Fibromyalgia can be associated with many different symptoms. It is also a disorder that each person lives differently. However, chronic pain without a known organic cause is always present. Natural medicine can offer effective help.
Fibromyalgia is not a fad or a new disease. It’s most likely a new name for a disorder that has always existed. The current name is descriptive: pain of the muscle fibers, but in reality, the symptoms can be very varied, so much so that most patients go from consultation to consultation for years until they receive the diagnosis: you have fibromyalgia.
In 2000, the EPISER study estimated that fibromyalgia affected 2.4% of the Spanish population, with an incidence four times higher in women than in men. It is also possible that similar symptoms are diagnosed in women as fibromyalgia and in men as stress or burnout syndrome. But what does a person with fibromyalgia feel?
WHAT A PERSON WITH FIBROMYALGIA FEELS
Fibromyalgia is a whole collection of different symptoms. Here’s what a person with fibromyalgia may feel:
1. DIFFUSE AND PERSISTENT PAIN
The main symptom of fibromyalgia is paining those spreads and persists throughout the body. Patients are rarely able to tell where exactly it hurts. The pain seems to be everywhere, in the joints, in the muscles, in the organs. You can also move from one place to another. Sometimes it hurts in one place, then it disappears and a few days later the pain reappears.
Fortunately, fibromyalgia patients have good days, without discomfort, but with any effort or overload, the pain returns, either because of cold or hot weather, either because of too much work, too much stress, too much sport or because of an infection.
2. MENTAL “FOG”
Many people experience a kind of fog or lack of clarity or mental agility, with difficulty concentrating and memory lapses.
3. SENSITIVITY TO COLD AND HEAT
Many fibromyalgia patients endure cold and especially drafts poorly. They are often already freezing when other people still find the temperature to be pleasant.
However, if temperatures start to rise in summer, the heat can equally become a nuisance and those affected by fibromyalgia quickly suffer sweats and hot flashes.
4. EXCESSIVE SENSITIVITY TO IRRITATION
In the same way, an increased sensitivity to irritation can develop:
- Noise and noises are perceived as extremely unpleasant. Patients avoid situations where people are talking at the same time (eating at the bar, at a party, etc.) and are even bothered by the rattle of the fork on someone else’s plate.
- Bright light is equally uncomfortable. The best thing for them is not to leave home without sunglasses.
- Smells often take on threatening proportions, but it’s not a real stench that bothers them, even smells that others haven’t even noticed are extremely annoying to them.
- Those affected want to ventilate all the time, and in rooms where there are several people (perfume, deodorant) they hardly endure.
- Physical contact is also experienced as unpleasant. Sometimes they are bothered by firm touches (pressure, massage), but sometimes also by very light rubbing.
5. DIGESTIVE AND SLEEP DISORDERS
Falling asleep isn’t usually a problem in fibromyalgia, but staying asleep is. Often, those affected wake up after a few hours of sleep and can no longer fall asleep. In the morning they feel exhausted and unproductive.
It is not uncommon for patients to be diagnosed with irritable bowel, because they present the corresponding symptoms: abdominal cramps, bloating, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation or even alternating diarrhea and constipation.
Food intolerances such as histamine intolerance, gluten intolerance or fructose intolerance also occur.
6. DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
Fibromyalgia can often be accompanied by anxiety and depression. Sometimes depression came before pain, while in other patients it develops in the course of fibromyalgia, which is not surprising since the disease is extremely stressful.
7. FLUCTUATIONS IN BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS
Many fibromyalgia patients have problems with blood sugar levels. They seem to be much more sensitive to carbohydrates than other people. The consequent fluctuations of blood sugar with paralyzing periods of hypoglycemia cause dizziness, palpitations, concentration disorders, night sweats, etc.
However, these symptoms can also have completely different causes, such as gluten intolerance.
7. MANY MORE SYMPTOMS
Some people also suffer from shortness of breath, irritable bladder, headache and facial pain, tinnitus, numbness or tingling in the extremities, dry mucous membranes, dry eyes, forgetfulness, feeling of stiffness, swelling from fluid retention, itching, atopic dermatitis and heavy night sweats.
HOW FIBROMYALGIA IS DIAGNOSED
In many affected by fibromyalgia the symptoms are so intense that they prevent them from living a normal life. They can’t go to work and the simplest household chores become impossible. In addition, dizziness, tiredness, lapses and lack of concentration increase the risk of accidents. Fibromyalgia is, therefore, a disease that cannot be ignored
To make matters worse, visits to the doctor and specialist are usually fruitless. Blood tests, X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, endoscopies, and other tests that the doctor may order do not get a conclusive result.
Therefore, fibromyalgia is diagnosed when you suffer from a collection of symptoms that include pains distributed throughout the body, and a physical and mental fatigue for which no other cause can be found.
In fact, each person with fibromyalgia suffers from it in a different way: for some the suffering is mainly psychological and for others it is physical. Other patients suffer mostly from extreme sensitivity to external stimuli.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that causes pain all over the body, extreme tiredness, muscle stiffness. People with fibromyalgia may be more sensitive to pain than people who don’t have it, and may suffer from anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, or concentration problems, among other symptoms.
Until now the diagnosis has been made from the symptoms, because there were no known organic alterations detectable by analytical tests. This lack of evidence for fibromyalgia has led many doctors to believe that it is a problem of psychological or nervous origin. It also causes the diagnosis to arrive months or years late, since the patient begins his journey through medical consultations in search of help.
POSSIBLE TEST TO DETERMINE FIBROMYALGIA
This could change after the study conducted by American and Israeli researchers, who have discovered peculiar characteristics in the microbiota and bile acids of patients. The finding could facilitate diagnosis and contribute to the development of new treatments.
The study, published in the journal Pain, states that an abnormally reduced concentration of a secondary bile acid is found in the blood of fibromyalgia patients. This acid is a result of the metabolism in the liver of bile acids broken down by the intestinal microbiota.
The researchers compared 42 healthy women with 42 women with fibromyalgia and observed that the metabolizing gut bacteria were not identical in both groups, and in addition the women with fibromyalgia had significant alterations in the concentration of secondary bile acids in the blood. In addition, the values corresponded to the intensity of the symptoms.
Therefore, the measurement of secondary bile acids in blood serum can be converted into a diagnostic test for fibromyalgia. According to the researchers, the analysis currently has a diagnostic accuracy of 90%. This percentage could improve in the future.
The study, led by Dr. Yoram Shir of the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit at the McGill University Health Centre, says that in fibromyalgia patients the blood concentration of alpha-muricolic acid can be up to five times lower in fibromyalgia patients, compared to healthy people.
To analyze correlations between bile acids and different gut bacteria, the researchers turned to DNA sequencing technologies and artificial intelligence.
Because diet influences gut microbiota composition, researchers looked at patients’ eating habits in another study, but found no relationship between nutrients and types of bile acid-metabolizing bacteria. But they could verify that a better quality of the diet from the nutritional point of view is reflected in a milder symptomatology and less depression.
These findings suggest that both fibromyalgia symptoms and gut microbiome alterations associated with the disease are likely not due to nutritional differences, but to other factors, whether environmental, intrinsic, or both. More studies will be needed to determine the causes of fibromyalgia.
NATURAL TREATMENT OF FIBROMYALGIA
Natural therapies offer valuable complementary resources for fibromyalgia patients. In the following articles you can find guidelines and tips:
- 8 Natural Keys to Fibromyalgia Relief
- The 10 foods to relieve fibromyalgia
- Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia: how to improve insomnia and tiredness
- Balneotherapy is effective in treating fibromyalgia
- Probiotics improve mental state in fibromyalgia
- CBD Oil May Help in Fibromyalgia