Fibromyalgia: Symptoms and Treatment Options

Fibromyalgia is defined as pain for more than three months both above and below the waist. The more accurate name for this condition is chronic widespread pain. It is a diagnosis of exclusion when the doctor does not identify an obvious cause for the pain.

An important feature of diagnosis is tender trigger points. Besides, usually the patient is a female. It can occur at any age but is increasingly recognized in teenagers.

For the diagnosis to be made, 11 of the 18 points must be tender on digital palpation.

Symptoms:

1. The number one symptoms is Pain that has no boundaries. Pain can have variable character from one individual to another. Pain can be deep aching, throbbing, shooting, stabbing or intense burning.

2. Fatigue: patients can feel that their arms and legs are weighted down by heavy blocks. Besides they feel that their bodies are out of energy.

3. Sleeping disturbances: as insomnia. This can cause difficult concentration and memory problems.

4. Other associated problems as irritable bowel syndrome, depression, pre-menstrual syndrome, tension headache, Restless leg syndrome

What can aggravate fibromyalgia?

Flare-ups can be caused by a change in the weather, cold environment, stress, depression, over-exertion, pre-menopausal and menopausal states.

Now an important question arises, What is the treatment of such condition?

Unfortunately there is no definitive treatment for it but the current practice is to use analgesics to reduce pain. Besides, patients who suffer from depression should have an anti-depressant (and avoiding the potentially addictive anxiolytic agents).

Trigger points can be injected with a local anaesthetic or corticosteroids. Acupuncture can be helpful in some cases.

Other options include:

– Physiotherapy

– Diet: adding some components can be of great help in fibromyalgia as Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin C, B complex vitamins, vitamin D, magnesium.

– Exercise: can help a lot with the reduction of pain and giving the sensation of being active.

– Mind-awareness practices: as yoga and breathing exercises. These can help in decreasing the intensity of pain.

A new study showed that yoga is now being evaluated as a suitable treatment for fibromyalgia as it proved that it can improve the symptoms in many patients.

I would like to thank you for reading it and i hope you benefited from this article. Please share this article as we need to raise the awareness for this condition and maybe help the patients with new treatment options.