get more involved in daily life. Taking the animal on walks or playing with them in the park are great ways to coax yourself out of bed. And that’s especially true on days when your fibro pain makes you want to just close the curtains and go to sleep. So, a therapy animal can even be a kind of link to the rest of the world when you have fibromyalgia.
So pet therapy can not only help you reduce your fibromyalgia pain, it can help you feel happier and less anxious.
How Can You Start?
If you’re interested in trying pet therapy for fibromyalgia pain, the first step is to find a pet therapist in your area. They’ll be able to bring a therapy animal to you in the hospital or at home.
Or if you prefer, you can also purchase your own animal that has been trained to be a therapy animal. There are lots of different breeders and trainers. And one should be able to help you find what you are looking for. A quick google search should be enough to find some in your area.
Finally, if you already have an animal, you can have them trained and certified as a therapy dog. This will help your dog learn how to provide comfort to you and to others. But certified therapy animals are also considered service animals. And that means you can legally bring them into restaurants or on flights.
So maybe you’re the kind of person who hates having to leave their loyal pet behind. Well, getting them certified to provide therapy means that you can get comfort from them anywhere you go. And that can be a great thing when you’re suddenly struck by a fibromyalgia flare-up during your daily routine.
Animals make great companions, and it turns out that they might actually be great for treating fibromyalgia pain too. So if you’re tired of trying side-effect riddled medications, some alternative pet therapy may just be for you.
Fibromyalgia is primarily characterized by widespread pain. The locations include the right and left side of the body, as well as above and below the waist. However, many patients experience pain in just one or a few places. If you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, you probably have quite a story to tell about finally getting a diagnosis. One of the main reasons that getting the diagnosis is so difficult is because fibro symptoms resemble the symptoms of other conditions, diseases, and disorders. Widespread pain, for example, is not limited to fibromyalgia.
In your quest for a fibro diagnosis, you no doubt encountered a discussion about rheumatoid arthritis, which is also commonly referred to as RA. The reason you likely encountered a fibromyalgia vs RA discussion with your physician on within your personal research is that, in addition to widespread pain, both conditions produce other similar symptoms as well. These include:
Muscle pain
Morning stiffness
Fatigue
Loss of mobility and range of motion
Another similarity in the fibromyalgia vs RA debate are the flares or “flare ups.” The Mayo Clinic explains: “Rheumatoid arthritis signs and symptoms may vary in severity and may even come and go. Periods of increased disease activity, called flare, alternate with periods of relative remission – when the swelling and pain fade or disappear. Over time, rheumatoid arthritis can cause joints to deform and shift out of place.” While the flares are certainly similar, this is one key difference in fibromyalgia compared to RA: fibromyalgia does not cause joint deformation like rheumatoid arthritis does. That’s because RA is rooted in inflammation, unlike fibromyalgia.
Just What is Rheumatoid Arthritis?
Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disease that attacks the joints. This leads to inflammation which results in swelling and pain around the joints. Over time the inflammation causes damage to the cartilage, as well as a loss of it. This in turn leads to less and less space between joints. The joints then become unstable and painful, even losing their mobility and sometimes leading to deformed joints. This damage is irreversible. So it is recommended that RA treatment is addressed quickly and aggressively.
Fibromyalgia vs RA: What If I Have Both?
Though it is certainly possible to suffer from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis at the same time, these illnesses are definitely different. Even the medications used to treat them are different. In fact, having a correct diagnosis is critical for determining the correct medication. It is equally critical because ignoring RA symptoms and pushing through the joint pain can actually lead to irreparable damage.
If you are one of the few patients who suffers from both, make sure to find a knowledgeable physician who is experienced in treating both conditions. Good places to start are with a rheumatologist, neurologist, or an osteopath. Interestingly enough, the Arthritis Foundation explains that “people with other rheumatic diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, are at greater risk for fibromyalgia. For example, about 20 to 30 percent of people with rheumatoid arthritis also develop fibromyalgia, although no one knows why.”
Other Similar Symptoms
The Mayo Clinic adds that approximately 40% of those with RA also experience symptoms that do not involve the joints. Understanding this helps explain why fibromyalgia vs RA is such a difficult thing to puzzle out. Rheumatoid arthritis effects other structures, including:
Skin
Eyes
Lungs
Heart
Kidneys
Salivary glands
Nerve tissue
Bone marrow
Blood vessels
Compare those effected structures and how they relate to the following common symptoms of fibromyalgia:
Skin sensitivities, rashes
Itching, burning
Dry eyes, mouth
Vision problems
Muscle weakness, aching
Numbness, tingling
Dizziness
Pain
If you’re unsure about your diagnosis, it will be helpful to keep a journal of your pain so that you have specific details to discuss with your physician. Traditionally, women have been most effected by fibromyalgia. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates between 80-90% are women ages 18 and up. But the way it is tested is expanding, so more men are getting diagnosed with fibromyalgia as well. Similarly, the Arthritis Foundation says that rheumatoid arthritis effects nearly three times as many women as it does men. They add that while it does occur with men, it typically happens later in life for them. For women, RA begins between the ages of 30 and 60.
Were you misdiagnosed? Or do you suffer from both fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis? Tell us your fibromyalgia vs RA story, please!
When I was 19 years old, I developed chronic headaches. I simultaneously developed insomnia. I’m not sure which one fueled the other, but it seemed to be a reciprocal relationship wherein one made the other worse. If you have fibromyalgia, then you are likely no stranger to headaches either. You also know that lack of sleep can make them worse. And when you’re experiencing muscle pain during the night, it’s hard to sleep. No sleep = worse pain and headache. Worse pain and headache = no sleep. Right? It’s a vicious cycle and it can be hard to figure out where it stops and starts.
Obviously there are some unknowns here. This is likely for two key reasons: 1.) fibromyalgia is undoubtedly a very strange condition with uncertainties at every turn, from understanding what causes it to determining all of its symptoms and much more; and 2.) headaches occur in people without fibromyalgia all the time and the reasons range from stress and bright lights to medical conditions and food intolerances. In short, both headaches and fibromyalgia have such broad associations and variations that headaches are just kind of an add-on. Specifically, the Mayo Clinic lists headaches in the “also common” section of the symptom list, right along with depression, painful menstruation, and irritability.
So, yes, for 35-70% of patients with fibromyalgia, they get headaches with fibromyalgia. It’s a common symptom.
Why do patients get headaches with fibromyalgia?
The ACHE notes various studies that examine this very question or similar trains of thought. The findings are quite noteworthy and include: 1.) patients with fibromyalgia and headaches experienced greater sensitivity to pain, disability and more depression than patients with headache only, 2.) nearly half of headache-only patients experienced painful fibromyalgia tender points throughout their bodies, despite not actually having fibromyalgia.
Ok, so what does that actually mean? “These studies suggest that fibromyalgia, like some types of chronic headache, may be associated with increased excitation within the nervous system, which means it over-responds to stimulation that is not normally painful… Also, levels of substance P, a brain chemical that is involved in pain sensation, are high in patients with fibromyalgia. Finally, patients with fibromyalgia and patients with chronic headaches respond in similar ways to stress, and differently from people who do not have fibromyalgia or frequent headaches.”
Does this answer the question as to why people with fibromyalgia often have chronic headaches? Nope. But it does indicate a distinct difference in the way fibro patients experience pain. And when you look at the similarities in fibromyalgia patients and headache-only patients, the lines start to blur when trying to decipher which comes first: the headaches or the fibro? We’re back to our chicken and egg scenario that just keeps popping up over and over with this incredibly frustrating condition. It’s rarely clear which condition comes first and/or if one is a trigger or a consequence of the other.
What can I do about my fibro headaches?
The folks at ACHE are in the business of figuring out just what to do about headaches. They offer some headache therapies that are also good for minimizing some fibromyalgia symptoms:
Antidepressants (these also have some pain-relieving effects)
Keep in mind that there are different types of headaches. Tension-type headaches are particularly common with fibromyalgia patients. Thus, ibuprofen or acetaminophen may be helpful depending on circumstances and individual. And so can stretching or yogic exercises that specifically target the release of tension. Also, I don’t know about you, but I frequently walk away from aerobic exercise with a headache that did not exist before. It’s probably more appropriate to say that I fall down from aerobic exercise! Nevertheless, certain activities can exacerbate or even trigger headaches. Just be attentive to what brings them on for you.
Lastly, everyone is different. So while aerobic exercise or Advil may be the perfect solution for you, it may not even phase your fibro neighbor. In every case, talk to your health care practitioner to make sure the headaches aren’t related to a different condition. And, of course, ask them about the most effective ways to treat your headaches with your other medications and supplements. Have you found an effective fibro headache treatment? Tell us what works for you!
For years, the medical community has talked about the link between osteoporosis and fibromyalgia. The theory was mostly tied to the symptoms of fibromyalgia. Because of the widespread musculoskeletal pain, those suffering with the disease usually have lower levels of activity. And like osteoporosis, fibromyalgia affects women more than men.
Before we examine the possible link, let’s look at what osteoporosis is. Osteoporosis is often called a silent disease because many people have no symptoms in the early stages. Many don’t even realize their bones have become weak or brittle until they have a fracture. Once the disease is in its advanced stages, patients may have wrist, hip or vertebrae fractures, back pain, poor posture and they may notice a decrease in their height.
Since women are more likely to be affected than men, one of the main causes of the disease is a part of menopause—estrogen loss. Other diseases like Cushing’s Syndrome or rheumatoid arthritis may lead to osteoporosis. People who don’t get enough calcium are also at risk. For some, osteoporosis is due simply to age or genetics. Your risk factors are increased if you are a smoker or if you take certain drugs like prednisone.
The study
While doctors and scientists have not been able to pinpoint a cause for fibromyalgia, an article in a recent edition of Rheumatology International is claiming a definite link between osteoporosis and fibromyalgia. The article, “Bone Mineral Density Is Decreased in Fibromyalgia Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” says recent studies that show fibromyalgia patients have decreased bone density at the lumbar spine. This puts them at risk for osteoporosis.
Four studies involving 680 fibromyalgia patients were investigated. Not only was bone density measured at the spine, it was also measured around the top of the femur bone in the legs. The study showed that bone mineral density in the lumbar area of the spine was significantly decreased for fibromyalgia patients when compared to healthy people. The study found no differences in the leg area. The researchers said the study was limited because not all previous studies were included because not all the studies addressed the same bone regions. In addition, researchers encouraged further studies to further evaluate the link between the osteoporosis and fibromyalgia.
Preventing osteoporosis with exercise
So, what should patients with fibromyalgia do to prevent osteoporosis? The advice is the same for healthy people but it is challenging for those suffering with fibromyalgia. Exercise is one of the recommendations. Because of the fatigue and achiness, many fibromyalgia patients struggle just to do everyday tasks. But you don’t have to join a gym or start jogging because even the simplest of exercises can help improve bone mineral density. One simple exercise is climbing stairs. You don’t have to run up and down them—just go up and down one stair. While walking may seem like a chore, even a short 10-minute walk can have benefits.
As you age, you lose muscle mass so strength-building exercises are recommended. Again, you don’t need to build a weight room in your basement. Get a set of one, two or even five pound weights if you can handle them. Search online for a set of exercises that you feel you can do once or twice a week. Also, look for ankle and wrist weights and exercise bands.
The role of Vitamin D and calcium
In several studies, researchers and doctors have surmised that increasing Vitamin D levels can help with fibromyalgia symptoms. Vitamin D helps absorb calcium, a mineral that doctors say is needed for strong bone mass. This perfect as it can help both osteoporosis and fibromyalgia. While you can get both from supplements, you can also make some changes in your diet to make sure you are getting enough. Good sources are:
Dairy products, including those that are low fat or fat free. If you don’t like dairy or are lactose intolerant, you can use soy milk.
Cereal.
Some orange juices include calcium.
Vegetables with dark green leaves, such as kale.
Salmon is a good source calcium and Vitamin D.
Liver and egg yolks.
Other ways to prevent osteoporosis
Decrease or eliminate the number of soft drinks in your diet. Many studies have been done with some suggesting that the ingredients in soft drinks prevent the absorption of calcium while some believe a calcium deficiency is created because people choose them over milk.
If you are a woman, stop smoking. Research has shown that smoking has an effect on the estrogen in a woman’s body.
Researchers have also linked moderate to heavy alcohol use to low bone density. Try to limit alcohol to two drinks a day.
How the Opioid Epidemic is Affecting People with Fibromyalgia
Written By: Holly Case
It’s hard to avoid the fact that the nation is in the midst of a major opioid epidemic, resulting in over 42,000 deaths in 2016. You hear about drug overdoses not only on the streets of big cities but even more often in small towns. Patients get addicted to opioid medications like Norco and Oxycontin. But when the supply of prescription drugs runs out, many turn to heroin to get the same relief. Or they may combine opioids with other drugs like Xanax, which slow down the breathing rate, which makes overdoses much more likely to happen.
Doctors are working to try to reduce these addictions and their tragic deaths by cracking down on opioid prescriptions. But the unintended additional result is that people who rely on opioids for managing chronic pain, including fibromyalgia patients, are being affected, too. Here’s what you need to know.
What’s Going on with the Opioid Epidemic?
The typical opioid-addicted patient looks different than how you might imagine a drug addict. Very few start out looking to get high from the medicine. Most are only looking for relief from pain and find that the medication actually works. Many people end up inadvertently addicted to opioid medications like Vicodin and Oxycontin after injuries or surgeries. Patients with fibromyalgia also get prescriptions for opioid pain relievers.
But doctors get a lot of scrutiny about how they prescribe opioids. Many doctors get nervous about prescribing opioids indefinitely. It only takes a couple weeks to become addicted to opioid medication. When doctors cut off the access to the medication, addicted patients can start to experience drug withdrawal. Many turn to illegal sources of the opioid medication, which may include prescription drugs bought on the black market. These drugs are not necessarily regulated by the FDA, so they may not contain the active ingredient. Illegal prescription drugs often contain powerful medications like fentanyl. Because fentanyl is so powerful, even very small amounts can cause fatal doses. Other patients turn to heroin instead. Any of the alternative options when patients run out of legitimate access to prescription drugs can result in overdose and death.
The Food and Drug Administration issued new prescribing guidelines earlier in 2018. But in July, the FDA admitted some possible errors in calculating the number of people addicted to opioid medication. As a result, many people with serious conditions causing chronic pain lost access to the pain relief they needed. This includes many patients with fibromyalgia.
If you had a doctor who was prescribing opioid medication for you before, you may have found it difficult to get what you need. Many fibromyalgia patients report being suddenly limited to a much smaller amount of the medication. Others have found themselves completely without access, which can cause “cold-turkey” withdrawal symptoms.
Doctors now face serious consequences for prescribing opioids for chronic pain. Although most medical associations support the right to prescribe these medications, the FDA disagrees. Doctors who overprescribe opioids may be fined or even lose their medical licenses. The FDA and doctors’ associations are working together to review the prescribing guidelines for opioids. Fibro patients may have more access in the future to opioid pain relievers. But as it stands now, it will likely continue to be difficult to get them.
How to Get Pain Relief during an Opioid Epidemic
The FDA and a minority of medical doctors say that opioids aren’t an effective long-term pain management solution. Only terminal cancer patients have easy access to the medications since the risk of addiction is comparatively low. That leaves a lot of people with legitimate chronic pain without the relief they need.
Doctors may try to substitute alternative medications for pain relief. Some of the medication alternatives include non-narcotic pain relievers such as Tramadol or antidepressants like Cymbalta. However, many fibro patients have already tried these medications or may be using them along with opioids. Medical cannabis is also seen as an alternative.
Patients may try a variety of other options, including yoga, meditation, biofeedback, or writing in a journal. Some people find benefit from using essential oils. Those in states where medical marijuana is legal may try that as well. Most fibro patients have to combine a variety of strategies to get the relief they need.
A hallmark of fibromyalgia is always being in some degree of pain. Even when you have access to opioids, they still generally don’t provide complete relief. Rather than seeking out the few remaining doctors who may prescribe opioids, it may be best to find alternate coping mechanisms. Although they’re less than ideal, they don’t carry the same risk of addiction or accidental overdose. Fibro patients can still seek relief while staying safe from the opioid epidemic.
Have you ever noticed that your muscles suddenly start twitching? Or maybe they seem to clench by themselves, sometimes even painfully so. Muscle twitches are normal, of course. But if you’re noticing this happening regularly, then you might be suffering from a condition called spasticity.
And when you have fibromyalgia, there’s an even better chance that you have spasticity. That’s because there seems to be a link between the two conditions. So, what is spasticity? How is it related to fibromyalgia? And what can you do to treat it?
What Is Spasticity?
Spasticity is a term that covers problems with controlling the muscles. Usually, that results in stiff muscles, or muscles that tend to flex or clench by themselves. But spasticity can also include something called hyperreflexia. That means that the reflexive response lasts longer than it should or is too strong. For instance, when you try to close your hand around something, it might be difficult to let go.
There can also be more serious complications. The frequent muscle contractions can actually cause the muscles and tendons to get stuck in a contracted state permanently.
The cause of spasticity seems to be a malfunction in the nervous system that controls muscle movement. And that might be a clue as to why it seems to affect people with fibromyalgia.
How Is It Related To Fibromyalgia?
Researchers have noticed a link between spasticity and fibromyalgia. We know that people with fibromyalgia experience spasticity more often than people who don’t have it. But at the moment, we don’t know why that is. But there’s evidence that it could have something to do with the root cause of fibromyalgia.
We know that the pain of fibromyalgia seems to come from the nervous system, instead of the tissue of the body. Unlike when you stub your toe, and the brain reacts to the physical problem, fibromyalgia pain seems to come from the brain itself.
We also know that spasticity is triggered in the brain and moves along the nervous system. That’s why the condition is common in people who suffer from problems with the brain and nervous system like cerebral palsy and spinal cord injuries.
So the most likely explanation for the link is that it lies in the nervous system, just like the pain of fibromyalgia.
A lot of the muscle issues that people with fibromyalgia experience seem to be based on trigger points. Trigger points, or TrPs, are areas near the joints that are often the source of fibromyalgia pain. Usually, they hurt almost constantly, and the pain spikes when you press on them.
Fibromyalgia trigger points are a little different than tender points. Tender points are 18 spots on the body that tend to be the main source of fibromyalgia pain. Trigger points are similar but are actually caused by long-term stress to the muscle. This causes something called myofascial pain syndrome. These conditions seem to go together, frequently.
And there’s a link between myofascial pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, and spasticity. It’s a lot to keep track of, obviously. But bottom line: there’s a good chance that if you have fibromyalgia and spasticity, you’re also suffering from trigger points and myofascial pain syndrome.
Like spasticity and fibromyalgia, these trigger points seem to be related to the nervous system. The good news is that you can actually do things to eliminate the pain in trigger points. Not only will this help deal with the pain of spasticity, but it can reduce your overall fibromyalgia symptoms as well.
How Can You Treat It?
If you’re noticing spasticity without having trigger points, then there are a few things you can do to treat the muscle spasms. Usually, the best form of treatment is medication. There are a number of muscle relaxants that can prevent muscle spasms. Botox injections into the muscles have also been shown to be effective forms of treatment.
If the spasms are causing extreme pain or permanently affecting your body, then surgery to release contracted tendons or eliminate the pathways between the nerves and the muscles.
But if you’re condition is caused by trigger points, there are actually ways to eliminate them. With physical therapy and injections, you can loosen the tight muscles and get rid of the pain. Once the trigger points have been dealt with, you’ll likely notice less spasticity and less pain overall.
There are also a few things you can do at home to deal with muscle spasms. Regular exercise seems to help, as does using corrective braces to keep the muscles from flexing. As far as the pain goes, you can usually relax tight muscles with heating pads or a hot shower.
So, do you experience spasticity? Does it seem to be related to fibromyalgia? What do you do to treat it?
The list of symptoms associated with fibromyalgia can be exhausting just to think about. Experiencing them is much more draining. Part of what makes diagnosing fibromyalgia so difficult is that everyone’s experience is different. However, did you know that 100% of fibro patients have one particular symptom in common? That’s right: muscle pain. Muscle pain and fibromyalgia go together like cereal and milk. That means that if you are even questioning whether or not you have fibromyalgia, then you must be experiencing some sort of deep muscle pain. And what’s worse is that it has no boundaries, which makes diagnosing it even more difficult. Even though researchers still are not sure what actually causes fibromyalgia, they are learning reasons why we suffer the muscle pain.
It’s true that there are plenty of people who don’t care about the “why’s” in life. But others of us simply cannot sleep at night until we have the answer to that question. Ultimately, though, our hope is that a better understanding will help all of us figure out more effective ways to treat our fibro pain.
No Boundaries
For some fibromyalgia patients, the muscle pain is a deep ache or throbbing. For others it is a shooting or stabbing feeling, perhaps even a burning sensation deep in the muscle and sometimes on the skin too. And still for others it is a combination of any or all of those manifestations. Of course, for nearly all fibro patients, the muscle pain is worse during the morning hours, as is the stiffness. Perhaps a good analogy for those without fibromyalgia is what many patients describe as feeling like a pulled muscle that is also prone to twitching or cramping. Or even better, healthy folks might understand the pain better if you liken it to a regularly occurring Charley horse. Now take that thought and spread it all over your body and that’s a lot like what muscle pain and fibromyalgia feels like.
Why Does the Muscle Pain Happen Anyway?
The American Fibromyalgia Syndrome Association, Inc. is a private company dedicated solely to funding fibro research in order to improve treatment options. They explain that while “muscles hurt everywhere, they are not the only cause of the pain. Instead, the diffuse, body-wide symptoms are greatly magnified by malfunctions in the way the nervous system processes pain. Regional muscle pain not related to arthritis or the nervous system also occurs in the majority of people with fibromyalgia. Patients describe this as firm knots in the belly of the muscles, often causing restricted movement and radiating pain.” (Emphasis added)
Basically, what all of this means is that while you’re in the middle of intense muscular pain due to a funky nervous system, you often simultaneously experience more painful symptoms throughout the body. Because always feeling like you have the worst flu in the world just wasn’t enough, right?
Theories on Muscle Pain and fibromyalgia
The University of Maryland Medical Center published an in-depth report of fibromyalgia, including findings of abnormalities found in fibromyalgia patients. They found that fibro patients may have lower levels of phosphocreatine and adenosine triphosphate (ATP.) These are chemicals that regulate the levels of calcium in muscle cells. “Calcium is an important component in the muscles’ ability to contract and relax. If ATP levels are low, calcium in not “pushed back” into the cells, and themuscle remains contracted” (emphasis added). Sure explains that muscle pain and fibromyalgia Charley horse feeling, doesn’t it?
They also speculate harm to muscle function of fibromyalgia patients due to the pain and stress that accompanies it. This is really starting to sound like a self-perpetuating system, don’t you think? They add, “Some researchers have seen overly thickened capillaries (tiny blood vessels) in the muscles of fibromyalgia patients. The abnormal capillaries could produce lower levels of compounds essential for muscle function, as well as reduce the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the muscles.”
What the Pain Is NOT….
Widespread muscle pain with fibromyalgia should not be confused with myositis (muscle inflammation) or muscle disease which is due to metabolic abnormalities, also called metabolic myopathy. A further distinction here is that patients with myositis usually have abnormal levels of muscle enzymes. So please note, inflamed muscles and metabolic abnormalities are not what is happening with fibromyalgia patients dealing with muscle pain.
Whatever the case may be, it hurts like hell. Have you found a way to treat the muscle pain and fibromyalgia? Or just muscle pain specifically? Tell us what works and what doesn’t work, please!
Each person who struggles with fibromyalgia can have different triggers and different things that make you feel better. It can be very difficult to navigate what is working to minimize your pain or prevent you from becoming in pain.
Keeping a fibromyalgia journal is the perfect way to keep track of your eating, exercising, and feelings. When you read back through your journal you may be able to identify certain foods that triggered your fibromyalgia, or certain exercises that made you feel much better for days after. It can also help identify stressful situations or people that caused anxiety or even a flare-up. Take the time to keep a journal and see if it can make a difference in your fibromyalgia.
Reducing Stress
We all have stressful lives and it might not be possible to totally eliminate stress from your day to day life. By journaling, you might be able to plan out your day better or deal with your feelings, which can reduce the stress you are feeling. Sometimes simply writing something down will give you a release so you can move forward with the rest of your day.
Reducing stress is an important part of your day to day health. Take whatever steps you can to write down your stressors from the day and try to tackle them one at a time. Make a list of things you don’t want to forget, or of people you need to call. Your fibromyalgia journal can be used for anything that will reduce your stress.
Use as Your Investigator to Identify Food Triggers
A key component in staying away from fibromyalgia triggers is the ability to identify what foods are making your symptoms worse. This is a long process that involves eliminating and reintroducing foods to test what effects they have on your body. A food journal is a perfect assistant on this investigative journey.
Write down everything you eat, when you eat it and how it makes you feel. You will quickly start to identify items that are causing you more fibromyalgia pain. If you are unsure if an item is a trigger for you, try reintroducing the food and see if you still notice the poor effects on your body.
Basics of Journal Keeping
Journaling can be as detailed as you would like or as sparse as you would like, it is all up to you. Your journal is what you want it to be. You can keep track of only your foods that you eat. Or perhaps you want to keep a detailed list of all your aches and pains throughout the day to see if exposure to other items may be making your symptoms worse. You decide what is most important to you and keep the journal with that information. It is important to be consistent and keep the journal for several weeks, even months, so you can accurately identify what works and does not work for you.
Electronic vs. Paper Journals, which is Best?
Everyone has their opinion on what works best, old-school paper journals or new journals you can keep on your phone or tablet. Both options have their positive and negative points, so it is important for you to find the journal type that works best for you. If you are not allowed to have access to your phone at work, it would not be good to keep your journal on there.
Instead, use a small notebook so you can accurately keep track of all the things you want to track. If you travel a lot and your phone is what you use for your calendar, appointments etc; your phone may be the best option for you to keep your journal on. There is no right or wrong answer to which type of journal you should keep.
Fitness Journaling can Help Too
Because staying fit is such an important part of managing your fibromyalgia, you might want to include your fitness activities in your journal as well. Keep track of the days you are more active and the things you do. Write down when you go for walks or get a chance to go to the gym. Then make sure and write down if you feel like your symptoms improved or got worse after your exercise. It is important to track which physical activity is making you feel better and which might be doing more harm than good. If you try out some Pilate’s classes or other new activities, track the changes they have in your mood and body to see if it is something you would like to try again.
Share Your Fibromyalgia Journal with Your Doctor
After all this work of keeping a journal, what do you do with it? Share it with your doctor. You and your doctor can go through the foods that you felt were causing you trouble and decide which one food you should eliminate first. You do not want to make too many changes at one time because you will not know which food was actually your trigger food.
Talk with your doctor about other items that you feel may be making your fibromyalgia worse, like your menstrual period or new tooth fillings. Your doctor is your partner in this fight against fibromyalgia, make sure and share as many details as you can with them.
Keeping a fibromyalgia journal may seem like a tedious task or something only your teenage daughter would do. But you may find that keeping a journal is the perfect solution for identifying your triggers and reducing or eliminating them. Take the clues you gain from your journal and work with your doctor to find the perfect solution for minimizing your fibromyalgia symptoms. You can also use your journal to monitor your own fitness and diet goals. Keep your journal on paper, or in an electronic device, but make sure you are updating it frequently throughout the day so you can have the best possible results of what your triggers are.
What Explains the Link Between Psoriasis and Fibromyalgia?
Written By: Wyatt Redd
admin
People who fibromyalgia often don’t just suffer from fibromyalgia. There are a number of diseases that seem to go hand-in-hand with the condition. Fibromyalgia seems to be liked to things mood disorders, PTSD, arthritis, and IBS. Sometimes, you can even see the conditions that go along with fibromyalgia, like psoriasis.
Psoriasis is a tough condition to deal with, which is why it’s such a concern for people with fibromyalgia. So, what should you know about psoriasis? And how is it liked to fibromyalgia?
What Should You Know About Psoriasis?
Psoriasis is a condition that causes scaly patches to form on the skin. These patches are usually red and inflamed. And they are often very sensitive to the touch and may be quite itchy. The issues with the skin usually come and go. Sometimes, you might experience small outbreaks. And other times, there may be major outbreaks that cover large areas of the skin.
There are a few different types of psoriasis. The most common form is called plaque psoriasis. This form causes the basic skin outbreaks that you might be familiar with, and it can occur anywhere.
Then, there’s inverse psoriasis. The major difference in this form of the condition is that the plaques seem to form from friction. So, the most common places to suffer from inverse psoriasis are the armpits and under the breasts. But anywhere where the skin rubs together can be vulnerable to outbreaks.
These are probably the most common form of psoriasis, but there are also other, less common forms. Those forms include nail psoriasis, which causes damage to the finger and toenails, and erythrodermic psoriasis, which creates a huge rash all over the body.
Finally, there’s psoriatic arthritis. Psoriatic arthritis is a condition that combines the skin problems of psoriasis with the joint pain of arthritis. This joint pain can sometimes make it hard to distinguish from fibromyalgia, which also causes pain near the joints.
Like other forms of psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis is an autoimmune disease. In a healthy immune system, your body produces cells that target and destroy bacteria. It’s an important part of keeping you healthy. But sometimes, the immune system begins to target the body’s own cells instead.
When this happens, it produces an autoimmune disease. In the case of psoriasis, the immune cells attack the skin cells, which causes them to multiply rapidly. That explosion in the number of skin cells produces the scaly patches we associate with the disorder.
Psoriatic arthritis is especially interesting for people with fibromyalgia because the conditions can actually cause similar symptoms.
And there seems to be a strong link between psoriatic arthritis and fibromyalgia.
How Is It Linked To Fibromyalgia?
Both conditions can lead to fatigue and stiffness. But while a trained doctor can easily tell the difference between the two conditions when you go for a check-up, there does seem to be a link between the conditions. People with fibromyalgia often seem to develop psoriatic arthritis and vice versa.
That link can probably be explained by the fact that psoriasis is an autoimmune condition.
We know that people with fibromyalgia seem to develop autoimmune diseases at a higher rate than the rest of the population. For a long time, doctors assumed that meant that fibromyalgia itself might be an autoimmune disorder. But most researchers no longer think this is the case.
Instead, the link may simply be due to stress. Experiencing long periods of stress substantially raises your risk of developing autoimmune diseases. And of course, few conditions cause long-term stress like fibromyalgia. It could that the stress of fibromyalgia is actually making people more likely to develop autoimmune conditions like psoriasis.
And it turns out that stress might also play a role in developing fibromyalgia. So essentially, autoimmune diseases like psoriasis might be so stressful that it makes you more likely to develop fibromyalgia. It’s a horrible, self-reinforcing cycle that might just explain the link between the two conditions.
Both autoimmune disease and fibromyalgia are poorly understood by modern medical science. And until we know more about both conditions, it’s hard to say for sure what the link between them is. But chronic stress may be the best answer we have at the moment.
This may be another sign of how important it is to reduce stress when you’re living with psoriasis or fibromyalgia. It may prevent you from developing another, related medical condition. The good news is that both conditions can also be managed with medications. Always consult your doctor if you think are suffering from a serious medical problem and follow their advice.
What do you think, is stress to blame for fibromyalgia or psoriasis? Are the conditions really linked? Let us know in the comments.
As you likely know, fibromyalgia ends up having a lot of different issues associated with it. One of the most common syndromes that end up being linked with fibromyalgia is known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome. In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome and what it is, and look at the links between this disorder and fibromyalgia.
What is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome?
Many people don’t know the name, but Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome is actually a quite common issue among people. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome is known by a number of names, including idiopathic environmental intolerance.
Like other issues, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome is considered to be a sensitivity syndrome, which is where the nervous system starts to overreact when certain stimuli are brought into the environment that you are in. In the case of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome, it happens when certain chemicals are in the air. Then, your body reacts negatively by giving you a headache or making you suffer from nausea.
How does it work? Let’s say that someone is out shopping at the mall or another shopping center. You would come into contact with a number of different stimuli throughout the day. Say that you go into a store that has scented candles and other products that have strong scents.
Most people can walk into those stores, take note of the strong scent, and continue shopping. But, with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome, a person would walk into one of those stores and make them feel as if they are incredibly ill, either with a headache or because of other problems.
There are other chemicals that can cause a reaction as a result of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome. They include smoke, chemicals from industrial structures, paint, gasoline, cleaning products, hygiene products (perfumes and cologne), and even any chemicals that are used to clean up tap water. That being said, people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome may also struggle with different scents.
One person may struggle with strong fragrances, whereas someone else will only be sensitive to the smell of gasoline, and others may not even struggle unless they ingest a medication or something else that has a large number of chemicals.
What are the Links Between Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome and Fibromyalgia?
So where does this come from? Like with many sensitivity syndromes, no one really knows what the cause of the issue is. Fibromyalgia is also considered to be a sensitivity syndrome, so that may be one of the first connections that you may want to look at and consider when you’re looking at the issues that can be caused by Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome.
That being said, all of these have one thing in common – for some reason, the nervous system just goes absolutely nuts when it is stimulated in particular ways. And, because of that, it’s important to realize that we have to be careful when it comes to any sort of stimuli that is going on.
Fibromyalgia, as you likely know, is a sensitivity to pain. The pain sensors in the body are overreacting to the stimuli that indicate pain, and it causes us to feel pain all of the time – even when we wouldn’t have felt pain anyway. Your body is already going to be overreacting to everything, and because of that, you may not be able to tell very easily as to whether or not you’re just having a fibromyalgia flare-up or if you have another sensitivity disorder that goes along with the disorder. Nausea, headache, stress, and other symptoms that are frequently part of the diagnosis of fibromyalgia can also be symptoms of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome and other similar disorders and diseases.
So how do doctors diagnose Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome? Since there is so much overlap between the two, you have to pay a lot of attention to what is going on in your body. If there is a new symptom that hasn’t been around before, then you may be dealing with a symptom of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome instead of your fibromyalgia. Some specialists suggest that you keep an eye out for what is known as “symptom clusters.”
As you may have guessed from the name, symptom clusters are groups of symptoms. And even though they may come up when you are dealing with your fibromyalgia, you may notice new symptom clusters if something like Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome is starting to happen in your body as well. On top of that, you may also notice that there are single symptoms that you didn’t have to fight off as part of your fibromyalgia as well – it’s better to be safe than sorry.
This is a pretty good rule of thumb for fibromyalgia in general, and not only if you are concerned about getting Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome alongside it. Our bodies change over time, and there are a variety of different disorders that we can end up having because of our weakened immune systems and the other problems that we have from fibromyalgia. So always make sure that you are keeping track of your symptoms. Keep a journal with any new symptoms and keep track of things, discussing them with your doctor every time that you have an appointment scheduled.
Now that we understand the links between these two issues, it’s important for us to know how to treat them. If you aren’t sure how to take care of it or you need help finding suggestions in order to help you out, you will want to make sure that you talk to your medical professional that helps you with your fibromyalgia symptoms.
They can help you figure out a treatment plan and give you advice as to what may help reduce the symptoms of either or both of these disorders. Always talk to your doctor before changing your treatment plan and if you have any questions about your treatment.
If you’re suffering from fibromyalgia, you have probably noticed that you have difficulty sleeping. However, is your fibromyalgia causing your sleep problems or are your sleep problems causing your fibromyalgia. Things such as restless sleep, fatigue, lack of sleep, and frequently waking during the night are some of the most common complaints among those suffering from fibromyalgia.
Some researchers are claiming that insomnia and the other sleep disorders are side effects of the chronic pain associated with fibromyalgia. On the other hand, some scientists are now claiming that fibromyalgia could be the cause of the sleep disturbances.
Most people with fibromyalgia complain of having difficulty sleeping. No matter how much sleep they get, it’s rare to get restful, quality sleep. Following is some information that can help you to get a better night’s sleep.
What are the Common Sleep Issues with Fibromyalgia?
Sleep problems related to fibromyalgia include difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, insomnia, and more. You may wake up frequently and remember it the next day. Even more common is waking up and not remembering it. However, these awakenings interrupt your deep sleep and make you groggy the next day. Additionally, other sleep disorders including sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome could possibly be associated with fibromyalgia.
Individuals with fibromyalgia report that they wake up every single day feeling completely exhausted and drained of all energy. Typically, they feel much more tired first thing in the mornings and in order to combat their fatigue, they take naps during the day. Additionally, it is quite common for individuals with fibromyalgia to have difficulty concentrating during the day- which is a condition referred to as “fibro fog.”
Other symptoms of fibromyalgia that can contribute to sleep problems include anxiety and depression.
Restless Leg Syndrome and Fibromyalgia
Restless Leg Syndrome, called RLS for short, is a neurological disorder that is characterized by a desperate desire to move your legs while resting. Restless leg syndrome is quite common among individuals who suffer from fibromyalgia. However, you should know that there is treatment available for restless leg syndrome. You should speak with your physician about treatment if you’re experiencing symptoms of restless leg syndrome. Treating this could also help ease your fibromyalgia symptoms.
Sleep Strategies to Help With Sleep Issues Related to Fibromyalgia
Establishing a better sleep schedule can help you to manage your symptoms of fibromyalgia. When you work on improving your sleep, you can possibly help decrease the fatigue, “fibro fog,” and pain associated with your fibromyalgia. Following are some strategies you can employ to try to help with your sleep. Additionally, you can speak with your physician about prescribing a sleeping pill that will be safe and effective that can help you get your body back into the habit of a restful sleep regimen.
First of all, you should only sleep as much as you need to feel refreshed and able to function the next day. You don’t want to sleep any more than that. When you shorten the time you spend in bed, that seems to make your sleep better. When you spend excessive time in bed, that seems to cause fragmented, shallow sleep.
Track your sleep in a sleep diary. Take the time to jot down how you slept during the night and the triggers that caused interference with your sleep. After several weeks, take some time to go over your notes. It can provide some insight into what is causing your sleep issues.
Wake up at the same time every morning- no matter how much or how little you sleep. Waking up at the regular time every day strengthens your circadian rhythm and leads to falling asleep at a regular time every night.
Employ some relaxation techniques. Have your partner give you a gentle massage, practice some deep breathing, and other relaxation techniques can be great for helping you manage your fibromyalgia symptoms and promoting restful sleep.
Make sure you’re getting regular exercise. However, you need to make sure that you don’t exercise within three hours before going to bed because exercise increases your endorphins, and can keep you awake. Exercise could possibly have some beneficial effects by promoting better sleep quality.
If you must have noise when you’re sleeping, sound-attenuated bedrooms could be beneficial. Even if you are not fully awakened by loud noises such as airplanes flying over, your sleep can still be disturbed- even though you don’t remember it the next day.
You should avoid taking really long naps during the day. If you nap too much or too long, it can cause interference with your sleep at night.
The temperature in your bedroom should be cool. If your room is overly warm, it could possibly disturb your sleep.
Try not to go to bed hungry- hunger can possibly cause sleep disturbances. However, you don’t want to eat a full meal but a light snack may help.
Alcohol and caffeine can cause sleep disturbances, so you should avoid consuming either in the evenings.
Can Medication Help with Fibromyalgia-Related Sleep Disorders?
Some of the other medications that are helpful in treating and managing the symptoms of fibromyalgia include muscle relaxers, antidepressants, and pain relievers. Your physicians may also be able to recommend the use of sleep medications.
9 Ways to Recognize and Manage Fibromyalgia Flare-ups
Written By: admin
John
Fibromyalgia is a musculoskeletal condition that affects the muscles and joints. In addition to fatigue and joint pain, it can also lead to issues such as social isolation, anxiety, and depression. This disease can affect people of any gender or age, but it is most common in women over 30 years old.
Approximately 4 percent of the U.S. suffers from fibromyalgia, and there is no definitive cause for this medical condition. Flare-ups from the disorder can range in severity from mild to debilitating so it’s best to know and recognize the symptoms of a flare-up. That way you can take steps to manage severity and chances of it occurring.
What is Wrong with Me?
If you’ve been experiencing pain throughout your body, you are probably wondering what this discomfort stems from. Patients who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia may experience swelling, tender areas on the body and mood disruptions. Whether you work, have a family to tend to or are retired, this type of disease can make it difficult for you to manage everyday activities. In fact, simple feats such as walking and household chores may prove impossible.
There are a number of theories behind the causes of fibromyalgia, including an emotional or physical injury that affects the central nervous system. The biochemical changes caused by the trauma could be the main culprit behind your chronic pain. Hormonal changes, viruses, and the flu could also potentially be a trigger for fibromyalgia. Additionally, scientists suspect that sleep disturbances, a change in muscle metabolism and a lack of exercise could all lead to the development of this medical condition.
Mild Flare-ups
Fibromyalgia presents symptoms that are similar to osteoarthritis, including achiness, sleep restlessness and tenderness in the neck, shoulders, hips, and back. Mild flare-ups can occur often for those who are afflicted with the disease.
Debilitating Symptoms
Symptoms can also become crippling over time, and this could cause you to experience severe bouts of depression and mood disturbances. Overwhelming pain can also consume individuals who are diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and this will make it difficult for them to master even the easiest chores. In addition to burning, twitching and sore muscles, your body might experience abdominal pain, dryness in the eyes, mouth and nose, incontinence, sensitivity to cold and heat and irritable bowel syndrome.
1. Understanding Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a chronic disease best characterized by pain, tenderness, swelling and fatigue. It can also contribute to depression, anxiety and mind fog. While often considered a disorder that resembles arthritis, fibromyalgia won’t damage the joints, muscles and other bodily tissues. The widespread pain and discomfort can make it challenging for an individual to perform simple duties and activities. It can also lead to social isolation.
2. Who Gets It?
This often misunderstood and misdiagnosed disease resembles the symptoms of osteoarthritis. There are approximately 12 million individuals in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Is it Gender-Specific?
Although men can be diagnosed with fibromyalgia, it’s 10 times more likely to affect women than men, especially when a woman is between the ages of 25 and 60. According to the Mayo Clinic, approximately 3.5% of women and 0.5% of men in the United States have this disorder.
No One is Immune
Fibromyalgia sufferers come from all walks of life, ranging from the average Joe to celebrities. Several notable individuals have grappled with this disease, including soap opera great Susan Flannery, Grammy-winning songstress Sinead O’Conner, health pioneer Florence Nightingale and Michael James Hastings, who is best known as Captain Mike from the television hit series “The West Wing.”
Whether it was triggered by an infection or trauma of some sort, people have an amazing capacity to find ways to deal with pain and the struggles that are associated with it. Some celebrities such as Michael James Hastings have even spoken publicly about their fibromyalgia difficulties and how to overcome them.
Risk Factors
There are a number of risk factors when it comes to fibromyalgia. Gender is a predominantly known risk factor because more women than men are diagnosed. Family history can also make you more prone to it, so it is important to get regular check-ups if you have a relative who has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Rheumatoid arthritis and lupus are other contributing risk factors that can lead to the development of fibromyalgia.
In order to accurately diagnose fibromyalgia, your physician will need to take into account your entire medical history. They’ll also perform a physical examination and blood test to better diagnose the issues at hand. The FM blood test can help identify certain markers that are manufactured in people with fibromyalgia. Symptoms are another important factor when it comes to making the right diagnosis. A series of blood tests will be run to help rule out other possible diseases that present similar symptoms.
5. Treatment
Although there isn’t currently a cure for fibromyalgia, there are some conventional prescription treatments that can help you better manage the pain.
Conventional Treatments
Drugs such as analgesics, opioids, anticonvulsants, sleep aids, antidepressants, and benzodiazepines can help relieve sore muscles, improve mood swings and promote better sleep. However, these medications can come with some serious side effects that include dizziness, headaches, vomiting, impaired coordination, and confusion. You could also end up coping with sleepwalking and weight gain while using some conventional treatments.
Alternative Treatments
If your conventional medical treatment isn’t providing you with the type of results that you need to better manage your fibromyalgia, you can find some worthy natural alternative methods.
Yoga and Meditation
Several studies have found that yoga can be instrumental when it comes to dealing with the pain that is caused by the disease. Research from the Oregon Health and Science University indicates that attending a yoga class twice a week for 75 minutes could significantly reduce your pain.
Meditation can also change the way your brain receives the pain signals. In addition to providing pain relief through this meditative outlet, the practice of yoga can calm your mind and help your body with healing and relaxation. You might receive positive benefits from acupuncture, including reduced stiffness, pain, fatigue and anxiety.
Supplements
Proper nourishment is important for staying healthy and for the prevention of chronic diseases. It is best to eat a well-balanced diet so that you can absorb the correct amount of vitamins and minerals, but in reality, many people find they are unable to achieve this perfect mixture of food. Whether it’s because they have food allergies or a busy lifestyle, people often end up supplementing the nutrients they are missing with vitamins and herbal concoctions.
These supplements come in many forms, including fortified shakes and smoothies, multi-vitamins and an emerging class of herbs known as nootropics. Because fibromyalgia is thought to be caused by an abnormality in the central nervous systems, there are many people who now believe that natural nootropics such as Bacopa monnieri and Acetyl L-Carnitine act as strong antioxidants that protect the brain from harm.
Nootropics can also assist the brain with healing, and this helps stave off disorders that attack the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Please note that dietary supplements can have side effects and negative interactions with other drugs, so be sure to talk to your physician before you begin using them.
What Doesn’t Work
Therapies that promise to quickly and completely take away the pain, discomfort and moodiness of fibromyalgia can often bring false hope and empty promises; some far-fetched remedies may even be dangerous. It’s best to work closely with your healthcare practitioner regarding changes to your diet, exercises and any therapies that you want to try.
6. Experimental Treatments
Fibromyalgia is classified as a chronic pain with no known cause or manner of causation. Due to this, research centers such as the Mayo Clinic are performing clinical studies aimed at understanding the disorder better and improving the quality of life for patients. One recent fibromyalgia study conducted in Rochester, Minnesota, by the Mayo Clinic concluded in December 2014, and researchers there tested the delivery of Magnesium Chloride on 40 female volunteers who currently have fibromyalgia.
A lot is unknown about fibromyalgia, but the researchers at the Mayo Clinic worked with what they did know: There is evidence that the extensive pain associated with the disease is caused by an abnormality in each afflicted individual’s central nervous system. Patients who have fibromyalgia have very low thermal and mechanical pain thresholds as a result, so it doesn’t require much normal stimulus for them to feel pain.
Recent reports also suggest a link between the onset of fibromyalgia and a deficiency in trace elements and antioxidants. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic developed a related theory in response to this and postulated that a magnesium deficiency might be at the heart of the development of the abnormal conditions that cause fibromyalgia. Their reasoning was based on the fact that the tender points found on the body of fibromyalgia patients are similar to those found on the body of a person who suffers from a magnesium deficiency.
A topical solution of magnesium chloride was administered transdermally during the study to each volunteer’s extremities three times a day for 28 days in a row. Although the clinical trial has been concluded, the process of information collection is ongoing and seeks to answer questions about each volunteer’s quality of life before treatment and after the administration of the magnesium chloride.
7. Managing Fibromyalgia
Learning to live with fibromyalgia can be a challenge. However, working with your physician regarding your treatment will help. Also, through the use of natural remedies, diet, and exercise, you can find a beneficial mixture that will help you get through your everyday activities.
Coping with Flare-ups
If you’re one of the many individuals diagnosed with fibromyalgia, you probably already know that getting through a day filled with brain fog, fatigue, and crippling pain is a feat on its own, especially when you have to work and tend to your personal life. In fact, one of the reasons the disease is so challenging to diagnose is because of the way that it attacks every part of an individual’s body. However, there are a number of ways to minimize the many flare-ups that are caused by this condition.
Although conventional methods can help lessen some symptoms, it can also make others worse. Therefore, diet is an extremely important way to relieve symptoms. In addition to losing weight, a diet that is high in fiber and rich in fruits and vegetables can help repair the muscle damage and fatigue that is caused by the disease. Since fibromyalgia is believed to stem from vitamin deficiencies, supplements such as CoQ10, B-vitamin complex, vitamin D, and omega-3 could prove beneficial.
Mental wellness and stress can be contributing factors to fibromyalgia. Fortunately, you can minimize flare-ups by monitoring your own stress levels. Finding activities that calm and promote relaxation can also bring your body comfort. If you’re currently unable to determine those main culprits that are causing you to experience pain, you may want to start a journal to help you with pain management. This intimate look at your life will enable you to better determine what you have eaten on your worst days. Additionally, you should take into account a few other factors, including the weather, current medications and any unusual worries or stress that you experience each day.
Coping with Fibromyalgia
It can be difficult to deal daily with the emotional and physical pain that is associated with fibromyalgia. When you combine this with the problems that can be caused by having a so-called invisible illness, it often becomes necessary to seek out the support of others. As previously mentioned, keeping your stress levels in check can help minimize fibromyalgia symptoms, so it is vital to utilize healthy coping techniques.
Getting Support
Getting needed support can be a saving grace when it comes to dealing with fibromyalgia. Whether you check with your local library, physician’s office, hospital, newspaper or Internet, you’ll be able to find encouragement and some friendly advice that could be beneficial for treating your condition. This is also a great outlet for people to come together to share their fears, experiences, pain and mental anguish. Spouses and family members can also attend meetings or seek out assistance online. This will help them better understand how their family member feels and what they can do to assist them.
Family
Although you may be the only family member experiencing the pain and discomfort of fibromyalgia, the other people in your support system will still be affected by it. Your family can become instrumental when you keep the lines of communication open. This includes everything from discussing the symptoms to finding treatments. Therapies, eating a healthy diet, exercise and keeping a positive attitude can all be activities that a family participates in together.
Support Groups
Whether you attend an online message board or meeting in person, the groups can offer assistance on how to treat the pain. They can also provide information on the latest advances, treatments, and therapies.
Social Media
Social media sites such as Facebook can offer interesting tidbits and information to better help individuals who are diagnosed with this disease. Simply visit our Facebook page to begin your journey to a better, more supported life.
Disability
Most individuals will be able to continue working either full or part-time with fibromyalgia, but the chronic fatigue and pain can prove very challenging. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to keep working, you can visit online fibromyalgia resources to learn how to better manage your symptoms. However, if you find yourself unable to work, you may want to consider filing for disability. Your physician can help you gather the necessary medical records to showcase the fact that fibromyalgia or any other chronic condition has rendered you eligible for disability benefits.
However, it will also be important to work with an attorney who specializes in disability cases because the government only approves about 40 to 45 percent of these claims. In most cases, you will need to be prepared to go through an extensive legal battle due to the Social Security Disability Insurance claims and appeals process.
8. Learning to Live with Fibromyalgia
It can be hard to balance the time constraints that work, family and personal obligations bring to each of our lives. When you add pain, fatigue, moodiness and sleeplessness, you could easily find yourself overwhelmed. In order to better live with this disease, you will need to begin putting your own needs ahead of others. This is vital, especially when you’re trying to deal with stress and anxiety. You also need to find ways to delegate things that you can’t handle. Always take a break when you’re feeling your worst and don’t be afraid to ask for assistance when you’re overwhelmed. If you have important obligations, you can plan them during the day when you’re feeling your best.
Power Diet
Pharmaceutical products can help a person manage their pain, but this might cause you to suffer from some side effects. More than 40 percent of patients diagnosed with this disease will experience more severe symptoms after they consume specific foods. If you’re looking for alternative methods to ease the pain that often accompanies fibromyalgia, you may want to tweak your diet.
Most adults are lacking when it comes to vitamin D. However, if you have fibromyalgia, getting enough of this important vitamin can be crucial to managing your pain. Limiting additives, processed foods and saying yes to omega-3 fatty acids can also offer some much-needed relief. Nixing your caffeine intake and incorporating more fruits and vegetables is another way to help improve your painful symptoms.
Staying well-nourished and healthy is the key to the prevention and management of fibromyalgia and other chronic diseases. Because there is growing evidence that a magnesium deficiency is at the root of fibromyalgia development, it’s best to always get them in the daily recommended allowances of magnesium for your gender: Men 400 mg and Women 310 mg. Taking this approach will help you manage your fibromyalgia and have a healthier lifestyle in general. The following foods are rich in magnesium: green leafy vegetables such as spinach and chard, pumpkin seeds, almonds, fortified yogurt, avocado, artichokes, salmon dark chocolate, and figs.
Don’t Skip Exercise
Exercise may be one of the last things that you want to focus on when you have fibromyalgia. However, lack of exercise is one of the main contributing factors that are thought to be at the heart of the development of fibromyalgia. Simple movements such as walking, yoga, Pilates, swimming and tai chi can improve your muscle strength, and they will also help you lose weight and keep you in shape. Your doctor can work with you to manage the tenderness and pain associated with fibromyalgia so that you can participate in a regular exercise regimen.
9. The Future of Fibromyalgia
The FDA has approved some medications for treating the pain and other symptoms of fibromyalgia, including Lyrica (pregabalin), Cymbalta (duloxetine hydrochloride) and Savella (milnacipran HCI). There currently is no proven cure for the condition, but there are biotech companies, medical research centers, and other organizations racing to find a viable cure. When a method for effectively eliminating fibromyalgia is eventually developed, the FDA will need to approve the drug and related treatments before it can be used in humans. Although a cure for fibromyalgia may be several years away, the outlook does look promising.
The medical field has known about fibromyalgia since the early 1800s, and it has had its current name since 1976. There are approximately 12 million U.S. citizens who have this medical condition, and ongoing research is dedicated to finding new and improved treatment methods. Women are by far the most susceptible to contracting fibromyalgia, and there are still many questions about what exactly causes this disease to develop. However, we do know that stress, diet, heredity and other diseases such as lupus can be contributing factors.
The best method for dealing with fibromyalgia is to work closely with your physician and obtain some emotional support from your family, friends and other people who have this disease. You should also be very careful with your diet and make sure to exercise regularly. Although there are no medications that can completely remove the symptoms of fibromyalgia, you can have a much better life if you are proactive about continuously maintaining the best possible mental and physical health.
As you likely know, pain is the main core of what is going on with fibromyalgia. That being said, there are other symptoms that are pretty regular as well. These symptoms can make it difficult for you to control your fibromyalgia effectively.
Exhaustion and fatigue are a regular part of daily life if you are dealing with fibromyalgia. But why is that the case? What happens to our bodies that make them exhausted after every bit of pain? Let’s take a closer look here in this article.
Why Is Fatigue Common in People with Fibromyalgia?
Many times, chronic fatigue syndrome goes hand in hand with fibromyalgia. But why is this the case? There are a few reasons, actually – it all depends on what symptoms you have and how under control your symptoms are. One of the main reasons that fatigue is common is because the sleep that you get isn’t very sound.
You likely know about the pain that comes with fibromyalgia, but that pain, even if it seems to be under control before bedtime, can actually make it so that you sleep very lightly. If you’re not sleeping through the night, or you aren’t falling into your REM sleep, you’re not going to feel refreshed at the end of the night and you will feel fatigued throughout the day. It’s pretty miserable.
The other reason that those with fibromyalgia fight off sleep issues is because our bodies are always in so much pain that, even when we’re awake, we’re constantly fighting it off and that becomes exhausting.
This is especially true when we’re fighting off flare-ups – our body is working incredibly hard to make sure that we can still function normally, or at least somewhat normal, so it gets worn out. The mental fatigue can also be extremely burdensome, causing it to be difficult to think (sometimes called “mind fog”) and causing all sorts of other types of issues.
Fatigue is a very real thing for many people with fibromyalgia, and as we mentioned above, it happens for all sorts of different reasons. The good news is, we don’t necessarily have to try and fight off everything on our own. There are lots of healthy ways for us to fight the fatigue that comes with fibromyalgia, and we’re going to look at that in the next section of this article.
How Can We Deal With Fatigue Related to Fibromyalgia?
The fatigue-related to fibromyalgia can really take a lot out of us, but there are a lot of things that we can actually do in order to make sure that it chills out on us somewhat. Here are some suggestions that you can use in order to make your fatigue less and/or more manageable, making it easier for you and your family to enjoy the life that you want to live.
First off, you want to make sure that you’re getting a proper amount of sleep every night. It may be difficult with the pain, but if you work to manage your pain effectively, you can make it so that your body is at least a little bit less tired than it would be in other situations.
Keep a regular sleep schedule when you can – you want to go to bed around the same time every night, and you want to wake up at the same time every day. That way, your body is used to the schedule and it gets the rest that you need. Get a full night’s sleep too – between 7 and 9 hours is good for most adults.
Another thing that you want to do is remain active. I know, it can be really difficult to be active when you are in pain, but if you aren’t as active as you want or need to be, you won’t be able to sleep as well as you could otherwise. On top of that, exercise actually gives us energy and keeps us moving, which makes it a lot easier for us to continue through our day. Even if your definition of exercise is going out and taking a walk around the block, you still want to do a little bit of something to get your body moving throughout the day.
Planning your life in such a way that you can easily deal with your symptoms can also play a huge role in helping with fatigue. The fatigue will get worse when you have a flare up, so you want to make sure that you make things work out with as few commitments as possible. On some days, taking a nap may be incredibly helpful for you, because it will help you to get rid of your fatigue and it will make you a little more comfortable with your day.
Last but not least, watch your diet. The foods you eat can affect how much pain you’re in, but they can also affect your sleep patterns. Don’t drink a lot of caffeine; don’t eat a lot of sugar, and stay away from foods that have a lot of preservatives.
These things don’t only cause flare-ups, but they also make it so you have a harder time sleeping and cause a lot of people to throw their sleep schedules more out of whack than they may already be. Other dietary changes may be necessary; consult with your specialist.
Fatigue can make life incredibly difficult, which is why it is important for us to take care of it promptly. It’s really difficult for us to make sure that our bodies can work how we need them to when we have fibromyalgia.
Taking care of your fatigue is important, so be sure to communicate with your caretakers and specialists so that you don’t experience further issues with it. By caring for your fatigue, you can also be sure that you are going to care for the rest of your body’s health, and you’re going to make it more likely that you can get through the day.
Since you’re here, you’ve likely been looking into fibromyalgia and whether or not it is the cause of the issues that you may be dealing with on a regular basis. That being said, it’s important for you to know whether or not your symptoms could be caused by any number of other diseases.
Even though some of the symptoms may overlap, it’s important to know which disorders you’re dealing with so that you can get appropriate treatment. One disease that frequently gets mixed up with fibromyalgia is Hemochromatosis. How are they related? What are the differences? We’re going to look at that here in this article.
What is Hemochromatosis?
In short, Hemochromatosis is an iron disorder. Essentially, it’s the opposite of anemia – instead of not having enough iron in your body; you end up holding way too much in your body (bloodstream, muscles, etc). Your body only needs so much iron, so if you’re overloading it with your diet, you’re going to find that there are a number of issues that you will have to deal with in the process.
Your body only holds about 1/10 of the iron that you get from foods. When someone is fighting off Hemochromatosis, they are going to end up holding about 1/3 of the iron that they ingest.
Your body can’t get rid of the iron in any way, so it stores it pretty much everywhere. That’s a problem because if there’s too much iron buildup, it could cause the organs not to function.
The pancreas, the heart, and the liver are the organs that are most commonly affected by Hemochromatosis, but there are other areas of the body that may end up fighting it off as well, including the stomach, the kidneys, and various muscle tissues throughout the entire body.
Hemochromatosis has a number of different causes. In some cases, it’s hereditary, which means it’s passed down through your family line in one way or another (it only has to be present in one parent to be possible; if it is present in both parents, your child will definitely have the disorder.
There is secondary Hemochromatosis, which comes from drinking too much alcohol or from your body overreacting to anemia (trying to overcompensate for the lack of iron in your body). The other types of Hemochromatosis, which are juvenile and neonatal, happen because one of the genes starts to work incorrectly and ends up causing the body to start absorbing and holding in too much iron from the food that the teenager or baby is eating. The cause of the gene’s mutation in teenagers and infants is unknown and research is still being conducted as to the relationship between the two.
How Are the Two Related?
So why do people mix up Hemochromatosis and fibromyalgia? How do the two interact, and what can happen in both cases? There are a few things that we have to consider here – first, remember, fibromyalgia is developed over a period of time, whereas Hemochromatosis is genetic, so they are very different diseases, but they often have a number of links and there is some overlap between the two diseases.
Many of the symptoms of Hemochromatosis are similar to what you may be dealing with as part of your fibromyalgia. The big overlaps happen with the pain in your joints (which, if not treated correctly, can end up leading to arthritis later in your life), the fatigue, and the abdominal pain. Sometimes, Hemochromatosis ends up being misdiagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome at times as well, much like fibromyalgia can end up being misdiagnosed.
The fatigue is an overlap in a number of disorders, so you will want to keep an eye on it and talk to your doctor if anything seems to be changing unexpectedly with your fatigue. It may indicate that there is another issue going on. Also, if you note that your joints are in a lot of pain and you don’t feel as if you are going to be able to move, it could be a problem from either of these diagnoses.
That being said, Hemochromatosis has two specific symptoms that you usually don’t find with fibromyalgia. One is the loss of a sex drive (libido). Even though the pain from fibromyalgia may make it hard for you to enjoy sexual intercourse, it really isn’t due to a loss of libido.
That being said, some of the medications that are used to treat fibromyalgia can cause the loss of libido, so make sure that you keep an eye on your sex drive and take note of any changes that may happen over time when it comes to how you are feeling sexually. Another symptom that is more common with Hemochromatosis is heart problems and pain. This is due to the heart being one of the main targets of what is going on with the excess iron in your body.
In some cases, those with Hemochromatosis will end up struggling with fibromyalgia as well, but it doesn’t happen the other way very often, since Hemochromatosis is primarily a genetic disease that you end up having from birth, basically. That being said, it’s important to understand that even though you may have Hemochromatosis, you may not end up getting fibromyalgia – it’s just a possibility and it’s not something that you should put a lot of worry into.
Take care of your Hemochromatosis as you should and make sure that your body is getting exactly what it needs in order to thrive.
If you aren’t sure whether or not you have fibromyalgia or your symptoms are, instead, from hemochromatosis, you will want to sit down and have a talk with your doctor. They will be able to diagnose your fibromyalgia based on a number of criteria (including blood tests) and answer any questions that you may have about what is going on in your body. Determining which you have is important to figure out how to treat the disorder and how to find relief from it.
Have you ever noticed that the things you eat can actually have a huge effect on the way you feel? When we stick to a healthy diet, we have more energy and even just feel happier. But have you ever binged on a bunch of processed snack foods and felt terrible afterward?
Don’t worry. It happens to everyone. But by now, you’ve probably figured out that diet is an important part of maintaining your body. Obviously, a healthy diet reduces the risk of disease, but it also helps you maintain your energy levels. And when you have fibromyalgia, a little bit of extra energy can make a big difference.
That’s why you might want to consider trying out a ketogenic diet. You may have already of heard of the ketogenic diet as a great way to lose weight, but it can also have a lot of other health benefits, including extra energy. So, what is the ketogenic diet? And can it help improve your fibromyalgia symptoms?
What Is A Ketogenic Diet?
Your body turns everything you eat into energy. And the energy it doesn’t need to use is stored as fat. When you don’t eat anything for a long time, your body begins breaking that fat down into energy. This process is called ketosis. But you can also trigger this process by starving your body of carbohydrates.
Without those carbohydrates, the body has to turn to its store of fat. So, a ketogenic diet is designed to keep your body in a state of ketosis and burn fat.
Usually, that means eliminating simple carbohydrates and processed foods and replacing them with protein and leafy greens. So, a basic ketogenic diet plan would be something like this:
Breakfast
A smoothie with kale, almonds, and coconut milk.
Lunch
Steak salad.
Dinner
Pan-fried cod with garlic.
As you can see, the ketogenic diet tries to incorporate fresh meat and nuts for protein. And it eliminates things like bread, or cereal, which are made from grain and heavy in carbohydrates. There are a lot of benefits to a ketogenic diet. And some of those benefits might be helpful for someone with fibromyalgia.
Can It Help Improve Your Fibromyalgia Symptoms?
The first benefit of a ketogenic diet is that it can help you lose weight. And we know that losing weight can have a huge impact on the severity of the symptoms of fibromyalgia. Being overweight increases the amount of pain you feel and saps your energy. Of course, losing weight when you have fibromyalgia can be difficult since it’s hard to exercise when you’re dealing with symptoms. So a low-impact option like dieting can really help.
In addition, a ketogenic diet can increase the amount of energy you have. When you eat carbohydrates, your body turns it into glucose. Glucose is easily processed by the body, which means that it can give you a temporary energy boost. But it is also burned so quickly that you might experience a sudden loss of energy once the glucose is gone.
Fat is processed more slowly as energy by the body. By following a ketogenic diet, you can force your body to burn fat for energy. And by using fat instead of carbohydrates as fuel, your body has a steadier supply of energy. That helps avoids the natural spikes and dips in energy you feel throughout the day.
A ketogenic diet also helps you regulate your blood sugar, which is vital when you have diabetes. And that’s important for a lot of people who have fibromyalgia since diabetes is common in people with the condition.
Finally, a ketogenic diet can help you deal with the “fibro-fog” that can make it difficult to focus on daily tasks. The ketones produced by a ketogenic diet can help stimulate the production of neurotransmitters in the brain. And these extra levels of neurotransmitters can make it easier to focus and increase your mental clarity.
Now, while a ketogenic diet can have a lot of benefits for fibro sufferers, it may not be for everyone. If you have type-1 diabetes, it can increase the risk of ketoacidosis, which can be fatal. Although, most experts agree the risk of that is quite small.
But there can also be a few negative side effects, especially in the first few weeks. Many people who go on a ketogenic diet notice something called “keto flu.” This produces symptoms like nausea, fatigue, headaches, and cramps. This condition is caused by your body transitioning to a new way of using energy and usually goes away within a few weeks.
So, what do you think? Have you tried a ketogenic diet? Did it improve your symptoms? Let us know in the comments.
The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that their research has reaffirmed their suspicions that Kratomis similar to addictive, dangerous opioids. The drug, an herb from Southeast Asia that many fibromyalgia sufferers use for relief from their symptoms, is still legal in the U.S. (unless you live Alabama, Indiana, Arkansas, or Wisconsin). Still as many as 5 Million people in the U.S. use or have used kratom to get relief from pain, anxiety, opioid withdrawal, and fibromyalgia. The FDA has not announced whether it will place the drug on the Schedule 1 list of addictive drugs like cocaine and morphine (and for some reason, marijuana), but yesterday’s announcement is probably not good news for people who use the substance. The above video from the Washington Post gives a good breakdown of what kratom is and the issues surrounding its legality.
Have you used kratom to treat your fibro symptoms? How would a change in it’s status affect you?
Fibromyalgia can cause a lot of stress for those of us who are suffering from it. Because of that, it’s important that we find ways to deal with the pain that is healthy and, many times, that are more natural than trying to deal with prescription medications and such.
Mindfulness, in short, is the act of being here. That sounds odd, but many of us are so distracted by so many things that we aren’t always mentally here in the present. Our minds are out there, somewhere, thinking about something else that isn’t even going on.
Electronic devices like computers, tablets, and phones are taking us away from being present in the moment. Mindfulness is taking control back and making sure that you are able to be in control of your emotions and what is going on with your body and your mind. A lack of mindfulness (sometimes referred to as “mindlessness”) can actually result in more anxiety and can make it more difficult for you to cope with your daily living.
How do you practice mindfulness? There are a lot of ways; it all depends on what techniques work for you and how much they can help you. Some methods work for some people, others don’t work at all. You will have to try some for yourself in order to see whether or not they are the right thing for you to do.
Meditation is a huge part of mindfulness. You can either do it as part of yoga, or you can do it by itself. Sit down quietly in a comfortable position for about 10 or 15 minutes. Listen to your breath as you breathe in and breathe out. Pay attention to what your body is doing, and approach it with curiosity instead of with fear. Your body will be more relaxed, and you will be more present in the moment that you are in, instead of being lost in the clouds somewhere.
Grounding is a huge part of helping to deal with mindfulness as well, especially for those who have symptoms of anxiety alongside their fibromyalgia. Grounding is fairly simple. Sit somewhere or stand somewhere. Wiggle your toes and pay attention to where your feet are touching the ground. You are there, you are present, and you exist. Some people will rub their thighs if they’re sitting, or rub their hands if they’re standing up. This helps you to feel the sensations on your skin, which helps you to feel more present as well. Grounding is the physical part of being present where you are, at the moment.
Being mindful of everything you do is also helpful. Are you the type of person that just gulps down a meal instead of working to enjoy every bite? Sit and be mindful of what you’re eating, think about the texture and the flavors of the food that you’re enjoying, and breathe in the smells as well. You can do this with every experience you’re in – use all of your senses to be more in touch with what is going on around you, and you will find that you are enjoying the entire process a lot more than you would have been otherwise.
These aren’t the only suggestions that you can use in order to be more mindful. Basically, you’re just working to make sure that you are more aware of what is going on with you and around you; you are allowing yourself to be present in the moment, instead of being somewhere else and ignoring what is really going on. You may find your own ways to be more mindful, as well.
How Does It Help with Fibromyalgia?
By training your brain to be more mindful, you can actually find a number of different benefits when it comes to coping with your fibromyalgia pain and stress. Here are some of the ways that research has shown that mindfulness can actually help with your fibromyalgia pain and stress.
First off, let’s look at the positive effects that mindfulness has on anxiety related to fibromyalgia. Instead of panicking when the anxiety comes, mindfulness has been shown to help us look at anxiety and teaches not to be more afraid of it. As you likely know, anxiety has a tendency to spiral down into something worse. By approaching it with mindfulness, we become curious about it, take the reins of control back, and make it a lot less stressful.
When it comes to pain, mindfulness helps us not to just ignore the pain that we’re dealing with. Instead, it allows us to look at our pain and accept that it’s there, and take steps to help relieve some of the pain. We don’t necessarily get frustrated with it or put all our energy into focusing on it, we just learn how to respond to the pain in a more positive manner. Mindfulness, as we mentioned above, also helps to reduce stress, thus making it so that our bodies are more relaxed and thus, the pain is likely lessened and it makes it easier for us to go through our daily grind.
Mindfulness isn’t something to be afraid of – if we embrace it and make it part of our daily lives, it can end up being incredibly beneficial. Fibromyalgia can be stressful, but if we allow ourselves to be present and we allow ourselves to learn helpful techniques that can make our lives easier, it can really play a huge role in our overall wellness. If you aren’t sure where to start, a therapist and/or your specialist can point you in the right direction as to how you should go about it. They may even be able to help you learn proper techniques as well.
Lady Gaga’s Fibromyalgia Pain Causes her to Cancel Tour
Written By: admin
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Lady Gaga, whose fibromyalgia diagnosis we’ve covered previously, announced over the weekend that she was canceling the last 10 dates of her European tour in consultation with her medical providers. While her announcement on Twitter doesn’t mention fibromyalgia specifically, she has been open about her condition in the past, and it’s being reported that she was suffering severe pain which led her to cancel her tour dates.
“I’m so devastated I don’t know how to describe it. All I know is that if I don’t do this, I am not standing by the words or meaning of my music. My medical team is supporting the decision for me to recover at home,” the statement reads. Here’s wishing her well in her treatment and we hope she can get back to doing what she loves soon.
Fibromyalgia swelling is something a lot of people with the fibromyalgia have to deal with on a daily basis. And painful, swollen hands and feet make daily tasks hard for a lot of fibromyalgia sufferers. And there is also, of course, the constant pain of having swollen joints and limbs.
A lot of the time, people with swollen joints turn to stretching for fibromyalgia, which can help restore the flow of blood and healing cells to the affected limbs.
But can simply stretching for fibromyalgia help manage your symptoms? And if so, which stretches are best?
What causes fibromyalgia swelling?
Swelling, or edema, is caused by the building up of fluid underneath the skin. Usually, it is caused by injury. But diseases like fibromyalgia also cause the blood vessels in your body to release fluid which leads to swelling.
There is some debate about why this happens. Some of the theories include inflammation caused by the body’s immune response or possibly a neurological response.
Either way, with fibromyalgia swelling, the hands and feet are afflicted most often. And that can be intensely painful as they are not things you can really avoid using very easily. Luckily, stretching for fibromyalgia is something you can do at home that can help manage the pain.
How Does Stretching Help?
Stretching is believed to help with swelling because it encourages more circulation to the affected area. And the extra circulation helps to remove the fluid that leaks into your joints and pull it back into the bloodstream.
In addition, the extra blood carries with it the white blood cells and platelets that will begin to repair any damaged tissue.
So stretching for fibromyalgia can help reduce fibromyalgia swelling in an affected joint and promote healing which are the first steps towards managing it.
Stretching for fibromyalgia
Peroneal Stretch
The peroneal muscles are located on the outside of your legs and help with extending your ankle. A swollen peroneal muscle can make walking difficult because it is hard to flex your ankle. So to stretch your peroneal muscles try this simple stretch:
Tilt your foot to the side so that the outside of your foot is flat against the ground.
Gradually shift your weight onto your foot until you feel the muscles on the outside of your leg begin to stretch.
Repeat on the other side of your body.
Be careful when performing this stretch that you don’t shift too quickly onto your foot as you run the risk of spraining your ankle.
Shin Stretch
The muscles in your shin also help flex your ankle, though in a different direction. And a swollen shin can be very painful since a lot of nerves are located in that area. The best way to stretch out your shin is with a simple foam roller, which you can pick up in any running or athletics store, or online:
Place the toe of your shoe on the ground and lift your knee up onto the foam roller.
Slowly lean back onto your heel so that your foot is stretched out with the ankle being flexed downward towards the floor.
Keep the top of your foot on the ground so it doesn’t get deviate to the side, which could lead to injury.
Repeat on the other leg.
Calf Stretches
Your calves are located on your the back of your leg, below the knee. They essentially perform the same action as the muscles in your shin, but from the other side. To stretch out your calf, this is a very effective exercise:
Put the tip of your foot on a step, roller, or other raised surface and gradually lower your body weight into onto it.
Keep your knee straight and you will begin to feel the muscles in your calf flexing.
You can also stretch the muscles in your lower calf by taking a squatting position and doing the same thing.
Quad Stretches
The quadriceps muscles are the large muscle on the front of your leg above the knee. They handle the motion that comes from lifting your legs and extending your lower leg back and forth. To stretch out your quads, you can do this easy exercise:
Stand up and lift your leg up behind you so that you’re standing on one leg with one knee pointed at the ground.
Grab the foot you have lifted in the air with your hand and pull it upwards.
Try to balance against a wall to keep from falling as you stretch out your quads.
Repeat on the other side.
Fore Arm Stretches
There are a number of different muscles in your forearms which control the movement of your hands and fingers. And stretching for fibromyalgia pain will help deal with a swollen hand. A lot of the pain that radiates into your wrist and hand actual starts in the forearm. That’s why stretching for fibromyalgia can help restore a lot of mobility to your hands if they’re painfully swollen.
Stick your arm out in front of you with the palm open and your fingers pointed towards the floor.
Then grip your fingers with your other hand and slowly pull your hand back towards your forearm.
You should begin to feel the muscles in your forearm stretching.
Wrist Extensor Stretch
Finally, the wrist extensor muscles are a common place to experience swelling. These muscles control the movement of your wrist and can be stretched like this:
Bring your wrists up underneath your arm pits with the palms facing away.
Now slowly bring your elbows in towards your sides.
You will feel the muscles in your wrist begin to stretch.
Of course, fibromyalgia is different for everyone. And no two people experience the exact same symptoms. Stretches that are effective for one person with fibromyalgia may not work as well for someone else with the same condition.
So, help us out. Do you experience fibromyalgia swelling, and does stretching for fibromyalgia help with your symptoms? Do you have any other stretches that are effective? Tell us in the comments.
How Effective is Meloxicam for Fibromyalgia Relief?
Written By: Wyatt Redd
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Image: Wikimedia Commons
One of the most common drugs prescribed to treat fibromyalgia is meloxicam. It’s a drug that treats inflammation and pain. And while that might sound like an effective way to treat fibromyalgia, the truth is that there is little evidence that it and drugs like it are useful for treating fibromyalgia.
What Is Meloxicam?
It is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that doctors prescribe for the treatment of chronic joint pain. It is usually taken for arthritis or other chronic, painful conditions. Its common brand names are modec and vivlodex.
How Does It Treat Fibromyalgia?
Like other NSAID’s, it works by blocking the chemicals in your body that are responsible for swelling in pain. With fibromyalgia, which produces swelling and pain in the muscles, NSAID’s treat those symptoms.
Meloxicam is a powerful form of a NSAID drug, which makes it suited for treating fibromyalgia in some patients. However, many people who suffer from fibromyalgia report that NSAID’s don’t really help their symptoms.
The kind of swelling and inflammation of joints associated with diseases like arthritis isn’t really the same as what fibromyalgia sufferers endure. And studies have shown that NSAID’s are generally not effective in managing fibromyalgia.
What Are The Risks?
Like any NSAID, it increases the risk of cardiovascular problems. People who are on it for a long period of time have a higher chance of serious heart attacks or strokes.
In addition, the drug can cause internal bleeding, particularly in the stomach.
When you are on it, it’s important to look out for side effects. Look out for vomiting blood or dark stools which are signs of stomach bleeding.
Also, watch out for dizziness or a feeling like your head is spinning. This is another potential side effect that could be a sign of an increase in blood pressure.
Should You Take it For Fibromyalgia?
The best reason to take meloxicam for fibromyalgia is if you have other problems at the same time, such as arthritis. But as far as a treatment for fibromyalgia itself goes, there is little evidence that it is really an effective treatment.
The majority of drugs used to treat fibromyalgia at the moment are things like Celebrex, which are generally prescribed for depression. These are more effective than NSAID’s for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, but it probably has to do with the fact that fibromyalgia is not a physical disease, but one that originates in the brain.
Only you can know if meloxicam is an effective remedy for you. But if you are prescribed it and feel that it is not effective, talk to your doctor and let them know that the treatment they prescribe is not effective for you.
Anxiety is something that almost everyone struggles with at some point or another. And for some people, it can seem to completely take over their lives. If you’re familiar with chronic anxiety, you know how it can spiral into an endless cycle of worries and concerns.
That’s why one of the best ways to deal with anxiety is practicing something called grounding. Grounding is a way to break that cycle of negative emotions. So, here are some grounding techniques for anxiety that can help you reach a more positive state of mental health.
Grounding Techniques For Anxiety
The key to grounding is to pull your thoughts away from feelings of anxiety and into the present. So, most grounding techniques involve taking the time to really notice the things around you that you didn’t before. These exercises can help you stay in the present and out of your head.
Chair Exercise
The chair exercise should obviously be done while you’re sitting down and involves taking the time to focus on the feeling of the chair on the skin.
Place your feet an equal distance apart while sitting in a chair. Firmly grip the chair with your hands.
Close your eyes and focus on the feeling of the chair on your legs, back, and hands.
Take deep breaths and count to 30.
Clear your mind of all other thoughts.
Repeat until you feel more collected and calm.
5-4-3-2-1
The 5-4-3-2-1 Technique is mentally intensive enough to make it a good way to distract your thoughts. Here’s how it works:
Look around and name five things you can see in the room. Really focus on them. Take a moment to think about what they are. Describe them for yourself.
Name four things you can feel. Feel the ground under your feet, or the wind on your skin.
Name three things you can hear, like the air conditioner or people talking nearby.
Name two things you can smell. Is someone near you wearing cologne? Or can you smell anyone cooking something?
Name one good quality you have.
Music Exercise
This exercise is great for music fans. Basically, it involves listening to a song you love and really losing your thoughts in the music. Remember to pick a song with an upbeat tempo, something you can really tap your toes to:
Put on a song. Headphones work best, but a good stereo system is fine as well.
Close your eyes and focus on the music.
Imagine the sound entering your body and settling in your chest.
Drown out all other thoughts with the sound. This will help clear your head of negative thoughts and break the cycle of anxiety.
Mindful Walking
Mindful walking is a yoga-enhancing and meditation technique, that works great for overcoming anxiety. The technique works best outside in bare feet. But if it’s too cold, you can also do it inside. Here’s how you do it:
If walking on sand or indoors, start by taking your shoes off and placing your feet an equal distance apart.
Focus on your breathing and imagine your breath moving through your body and into the ground.
Really focus on the feeling of the ground underneath your feet. Can you feel grass? Dirt? Leaves?
Take a few steps, focusing on the ground. Close your eyes and try to figure out what you’re walking on based only on the feeling on the bottom of your feet.
Try to push out any other thoughts as you walk around. Repeat for as long as it takes to calm yourself down.
Thought Replacement
Thought replacement is a good exercise, but it usually takes a lot of practice to learn to do it well. But learning how to control your thoughts at will makes a huge difference when it comes to managing anxiety.
Try to identify which of your negative thoughts are the most upsetting. Is it something about work, or a loved one? Are you worried about something that will happen in the future?
Now come up with a good thought, something that makes you happy, or a positive trait you have that your proud of.
Whenever you find yourself thinking the negative thought, make an effort to think of the positive one instead, essentially replacing the negative thoughts with the positive ones.
Square Breathing
Regulating your breathing is a very useful tool when it comes to anxiety. Regular, deep breathing naturally helps calm the body. Here’s a breathing exercise you can use when you’re feeling anxious:
Sit in comfortable position in a place with no distractions
Close your eyes (although this is optional)
Breath in, taking four seconds to do so
Hold your breath for four seconds
Exhale, taking four seconds to do so
Repeat four times
Here’s a variation of that:
Take deep slow breathes and place your finger in the center of your chest.
Draw your finger in a square on your chest.
Try to time your breaths so that you finish one in the time it takes you to draw the circle.
Aim for about 10-15 seconds per breath.
Repeat until you’ve taken 20 breaths.
Using these techniques might sound a little silly, but you’ll find that they actually do help you focus your mind on the present. And grounding yourself in the present is the best way to help calm yourself when you’re feeling anxious.
Ways To Reduce Fibromyalgia Pain Without A Trip To The Doctor
Written By: Dominic John
John
Living fibromyalgia isn’t easy. The chronic pain, aches, and overall discomfort make living life so much harder to do. This ailment affects all aspects of life for a sufferer, as well as the lives of those around you. From fatigue to depression, relationships can become extremely strained due to this strange and still seemingly unexplainable condition. Are there ways to reduce fibromyalgia pain without going to the doctor?
Since there is currently no cure, medications are at the forefront of trying to ease the pain and discomfort that fibromyalgia brings. With that said, medications only mask the pain and some do not always do so at a 100% effectiveness rate. So, many people are having to just “deal” and live with their constant pain. As helpful as medications can be, there are other steps that you can take to try to lessen the blow that comes with fibromyalgia. Here are three handy tips that you can try to ease the symptoms.
Low Impact Exercise
Working out and some form of exercise is usually recommended for any fibromyalgia sufferer, however getting up and moving around doesn’t always prove to be easy when living with chronic musculoskeletal pain. More and more fibromyalgia sufferers are turning to low impact exercise routines thanks to the practice of things like yoga, Tai Chi, and Pilates. Exercise not only gets the blood pumping throughout the body, which in turn alleviates stress and tension on the muscles and joints, but it also helps to boost mood, reduce fatigue and strengthen the heart. Other low impact exercises such as cycling and swimming are great workouts too. All of these can help reduce fibromyalgia pain.
Sleep
Now, this may seem counterproductive, especially as fibromyalgia comes with its bouts of chronic fatigue, but doing your best to get a full night’s sleep, especially uninterrupted REM sleep, can really help. A full night’s sleep, between six and eight hours, helps the body to repair itself, it helps the brain recover and it eases the stress on the body. Some easy ways to help you to get to sleep and stay asleep are actually easy tweaks that you can make right in your own home, such as: reducing loud noises in the bedroom or the home, omitting all bright lights in the areas where you’ll be sleeping (blackout curtains are specifically designed for this) and avoiding alcohol or caffeine—especially up to an hour before you plan to fall asleep.
Reduce Stress
Much easier said than done for just about anyone, let alone anyone with fibromyalgia, but it can be done. Because fibromyalgia can affect the memory, sufferers often have brain fog, or the inability to properly recount information or think clearly. When this occurs it can be extremely frustrating, which can cause undue stress on the mind and body. Pacing yourself in all of the things you do each day is an effective and easy way to lower stress on the mind. Know your limits and don’t do too much all at once. Make lists, ask for help, and know when you’ve reached your limit. Many people find relief through meditation or breathing exercises too. Simply taking time away from your day to relax the mind, to stop whatever it is you’re doing, can help you to lower stress, and to increase your overall focus.
Can Vitamin D Lower Your Fibromyalgia Pain Levels?
Written By: Mandy Burkholder
admin
Image: Elena Hramova/Shutterstock
Could vitamin D be the secret to helping your fibromyalgia pain? A study was published in a recent article of PAIN magazine that explains the effects of vitamin D supplements on sufferers of fibromyalgia who also suffer from vitamin D deficiency.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain disease characterized by widespread pain, fatigue, sleep disorders, morning stiffness, and poor concentration. Although there is no cure for fibromyalgia, scientists and researchers from across the world are united in the quest to treat it.
The mysterious disease has left doctors scratching their heads for many years, but luckily the science is finally catching up. And it’s about time.
The researchers were interested in testing the effect of vitamin D supplements for fibromyalgia sufferers after discovering low levels of calcifediol in the blood of chronic pain patients. Calcifediol is prehormone produced in the liver, which is converted to vitamin D in the body. Their hypothesis was that if patient supplemented their vitamin D intake, it would lead to less overall pain.
To test the hypothesis, researchers gave a group of women an oral supplement of cholecalciferol dosed between 32 and 48 ng/ml for 25 weeks. A control group was given a placebo supplement so researchers could test the true effects of the cholecalciferol.
Before treatment began, the women were given a standard survey, called the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), that asked them to describe their current struggles with memory, fatigue, sleep loss, pain, muscle stiffness, and overall well-being.
When the 25-week cycle was complete, the women were given the FIQ again. The results showed that women in the cholecalciferol supplement group showed marked improvement in perceived pain when compared to their counterparts in the control group. Unfortunately, there was no significant difference in levels of depression or anxiety.
The results are promising for the fibromyalgia community because they deliver a cost-effective alternative to typical pain medications. The most important thing to remember is that your doctor should be notified if you’re interested in utilizing vitamin D to help control your fibromyalgia pain.
Would you ever consider taking cholecalciferol supplements as an alternative to traditional pain medicines? If so, let us know in the comments why you think it’s a good idea!
A lot of patients are prescribed Paxil for fibromyalgia. Since fibromyalgia depression and anxiety are are some of the worst symptoms of fibromyalgia, antidepressants like Paxil are often prescribed. These conditions can be caused by fibromyalgia, and they can also be an underlying cause. Doctors will often prescribe antidepressants like Paxil to relieve the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Antidepressants like Paxil can also provide some pain relief. They are also often helpful for patients who have trouble sleeping. One of the antidepressants prescribed for fibromyalgia is Paxil. Paxil is the brand name for paroxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) which are some of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. Paxil (paroxetine) is one of the most-prescribed SSRIs for treating depression and anxiety, and it can also be prescribed for fibromyalgia patients, both to provide relief from fibromyalgia and to relieve the concurring anxiety and depression that is often exacerbated by fibromyaglia.
What is Paxil?
Paxil is the brand name for the drug paroxetine, which is an antidepressant in a group of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The way SSRIs work is not completely understood, but researchers believe they restore chemical balance in the brain, and/ or affect positively communication between nerve cells in the central nervous system. Paxil is used by itself or in combination with other drugs for patients dealing with major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and social anxiety disorders. Doctors will often prescribe Paxil for fibromyalgia, either by itself or in combination with other medications.
Why would my doctor prescribe Paxil for fibromyalgia?
Research shows that SSRIs like Paxil can improve overall well-being, is effective with helping people sleep, and provide pain relief – with lesser effects on tender points and fatigue from fibromyalgia. Also, because fibromyalgia and anxiety are often diagnosed together, Paxil can provide some relief from the anxiety. Up to 20% of people diagnosed with fibromyalgia are also diagnosed with anxiety. Fibromyalgia and depression also often go together, so an SSRI antidepressant like Paxil can provide relief for fibromyalgia depression. Even if it doesn’t treat the fibromyalgia directly, it can be helpful with some of the conditions that are secondary to fibromyalgia.
Because stressful life events can cause fibromyalgia flares, which in turn can cause anxiety, which then turns into a vicious cycle of anxiety and pain, SSRIs like Paxil can help prevent flares. You may find yourself better able to cope with day-to-day stressors and anxiety that could in turn lead to fibro flares. Anything that may help prevent fibro flares may also be worth investigating.
It also common for people who are unable to go about their daily activities of living to become depressed. Not being able to care for your children, or go to a job can have a debilitating effect on your life, and an antidepressant like Paxil can help manage the depressed feelings. Many fibro patients develop anxiety about leaving the house, for fear of having a fibro flare while away from home. Medicines like Paxil can help reduce those feeling of anxiety and help return to a more normal daily routine.
While there aren’t many published studies on the efficacy of Paxil for fibromyalgia, what evidence is available suggests that the immediate-release form of Paxil (as opposed to the extended-release version) may provide some small improvement in pain, sleep, and depression based on one trial comparing Paxil to amitriptyline.
What are the side effects when taking Paxil for fibromyalgia?
Like any drug, taking Paxil for fibromyalgia does have some side effects, some of which can be unpleasant.
Common side effects, which if they persist, let your doctor know:
constipation
diarrhea
dizziness
drowsiness
ejaculatory disorder
erectile dysfunction
insomnia
male genital disease
nausea
weakness
headache
decreased libido
delayed ejaculation
diaphoresis
xerostomia
Abnormal dreams
change in sense of taste
congestion
discouragement, feeling sad, or empty
drugged feeling
fast or irregular breathing
feeling of unreality
headache, severe and throbbing
increased appetite
itching of the vagina or genital area
itching, pain, redness, or swelling of the eye or eyelid
lack of emotion
loss of interest or pleasure
lump in the throat
menstrual changes
pain during sexual intercourse
problems with memory
sense of detachment from self or body
sneezing
thick, white vaginal discharge with no odor or with a mild odor
tightness in the throat
tingling, burning, or prickling sensations
trouble concentrating
voice changes
watering of the eyes
weight loss
yawn
You should contact your doctor if you experience any of these unlikely but serious side effects:
Agitation
chest congestion
skin rash
chills
cold sweats
difficulty with breathing
confusion
dizziness, faintness, or lightheadedness when getting up from a lying or sitting position
fast, pounding, or irregular heartbeat or pulse
muscle pain or weakness
chest pain
Finally, seek immediate medial attention if you experience black or bloody stools, vomit that looks like coffee grounds, blurred vision, eye pain, swelling or redness of the eyes, widened pupils, or vision changes.
Should I try Paxil for fibromyalgia?
Paxil is only available by prescription, so you need to speak with a medical provider who is able to write them. If your fibromyalgia is accompanied by depression and/or anxiety, then an SSRI like Paxil may be a good treatment option for you. There are providers trained specifically in the treatment of fibromyalgia, so it may be helpful to find a specialist. If you belong to a fibromyalgia support group, it may be helpful to ask if any of the members have used Paxil for fibromyalgia, to get a personal testimony from someone you trust. The more knowledge you have the better you can tackle the disease.
Have you been prescribed Paxil for fibromyalgia? Let us know how it works (or doesn’t) in the comments.
Fibromyalgia itching is a symptom of fibromyalgia that you may not have heard of. But the fact is that many people with fibromyalgia suffer from it. And to the people who do, it is a horrible experience. They often find that they can’t sleep because their skin constantly feels like something is crawling across it. Or they scratch themselves bloody trying to find some relief.
Patients with fibromyalgia itching often have a lower quality of life due to their constant itching. They find it hard to sleep due to itching at night. And that makes the fact that it is already hard to sleep with fibromyalgia even worse. The itch is also chronic and can be with someone who suffers from it day and night for days or even years at a time.
And the worst part is that there are very few effective ways to treat it. But Gabapentin is a drug that may help manage your fibromyalgia itching. So what is it? And is it effective at treating fibromyalgia itching?
What Is Gabapentin?
Gabapentin is a drug that is usually used to treat seizures. But it has also shown some promise for treating nerve pain, which is why it’s sometimes prescribed for people who suffer from painful nerve conditions like shingles.
It works by blocking some of the receptors in your brain that usually transmit the sensation of pain. That makes it effective in treating people who suffer from nerve disorders like shingles or complications from diabetes that cause nerve damage. The signals from your nerves that make your brain feel what we think of as an “itch” work in the same way. They transmit sensation to the brain, which in turn makes you feel like your skin is itching. So essentially itching starts in the brain more than it starts in the skin. And Gabapentin might slow that reaction down.
This also might make it a potentially effective treatment for itching due to fibromyalgia.
Would It Be Effective For Treating Fibromyalgia Itching?
No one knows exactly what causes people with fibromyalgia to feel itchy, but there are some people who think it is caused by misfiring nerves. If that is true then a drug that blocks the pathways of nerve pain like Gabapentin might be effective in treating the itching sensation associated with some people’s fibromyalgia.
And doctors in New Zealand have long used Gabapentin to treat itching caused by other neurological disorders. Patients in these clinical trials often find that the drug is effective in treating their itching symptoms. Thus, it is one of the drugs that doctors in New Zealand most often use for this condition.
So if fibromyalgia itching does originate in the brain instead of the skin, then it seems reasonable to think that Gabapentin could be an effective treatment. And doctors from other countries have also been prescribing anticonvulsants to help people who suffer from chronic itching.
Dr. Gil Yosipovitch is a scientist at Temple University who specializes in the field of neurological based itching. And in an interview with NPR, he talked about how chronic itching is something that many doctors don’t take seriously enough. They feel like an itch can’t be as bad as chronic pain. But they don’t understand how much constantly feeling an itch that you can’t scratch away can lower your quality of life. And he even wrote a book called “Living With Itch: A Patient’s Guide,” that explores some of the realities of having a disease that causes a constant itching. And it explains some things you can try to help cure your symptoms.
Yosipovitch is even trying to create a specialized field of medicine that handles chronic itching so that medical breakthroughs can be made in treating the condition. In particular, he is focused on what he calls the “itch-scratch cycle.” That’s the fact that itching leads to scratching, which leads to more itching. In his words:
When a doctor tells a patient, stop scratching, it’s easy to say that, but in fact, it’s not easy to do because it really liberates – the scratching – some chemicals. Chemicals like opioids, like morphine-like. In fact, a lot of the patients say the only way to relieve her itch for a couple of hours is significant scratching.
In the interview, he also stated that he often prescribes Gabapentin to his patients, which sometimes confuses his colleagues.
But he explains to them that itching is fundamentally an issue of the nervous system. After all, the nerves in the skin transmit the signals to the brain that triggers the sensation of itching. And your brain encourages you to scratch to cure that itch. But Yosipovitch also found that these kinds of long term itching symptoms were common in people with neurological disorders.
So to Dr. Yosipovitch, it makes sense to prescribe drugs that target the nervous system to people who suffer from chronic itching. And he found that drugs like Gabapentin work.
They target and slow some of the reactions in your nervous system that create the sensation of itching. Which makes them effective in treating some of the symptoms of chronic itching.
So when it comes to your fibromyalgia itching, it definitely seems like Gabapentin and other anti-convulsants could be an effective treatment. But it is important to remember that there isn’t a great deal of research into whether these drugs are effective for fibromyalgia itching specifically.
And it’s important to remember that Gabapentin has a number of side effects. Those include dizziness, loss of balance, or suicidal thoughts.
So be sure to check with your doctor. But Gabapentin may be an effective remedy. It is already used by a number of doctors to treat patients with chronic itching caused by neurological disorders. Which means that if fibromyalgia itching is a result of those same mechanisms in your brain, then Gabapentin should work.
So let us know, do you take Gabapentin? Does it work for you? Would you like to try it? Tell us in the comments.
Tender Points That Hold The Key To Diagnosing Fibromyalgia
Written By: Dominic John
admin
Diagnosing fibromyalgia is one of the hardest things for a physician to do. Much of this difficulty is based on the fact that no two people have the exact same level of pain tolerance, and everyone describes the pain they feel in a different manner to some degree. So, one way that doctor’s rule out any other form of pain or ailment is by exploring the many tender points throughout the body.
Tender points are just as they sound, they are places on the body that are more susceptible to pain, and tenderness. Those that suffer from fibromyalgia often have severe and chronic pain located primarily at these tender points up and down the body. The body has 18 tender points, consisting of 9 pairs, and they are painful when pressed and may spread pain to other body parts. Fibromyalgia is typically diagnosed when at least 11 of these tender points have pressure applied to them. Knowing where these tender points are across your body can help you to better manage your fibromyalgia pain and assist a physician with your diagnosis. Here are the 9 pairs of tender points:
The Neck: This is often one of the primary locations for pain, as the back and the nape of the neck is where the base of the skull and the top of the spine come together. The pain in this area is often exacerbated by poor sleeping position, poor sitting posture, and rheumatoid arthritis.
The Elbows: One of the most frequently used joints in the human body, a tender point in the elbow can be excruciating when dealing with fibromyalgia. This pain also radiates and spreads to the forearms. Localized pain generally occurs in the crease of the elbow, and if not treated can lead to tendonitis.
The Hips: Sufferers over the age of 65 are more likely to see pain in the hips; this is because of their predisposition to osteoarthritis. The pain in the hips is usually felt in the joint, as well as the surrounding muscle. Tenderness can also be felt in and around the buttocks and thighs.
The Lower Back: Arguably the most common place for pain in anyone, let alone anyone with fibromyalgia, lower back pain can start at the lowest point of the spine and travel upwards.
The Upper Back: Since this is where a large number of tendons and muscles meet, the instance of pain in the upper back and shoulder area is common. The shoulder blades are where most people hold their tension and stress, and fibromyalgia pain can center in this area a lot.
The Knees: Knee pain when dealing with fibromyalgia can come from the inside and radiate outward. Knee pain in the joint, muscle and tendons are all common. This pain can be difficult to manage as the legs are used so frequently on a day to day basis.
The Shoulders: Tender points above the shoulder blades and upper back can sometimes occur, and this can cause discomfort, especially when moving the head.
The Chest: The sternum is a large area as far as the body is concerned, and pain can come from both sides of it, just a few inches down from the collarbone, at the top of the ribs.
The Ankles: Just as with the knees, this area is highly common, as walking applies a large amount of pressure to the area. This pain can often move up into the shins and make using the legs very painful.
Controlling Fibromyalgia Naturally With Diet and Exercise
Written By: L.B. Jacks
admin
Image: Alliance / Shutterstock
One of the most aggravating things about suffering from fibromyalgia is the fluctuation of pain levels.
One day pain levels may be extremely low, followed by a day of not being able to move or even breathe deeply.
Accomplishing small tasks or holding a child may be beyond a fibro patient’s scope on a bad day. If you are one of the 1 in 50 Americans who suffers from this condition, rest assured that research continues to show that pain levels associated with fibromyalgia can be managed.
Controlling the pain associated with fibromyalgia can be accomplished one of three ways. You can elect to take prescribed medications such as duloxetine (Cymbalta), milnacipran (Savella), and velafaxin (Effexor). Also used are anti-seizure drugs and pain killers. But be aware that if you stop taking some of these they may cause withdrawal symptoms.
Never stop taking a medication without consulting your doctor.
You also can elect to take your medications and remove food triggers from your diet. These methods, when used together, can be extremely effective in pain management.
The third way to control your pain levels takes dedication and observation. That method is a natural reduction in the foods that are contributing to your condition while increasing anti-inflammatory foods and spices.
These natural treatment approaches can include cognitive behavioral therapy (such as meditation), physical therapy, occupational therapy, increased exercise, manual lymph drainage massage therapy, aquatic therapy, and diet.
Movement helps. Try signing up for a yoga class. The Journal of Pain Research reported that stretching twice a week had “lowered pain levels” at the end of a clinical study.
Do you wake up stiff and sore? Some sources suggest taking SAMe, or S-Adenosyl methionine, supplements to relieve these symptoms.
Before you dismiss the notion that natural control is possible, talk to your doctor about these methods, including diet. Most physicians will suggest you limit the intake of certain foods – this is a testimony that you can begin to control pain levels this way.
If you elect to examine your food choices, you will need to begin a food journal. Record every single thing that goes into your body, the date and time. That means if you eat meatloaf you will need to know what was put into that meatloaf and record that, for example.
After several months of data collection, you should start to see a pattern of correlation between pain increases and certain foods you have consumed.
Medical research continues to prove that vitamin D is essential for many body functions. According to a paper published in January 2012 in Pain Medicine, fibromyalgia pain improved after only eight weeks of vitamin D supplementation for 30 women in a study group.
Also, try topical application of capsaicin – the compound found in hot peppers. It works by stimulating the body’s production of “substance P,” which reduces chronic pain sensations for diabetics, cancer patients, and those who suffer from headaches and fibromyalgia flares. This over-the-counter lotion is sold in varying strengths.
Want to eat inflammation-reducing foods and spices? It has been medically proved that an increase of antioxidant foods, minerals and essential fatty acids (omega-3) foods can benefit overall health in everyone, but there are specific foods to eat that will reduce your pain levels over time.
Spices can help. Try using more turmeric, cayenne pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, sage and rosemary in your cooking. Inflammation-reducing foods include tomatoes, olive oil, dark green leafy vegetables such as kale, collard greens and spinach (which all taste really good when cooked with a combination of the spices listed above).
Meats that reduce inflammation include salmon, mackerel, tuna and sardines.
Even some fruits and nuts worked into the diet, such as strawberries, cherries, citrus and blueberries, can reduce pain levels. Try combining those with pain-reducing nuts such as almond and walnuts.
What should you avoid eating? Sugar can cause inflammation, so stay away from simple carbohydrates. Stay away from monosodium glutamate, or MSG, and sodium nitrite. These substances are used in processed foods to preserve flavor. You will see them in cured meats and prepared sauces. Also avoid glutamic acid, glutamate, yeast extract, anything hydrolyzed, gelatin and caseinate (a milk component). This means you need to avoid cheese, sour cream, creamer, ghee, yogurt, butter, and milk.
There are more things to add to your list of foods to avoid. By keeping your own food journal, though, you can customize your diet to exactly what is causing you grief.
Fibromyalgia swelling is a painful condition that many with fibromyalgia experience. Their limbs and joints become painful and inflamed, which makes daily life difficult. But what causes the swelling? And can dietary supplements help you with your symptoms?
Their limbs become swollen with excess fluid, and they find that things, like walking or using their hands, are difficult because of the pain. And that makes it hard to perform basic daily tasks. So fibromyalgia swelling is definitely something that can reduce your quality of life.
But what causes the swelling? And are there dietary supplements for fibromyalgia swelling that help you with your symptoms?
What Causes Fibromyalgia Swelling?
People with fibromyalgia sometimes find that their hands, feet or other parts of their body suddenly start swelling.
Swelling, or edema, is usually caused by fluid from blood vessels leaking into the body and being retained by your cells. The afflicted area then swells up with fluid underneath the skin.
Usually, this is caused by injury, but in people with fibromyalgia, it can also be triggered by stress. Some doctors theorize that the swelling is actually inflammation, which is when your body’s immune system attacks its own tissue and causes it to swell. And if this is the case, it would support the idea that fibromyalgia is actually an autoimmune disease, which is where your bodies immune system begins attacking your healthy cells by mistake.
Either way, there are things you can do to reduce your fibromyalgia swelling, starting with dietary supplements.
How Can Supplements Reduce Your Swelling?
Because swelling is caused by the retention of fluid in your cells, supplements for fibromyalgia swelling that help your cells regulate fluid will help reduce the amount of pain and discomfort you experience.
Your diet actually makes a huge difference in nearly every aspect of how your body performs. And a well-balanced diet will make your body naturally retain less fluid. But if you can’t get all the vitamins you need in your diet, supplements for fibromyalgia swelling are a great way to go.
Some Supplements For Fibromyalgia Swelling
When it comes to choosing the right supplements for fibromyalgia swelling, it’s important to choose vitamins that help your body perform its job correctly. Certain nutrients are important in the way your body regulates the flow of fluid from joints and muscles. So you want to make sure you’re choosing your supplements for fibromyalgia swelling that help create the types of cells that regulate fluid in the body.
And you also want to make sure that you aren’t taking supplements for fibromyalgia swelling that aren’t helping to contribute to the sorts of nutrients that encourage your body to retain water.
There are certain types of foods that naturally make your cells more likely to hold in the fluid that leads to fibromyalgia swelling.
Iron
Iron is a vitamin that plays an important role in regulating your blood and cardiovascular system. A healthy level of iron in your blood will help your body naturally improve circulation to the areas where you are experiencing fibromyalgia swelling and pull the fluid back into your blood stream. Iron is a key ingredient in the creation of new blood cells. And a healthy level of iron in your diet will let you create the red blood cells your body needs. That will help drain the fluid away from the area.
Normally, Iron is found in leafy, green vegetables like Kale. But you can also get it in the form of supplements.
Vitamin B
Vitamin B normally exists in red meat, meaning that people who are vegetarians will often suffer from vitamin B deficiencies. And vitamin B plays a significant role in the regulation of your bodies circulatory system as it regulates nerves and blood cell creation.
So a healthy level of vitamin B will help your body naturally fight swelling in the limbs by creating the blood cells to carry the fluid away from the area.
Stinging Nettle
Stinging Nettle is a plant with natural anti-inflammatory properties. The plant has tiny spines that release painful chemicals when touched, which gives it its name. But when used as a supplement, the natural chemicals in the stinging nettle reduce inflammation and swelling.
You can also use a compound of stinging nettle directly on the skin to reduce the pain and inflammation you experience. The stinging spines are placed against the area that is inflamed, and after a brief feeling of pain, the chemicals the stingers release actually make the area feel numb.
It’s an effective way to treat a painful limb without using drugs if you’re interested in alternative treatments. And it’s also a great supplement for fibromyalgia swelling.
Turmeric
Turmeric is a spice that is usually used in Indian and Asian cuisines as the main flavor in curries. But it turns out that it also has some medical properties that can help reduce inflammation.
Turmeric contains the chemical compound “curcumin,” which has anti-inflammatory properties. So adding a turmeric supplement to your daily diet may help relieve some of your swelling. The natural anti-inflammatory compounds help your body move fluid out of the affected limbs and back into your blood stream.
Just remember that no matter what supplements you choose to take, make sure that you are getting them from a reliable source. The US Food and Drug Administration is actually not authorized to test supplements for their effectiveness or safety. So it’s important to carefully research any supplements for fibromyalgia swelling you decide to take. And make sure you’re getting supplements that are both safe and effective.
Some products you find on the internet may actually be full of useless additives, which makes them ineffective. And some products can actually be harmful. Around 23,000 people every year actually end up in the hospital due to taking supplements that contain things like aconite powder, which is poisonous.
When you’re taking supplements for fibromyalgia swelling, make sure you’re careful about the supplements you’re using. So let us know, do you take supplements for fibromyalgia swelling? What works for you? And what doesn’t? Let us know in the comments.
Many people with fibromyalgia know how uncomfortable the sensation of fibromyalgia swelling can be. Painfully swollen hands and feet or joints are something that many sufferers deal with on a near-daily basis. It makes it tough to do basic things like walk or handle errands because their limbs are swollen.
Many wonder if there is anything they can do that will help relieve those symptoms. Well, it turns out that your diet may be one of the biggest reasons that you suffer from fibromyalgia swelling and may be one of the easiest ways to treat it.
What Is Fibromyalgia Swelling?
Fibromyalgia swelling is caused by fluid being released by the blood vessels in your body, usually as a result of an injury. The fluid builds up underneath the skin which causes your limbs or joints to swell up. No one knows exactly why this happens to people with fibromyalgia. But there are a few theories.
One is that the swelling is actually inflammation caused by the body’s immune system overreacting and attacking your tissue. This is due to the fact that fibromyalgia is an autoimmune disease according to some scientists.
There’s no concrete proof of this theory, though the fact that things like stress sometimes trigger swelling imply that there may be truth to it. Either way, there are things you can do that will help limit fibromyalgia swelling.
Diet And Fibromyalgia Swelling
Your diet can have a significant impact on the amount of fluid that your body retains. There are a number of dietary vitamins and minerals that encourage your body to retain water. And by simply eliminating those things in your diet, you can help reduce the amount of fibromyalgia swelling you experience.
The role between your diet and fibromyalgia swelling is the same as the link between your diet and nearly anything else. Simply put, you are what you eat. And though that’s a pretty cliched expression, it’s pretty accurate in a certain sense.
Your body uses the food you eat to fuel the growth of new cells. And there is an incredibly intricate relationship between all the different nutrients your body needs to stay healthy. And people with a healthier diet tend to be healthier.
And a good diet can play a huge role in treating lots of different conditions.
How Can You Change Your Diet To Treat Swelling?
Basically, when it comes to diet and fibromyalgia swelling, you want to make sure that you are getting in helpful nutrients and eliminating bad ones. A lot of the things you eat can cause swelling to get worse. So you want to avoid these kinds of foods at all costs if you are experiencing a lot of swelling in your limbs or joints.
But luckily, there are also many foods that will help your body naturally deal with swelling. They promote the flow of blood to affected areas and limit the body’s natural tendency to retain fluid.
Reduce Sodium
High levels of sodium are one of the most significant causes of fluid retention in the body. And sodium is hard to avoid. Restaurants and processed food suppliers load their products up with salt, which makes avoiding sodium something you really have to commit to on a conscious level if you’re going to do it effectively.
B Vitamins
B Vitamins are found in red meats and can help promote healthy veins and reduce the level of inflammation in your cells. The danger is that too much red meat can also lead to more fluid retention. So limit red meat to just a few times a week if possible.
Iron
Iron is another vitamin that helps promote good cardiovascular health. It is a vital ingredient in the creation of red blood cells and getting a good iron supplement can help your body naturally produce healthier red blood cells that bring nutrients to damaged joints and muscles. And that means a natural reduction in swelling.
You can find it in leafy greens like kale or spinach and it is a great addition to your diet when you are trying to limit swelling.
Potassium
Potassium helps regulate just about everything in your body, and increasing your levels of potassium will help you eliminate painful swelling. Potassium is what is known as an electrolyte, and it plays a role in moving fluid around the cells in your body. A lack of potassium makes it difficult for your body to move water from swollen tissue to healthy tissue. And that means you naturally will retain more fluids in your joints and muscles.
It’s found in many different kinds of fruits and vegetables like apricots, bananas, and broccoli.
Eat More Fish And Less Red Meat
Fish is a healthy source of nutrients, especially when compared to red meat. It is full of Omega 3 fatty acids which can help promote good joint health and reduce swelling. You can get it in oily fish like salmon or mackerel, or in a high-quality supplement.
On the other hand, red meat is full of a compound called Neu5GC. Humans used to create Neu5GC in their own cells until a genetic mutation a few hundred thousand years ago eliminated it. That’s different from most animals who still produce it naturally in their bodies. Thus, red meat naturally has a high concentration of it.
Doctors have suggested that the presence of this compound causes inflammation. That’s because your body doesn’t recognize it as a nutrient and reacts as if it were a foreign threat. And so it triggers the body’s immune response, which leads to swelling.
That isn’t a sure thing until more research is done, but it does seem like there is a definite link between diets high in red meat and levels of inflammation.
Diet and fibromyalgia swelling have a close relationship. And you can reduce a lot of swelling by maintaining a healthy diet. And by limiting the amount of things you eat that promote swelling in the body, you can help prevent the painful swelling.
Fibromyalgia home remedies are available to try for those who have been diagnosed with this debilitating condition. Your results and the safety of any fibromyalgia home remedies may vary according to your age, severity of symptoms, medications you are taking, and any other conditions you may suffer from, as well as other factors specific to your situation. Before trying any of the natural home remedies mentioned below, be sure to clear it with your doctor beforehand.
1. Massage
Patients who suffer from fibromyalgia usually have chronic pain that occurs throughout the body. Many find that massage gives temporary or lasting relief from this chronic pain. Massage is a fibromyalgia home remedy to try because it involves manipulation of the underlying tissues of the body. Massage can improve blood flow, reduce tension, and enable your body to better deliver essential vitamins and nutrients throughout the body.
Since fibromyalgia can cause heightened skin sensitivity, it’s best to receive massages for fibromyalgia from a licensed practitioner. Make sure that you advise the masseuse of your condition when you book the appointment and when the session begins. Otherwise, you could try getting a massage from someone personal who is knowledgeable about your condition and who has a light touch, such as your spouse or partner. While undergoing massage treatment for fibromyalgia, if you experience an increase in pain or discomfort, it’s best to try one of the other fibromyalgia home remedies instead.
2. Diet
Diet and nutrition can play a large part in the severity of your fibromyalgia symptoms. This is something that you have complete control over at home, and can make adjustments as soon as today.
Of course, everyone knows that whole foods are more nutritious than fast foods, but not everyone has the time or ability to cook homemade meals all day long. There are other options for you if you’d like to try improving your diet with homemade foods.
Join or start a neighborhood meal circle. This is a where a group of friends get together to form a cooperative circle. Each night for a week, one person in the group makes dinner for everyone and either delivers the homemade dishes to the neighbors or packs them up for pickup. When it’s your turn, you might be understandably unable to cook for five or seven people, but a family member might be able to do it for you.
Have meals delivered. There are several options for fully prepared meal delivery services now. You can compare quality and price online and choose one that suits your needs.
For best results with your diet, keep a food journal and keep track of your physical reactions immediately after meals and for the few hours after. You might be surprised to find how food influences how you feel. Just starting with the food journal will give you insight into what foods you should be eating and which ones to avoid.
3. Natural Supplements
As a complementary aid to good nutrition and, of course, whatever treatment your doctor has recommended, you might consider taking natural supplements for fibromyalgia. Natural supplements have real benefits and side effects just as prescription medication does, so before embarking on a natural supplement regimen, it’s important to get your doctor’s permission first.
Some patients with fibromyalgia have reported good results after taking certain natural supplements. These are:
CoQ10 – Coenzyme Q10 is a form of a naturally occurring enzyme in the body that is reported to help reduce fibromyalgia brain fog.
Magnesium – Magnesium is critical to the body, and helps to relieve the muscle spasms, and general aches and pains that are common in patients with fibromyalgia
Melatonin – Melatonin is one of the fibromyalgia home remedies to consider because it helps to transition the brain and body into sleep mode, increasing the likelihood of a deep and restful sleep without the sometimes drowsy side effect of sleeping tablets.
St. John’s Wort – This natural plant-derived supplement is commonly taken to treat mild depression, which some fibromyalgia patients report feeling.
Ginseng – For mental clarity and to beat fibromyalgia brain fog, many diagnosed patients turn to the herbal supplement, ginseng. It can be taken in tea form or as a tablet.
Peppermint Oil – This natural plant based supplement is effective against the digestive symptoms. A drop of the essential oil placed on the tip of the tongue is often all that’s needed.
When turning to natural supplements as fibromyalgia home remedies, be sure to purchase the purest form available, and purchase organic versions when your budget permits.
4. Mild Exercise
There is some evidence that mild exercise might work to combat the symptoms of fibromyalgia. If you are taking prescription medication for fibromyalgia that gives you added strength to move, ask your doctor if you should take advantage of that to do some mild forms of exercise.
Suggested exercises include things like walking, moving around in a heated swimming pool, doing gentle stretches, and even doing some household chores. Some reports indicate that mild exercise can lessen joint pain.
If you start exercising and notice that it tires you out excessively, you can either cut back on your motion or move on to a different kind of home remedy for fibromyalgia.
5. Meditation
Sometimes, taking time away from the hustle and bustle of your daily life can ease some of the less severe symptoms of fibromyalgia. Meditation has been shown to help some patients with fibromyalgia cope with the side effects of depression, anxiety and stress. In particular, in an 8-week study done at the University of Basel, a meditative technique known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) indicated promising results that fibro patients could use at home to lower stress and related symptoms, including pain.
While official MBSR programs do exist, it’s entirely possible to practice this at home. The difference between this concept and traditional meditation is that the patient focuses on the body and uses brain visualization to imagine pain leaving the body. Although regular meditation involves specific poses, these may be too painful for a fibro patient to get into. Instead, to practice MBSR, simply find a quiet place to lay down where you won’t be disturbed for a while. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing until it slows down into a meditative state. Then feel where the pain and stress are localized on your body (or in some cases, all over), and use visualization to imagine that pain exiting your body. MBSR may take several attempts to get right, but it is worth trying as a natural home remedy for fibromyalgia.
You don’t have to resort to dancing in the moonlight at midnight to get relief with these time-tested, natural and holistic remedies. These five fibromyalgia home remedies may give you some added relief in addition to whatever treatments your regular doctor has provided. In all cases, be sure to monitor your feelings and results from the remedies so that you can report them to your doctor and decide if you want to continue with them. Fibromyalgia has so many different symptoms that it makes sense to seek relief from safe sources when possible. Hopefully, one of these mentioned fibromyalgia home remedies will help you to feel better so you can get on with living the way you want, instead of having to give up on the things you have to.
People with fibromyalgia often find themselves struggling with irritable bowel syndrome. In fact, Fibromyalgia makes you more likely to develop a number of different conditions, including things like irritable bowel syndrome. But you don’t often hear people talk about the link between irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia. And that can leave a lot of people with the condition scratching their head and trying to figure out why they’re experiencing the symptoms.
And not only is fibromyalgia sometimes linked to IBS, but it’s also linked to other bowel conditions as well, like ulcerative colitis. So, what is ulcerative colitis? What’s the link between ulcerative colitis and fibromyalgia? And what can you do to treat it?
What Is Ulcerative Colitis?
Ulcerative colitis is a condition where the lining of the digestive tract gets inflamed. Over time, painful ulcers and sores appear in the tissue. These ulcers lead to a number of unpleasant symptoms, such as:
Blood or pus in the stool.
Diarrhea.
Pain in the rectum and abdomen.
Constipation.
Weight loss.
Fever.
Fatigue.
UC develops gradually. And the symptoms tend to come and go over the years. Some days, they may be worse than others. It also develops in different parts of the digestive system, and doctors classify the condition based on where it is.
But if you’re noticing any of these symptoms, you should see a doctor. They are a good sign that something is definitely wrong.
Ulcerative Colitis And Fibromyalgia
Studies have shown that a large percentage of people with ulcerative colitis also have fibromyalgia. A recent study by the National Institute of Health in the US put the rate at close to 50%. So, obviously, there’s some link between the two conditions.
The problem comes from the fact that we aren’t completely sure what that link is.
In fact, we aren’t even sure what causes ulcerative colitis. The leading theory was that stress and diet were responsible, but evidence suggests that there may be more to it than that, though both do still seem to play a role in the condition.
Instead, the condition may be caused by the immune system. Some doctors theorize that UC is an autoimmune condition, which is any condition where the immune system begins to attack the body’s own tissue. This would explain the inflammation, a common feature among autoimmune conditions.
It might also explain why people with fibromyalgia often develop UC. We know that there is a definite link between fibromyalgia and autoimmune disease. People with one condition are more likely to also have the other. And the reason might actually be stress.
Having fibromyalgia is an extremely stressful thing to live with. You’re trapped in a cycle of constant pain and fatigue, but the world unfortunately still continues to make the same demands on you as when you were healthy. It’s not hard to imagine why that would take an emotional toll on sufferers.
But that stress is also a known trigger for autoimmune diseases. Of course, that’s all speculation. And until we understand more about fibromyalgia and its link to ulcerative colitis, we won’t have a definite answer. Luckily, there are a few things you can still do to treat the condition.
How Can You Treat It?
The first step in treating ulcerative colitis is a diagnosis. The condition is usually diagnosed with a blood test to check for anemia, or a lack of red blood cells, which is a frequent complication of UC. Then, your doctor may want to perform a colonoscopy, which involves using a long flexible camera to check the bowels for ulcers.
Once you’ve been diagnosed, doctors usually prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs. One of the most common kinds used to treat UC is a class of drugs called corticosteroids. Corticosteroids are natural chemicals that your body produces to fight inflammation. But synthetic corticosteroids can help bolster your body’s natural healing process and reduce the inflammation in the bowels.
Your doctor may also want to add an immunosuppressant. These drugs reduce the activity of the immune system, which is responsible for the inflammation response. But they do carry the risk of making your immune system weaker, thus making you more likely to get sick.
Finally, your doctor can prescribe medications to help fight the symptoms of the condition like anti-diarrhea medication and iron supplements to fight anemia, along with pain relievers to help fight the intense abdominal pain.
In rare cases, your doctor may want to perform a procedure to remove your colon and rectum. Usually, this is only necessary if you’re experiencing severe complications, but it can often totally cure the condition.
So, have you suffered from bowel problems? Is it related to fibromyalgia? Let us know in the comments.
There are a lot of things we don’t know about fibromyalgia. And one of the most perplexing mysteries of the condition is the way it seems to affect and be affected by your internal body temperature. Cold temperatures seem to make symptoms worse, but conversely getting over-heated seems to affect your symptoms as well. And regulating your internal temperature can be difficult, which is why many people with fibromyalgia suffer from night sweats.
Night sweats are basically what they sound like: an intense period of sweating that tends to come at night. But while that might not sound like too serious a problem, having night sweats is uncomfortable, irritating, and makes it difficult to get a decent night’s rest. So what causes night sweats when you have fibromyalgia? And what can you do to treat them?
Night Sweats and Fibromyalgia
Generally, there are a lot of things that can cause night sweats. They usually result from a fluctuation in the body’s internal temperature. And the most common reason that people suffer from these kinds of hot flashes is the hormonal changes that often accompany menopause.
But when you have fibromyalgia, you’re also far more likely to have night sweats. And these hormonal changes that typically cause the condition don’t seem to be involved. The cause of them in people with fibromyalgia seems to be the inability of the body to properly regulate its internal temperature. The body’s internal temperature rises and so you start to sweat as if you just ran a marathon and got overheated.
But again, we just don’t know why this happens to people with fibromyalgia. There are a few theories. Some doctors have suggested that fibromyalgia may affect certain mechanisms in the body that regulate temperature, like the action of the thyroid gland. There is some evidence that people with fibromyalgia suffer from thyroid problems at a higher rate than normal, suggesting that the condition may be playing a role.
Others have proposed that the sort of small nerve damage that is quite common in fibromyalgia might be restricting blood flow, which makes it impossible for your body’s natural mechanisms of regulating body heat to work properly.
But while we don’t know why they seem to be so common in people with fibromyalgia, there are still a few things that you can do to treat them.
How to Treat Night Sweats
Night sweats can keep you up at night, which makes it hard to get the rest you need. This is especially true when you have fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia causes chronic fatigue, of course, but it can perversely also lead to insomnia. And not getting enough sleep has been shown to significantly increase both the severity and frequency of your fibromyalgia symptoms.
Night sweats from fibromyalgia can be bad enough to soak your sleepwear and bedsheets, which means having to do extra loads of laundry, always a dicey proposition when you’re already low on energy and in significant pain.
That’s why finding a way to treat your night sweats is important. Finding a way to get a good rest can leave you feeling better when it comes to all your symptoms. And there are a few things you can do.
First, make sure that you’re not over bundling when you sleep. Use a lighter sheet and blanket and don’t wear thick, woolen clothes to bed like long johns. These trap heat against the skin and can make the issue much worse. In addition, some
In addition, some pain medications can lower the ability of your body to regulate your temperature. Check the warning labels on any medications you are taking and talk to your doctor about the possibility of this specific side effect.
It can also be helpful to lower the temperature of the room you’re sleeping in and dress for bed in layers so that as you get hot you can remove a few.
Finally, night sweats are often caused by some of the complications of fibromyalgia. For instance, obstructive sleep apnea is a big contributor to night sweats, and people with fibromyalgia suffer from sleep apnea at a much higher rate than the general population. Check with your doctor if you’re showing any signs of sleep apnea. They will be able to recommend you to a sleep study for a diagnosis and then give you some ways to treat the condition.
And night sweats can also be a sign of more serious conditions like certain cancers, so it’s always a good idea to see a doctor if you’re suffering from severe sweating at night so that they can eliminate other possible causes.
So let us know, do you suffer from night sweats? Is it related to your fibromyalgia? How do you treat it? Tell us in the comments.
Fibromyalgia Weight Loss: 6 Mostly Painless ways to Lose Weight
Written By: Holly Case
John
Weight loss is a particular challenge for fibromyalgia patients. The illness itself makes you more likely to gain weight in several key ways, and some of the symptoms make weight loss more difficult, but doctors also know that losing weight improves the symptoms. You can break this vicious cycle with some conscious effort and dedication. Here’s how.
Get Your Hormones Checked
Many fibromyalgia sufferers have an imbalance of hormones, which can lead to weight gain. While nobody is certain how fibromyalgia alters hormone levels, it is still a common enough occurrence that you should ask your doctor to run some blood tests. Thyroid hormones may be particularly likely to be off in fibromyalgia patients, which is a treatable condition.
Get More Sleep
Poor sleep is one of the hallmark signs of fibromyalgia. There’s a chicken-or-egg element: it’s unknown if fibromyalgia contributes more to poor sleep or vice versa. What we do know for sure is that getting too little sleep is more likely to lead to weight gain, so it’s important to prioritize regular sleep habits and use medication when necessary to make sure you get a good night’s sleep.
Eat More Protein
You may think of low-carbohydrate diets as a fad, but the principles behind such diets are very good for managing chronic health conditions. One of the key points of low-carb diets is to eat more protein, and this is especially beneficial advice for fibromyalgia sufferers. Some studies show that fibromyalgia patients don’t utilize protein as effectively as other people do. Protein is essential for muscle building, repairing tissue and in the proper functioning of blood, enzymes, and hormones. Keep in mind that you should vary the type of protein you get and consume fish, chicken, beans, and tofu as well as red meat.
Limit Sugar
Added sugar isn’t a necessary part of anyone’s diet because sugar is naturally present in fruits and vegetables. Many people with fibromyalgia constantly crave sweets, which may be due to side effects from pregabalin (Lyrica), a common medication to treat fibromyalgia. Other research shows that fibromyalgia patients may have deficiencies of minerals like magnesium and chromium, which can increase sugar cravings. Since sugar provides empty calories, it’s best to avoid it when you need to lose weight.
Eat More Fruits and Vegetables
Boosting your intake of fruits and veggies is good dietary advice for anyone who is trying to lose weight, but it’s especially important for people who are trying to lose weight with fibromyalgia. Increasing your fruit and vegetable consumption is also particularly essential for fibromyalgia sufferers because fruits and veggies naturally contain high levels of vitamins and minerals that your body needs to heal and repair itself. It’s just a bonus that fruits and vegetables are low-calorie and help you to feel satisfied for longer, making it less likely that you’ll fill up on fattening junk food.
Exercise Regularly
Exercise is especially difficult when you have fibromyalgia. Because your body hurts all over, the thought of exercising sounds painful. However, inactivity not only contributes to weight gain, but it also makes fibromyalgia pain worse. It doesn’t matter what type of exercise you do, only that you are consistent in your habits. A combination of aerobic exercises like brisk walking and light weight lifting can help you to build muscle, and the regular activity will prevent future pain.
Fibromyalgia Treating is now part of the RedOrbit.com community!
We are excited to announce that FibromyalgiaTreating.com is now part of RedOrbit.com. All of the same great people, writers and editors but now with more firepower. We now have access to an enormous amount of additional research information
from doctors and scientists. We can now extend to other conditions that may be part of your everyday lives and help you on a broad level if that is what you need. We are here for you and now, better than ever so sit back and enjoy
the new Fibromyalgia Treating by RedOrbit!
Cachexia is a devastating condition that causes the body to essentially waste away. And a number of conditions that often affect people with fibromyalgia can lead to cachexia. If you’re suffering from some of these related conditions, it’s probably a good idea to be aware of the risk. So, let’s cover what you need to know about the condition, how it can be related to conditions common in people with fibromyalgia, and what you can do to treat it.
