How Can You Identify The Symptoms of Fibromyalgia

The symptoms of fibromyalgia can be a life changing experience. In addition, it can be a hard diagnosis with each case different and unique, with several factors contributing to its cause. One major problem for the physician, thus the patient, is the causes of this ailment do not show on normal blood panels. Thyroid, hormone or other lab testing have proven unreliable as well. These tests tend to come back negative confusing the physician, leaving him or her at a loss as to proper treatment.

Fibromyalgia, a form of non-inflammatory arthritis, affects the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the body. The syndrome can be quite debilitating, causing intensive pain throughout the body. Moreover, pain is but one symptom of its association. Fibromyalgia also causes fatigue, in some cases extreme fatigue, amplifying the pain associated with the ailment. Thereby having great impact on the patient’s lifestyle, reducing their ability to function as usual.

By contrast, not all people with this syndrome suffer the symptoms of extreme fatigue, yet they find they have an inability to adjust to the reduced energy levels that occupy. Finding their chronic fatigue influencing their lives in a negative way, insomnia and depression being asides to the syndrome. Even more disturbing is the fact that extended sleep and rest tend not to offset the effects of the fatigue. Aggravating the symptoms of fibromyalgia all the more. Too, intermediate cycles of pain and fatigue make sleeping difficult and inconsistent, and with the onset of insomnia, very near impossible. Thereby tending to acerbate the fatigue and pain, continuing the vicious cycle indefinite.

Researched extensively, studies have shown fatigue, suffered by fibromyalgia patients, reciprocal to the degree of pain they suffer. Many patients disclose that if they feel fatigued during morning hours, they tend to experience more pain throughout the rest of their day.

Exercise, being essential for optimum health, is especially important for those suffering the effects of fibromyalgia. However, because of the fatigue, those sufferers tend to think of exercise with great abjection. Nevertheless, exercising the muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints, help to decrease the degree of pain suffered. Moreover, the lack of exercise will tend to heighten the pain the patient suffers.

As mentioned earlier, depression can be another of the invasive symptoms of fibromyalgia. With fatigue elevating the emotional state of stress, followed with even more pain being experienced. In addition, extreme cases of depression induced by fatigue, have contributed to some memory loss and obliviousness.

Some 10% to 15 % of fibromyalgia patients report they have no problems with the onset of fatigue despite their having pain. A somewhat fortunate lot. However, those who suffer Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS, the extreme fatigue many fibromyalgia sufferers experience, has a very close association with CFS. Diagnoses of CFS are given for those who experience intensive fatigue for periods of six months or more.

Some may even suffer the duality of fibromyalgia and CFS as well. However, much confusion surrounds the facts of these two syndromes, being they are very similar to one another. Still, adding more confusion, a full 60 to 70 percent or more of chronic fatigue sufferers experience similar symptoms associated with those of fibromyalgia.

Other more recent research has suggested dysfunctional mitochondria for the extreme fatigue, which accompanies fibromyalgia. Mitochondria found inside the cells, synthesizes nutrients and oxygen, which supply the body with energy. A large percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers seem to display symptoms of dysfunctional mitochondria, thereby leaving their bodies short of energy.

The recent research studies of sleep disorders, symptoms of fibromyalgia being tantamount, have shown they may develop sleep disorders or aggravate an already existing sleep disorder. Known as the “alpha EEG anomaly,“ the disorder characterized by sudden brain activity negating the engagement of deep sleeping cycles, causing sufferers to wake up and/or feel much less rested, thus contributing even more to their levels of fatigue.