Fibromyalgia is a rare disorder that affects nearly one out of every twenty Americans. Information about the disorder is quite scarce, and the verifiable primary causes of fibromyalgia have been difficult to prove.
There are a few theories concerning what causes fibromyalgia and what does fibromyalgia necessarily cause in those that have become victim to it. The fibromyalgia disorder can best be defined as a musculoskeletal pain that has spread all over the body of the individual who has been diagnosed with it.
The disorder is oftentimes accompanied by several symptoms, including a chronic fatigue, the occasional memory loss, alterations in mood and emotional response, and the alteration of sleeping patterns creating various sleeping problems and disorders.
Those that have researched the fibromyalgia disorder have noticed that individuals with fibromyalgia are sometimes affected by the heightening painful sensations due to the disorder and can cause the brain to become overly receptive of the symptoms leading to chronic fatigue and several other complications.
Women are disproportionally affected by the fibromyalgia disorder, with no real explanation as to why. People that have been diagnosed with the fibromyalgia often claim to their physicians that they often experience migraines and tension headaches and suffer from a joint disorder that is known as temporomandibular joint disorder, or simply, TMJ.
In some special cases of fibromyalgia,irritable bowel syndrome, or what is known as IBS, has been reported by individuals that are experiencing several other symptoms of fibromyalgia simultaneously. Feelings of anxiety and rather severe states of depression have been documented in patients that have fibromyalgia.
No primary cause of fibromyalgia has been verifiably proven, but there are many speculations. While there is not much substantial proof, it has been documented in many cases that the plethora of symptoms attributed to fibromyalgia begin soon after a person has gone through some type of physical trauma or has had a major surgery.
In some cases,a person has reveled having fibromyalgia-like symptoms after they had been dealing with physiological stresses for a period of time.In special instances, it has been documented that an infection of the body could have triggered the symptoms attributed to fibromyalgia. Currently, there is no absolute cure for fibromyalgia that has been made readily available.
However, there are a few options that exist to help those with fibromyalgia to ease some of their symptoms while coping with the disorder and their ailments. Several medications and some home and natural remedies have been used to treat the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
While these remedies cannot serve as cures, they do have some success if easing the symptoms or providing relief to those that have fibromyalgia for at least a period of time.Physicians recommend that those with fibromyalgia should try to exercise regularly, should adopt of a healthy diet consisting of many fruits and vegetables, and try to use several stress reducing techniques and some relaxation methods that may help to soothe their stress and ease their ailments.
Causes of Secondary Fibromyalgia
Studies have been conducted on fibromyalgia patients that have monitored their brain, hormonal, and metabolic activity. In these studies, the patients’ monitored activity have shown a rather large number of abnormalities. When brain scans of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia the tests revealed that the patients had reduced blood flow to specific regions of their brains.
The specific regions of the brain were those that were in control of pain sensation to the body. The brain system known as the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal gland axis, a system that controls some very important functions, including depression, growth, stress response, and sleep, is particularly interesting to researchers of fibromyalgia.
A research target that has seen lots of attention lately is the somatomedin C hormone, also known as the insulin-like growth factor in layman’s terms. This hormone is produced by the pituitary gland in the human brain while the body is in deep sleep. Its primary responsibility is to communicate information’s between the brain about pain-producing stimuli. Patients that have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia have very high levels of somatomedin C that is located in the patient’s spinal fluid.
These high levels may cause patients to be hypersensitive to pain and can cause them to feel painful sensations even when their muscular activity is mild in nature. When the pain sensitivity levels are so high, individuals with fibromyalgia may decrease their level of activity to avoid any more painful experiences.
This decrease in activity will ultimate weaken the muscles, thus leading to a sort of loop of muscle atrophy and the increase of pain due to the low level of physical activity. Excesses of the hormone somatomedin C may be the result of genetic defects or can form from unhealthy sleeping habits that were practiced in the early stages of life. The bad sleeping habits may cause brain or hormonal chemical imbalances.
Individuals that have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia often have particularly low levels of a certain neurotransmitter known as serotonin. These individuals may also have low levels of serotonin’s precursor, tryptohphan, an amino acid. The low levels of these brain chemicals have been associated to depression and a number of other symptoms often associated with fibromyalgia.
Symptoms like anxiety, migraine headaches, and the common gastrointestinal distress, are all the result of low levels of the chemicals found in the brain. Possible defects in systems that govern serotonin and epinephrine, another neurotransmitter, have led some researches to believe that migraines and fibromyalgia are related. Patients of fibromyalgia and some sufferers of frequent migraines have been recorded as having low levels of magnesium, as well.
Fibromyalgia has been very difficult to assess for researches, but there has been some progress made. The connections that have been drawn are sometimes just considered to coincidences, but new evidence has been discovered to support these theories. Living with fibromyalgia can be tough, especially since a verifiable cure does not exist. Finding the primary causes of fibromyalgia will be an excellent start, however. Researches are working non-stop to find what factors trigger or contribute to the disorder that is only increasing the amount of people that it affects.
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