I wanted to provide a little information on this disorder as many of my patients currently suffer from this. Fibromyalgia is very difficult to diagnose objectively. Furthermore, it usually is arrived at by excluding other disease processes. The general symptoms include: marked fatigue, diffuse muscular pain, depression, difficulty sleeping, and cognitive difficulties.
New information published in Seminars in arthritis and rheumatism June, 2007 indicate that the etiology of fibromyalgia may have a neurophysiological basis. The authors define a new classification for this disorder as central sensitivity syndrome (CSS). The evidence is mounting that fibromyalgia can be considered a neurosensory disorder characterized partly by pain processing in the central nervous system (CNS).
The long and short of it is whether due to chronic stress, trauma, or severe life events, the CNS has adapted and pain is processed differently than normal. Without going into too much detail, the nervous system has become sensitized or worn down by a traumatic event and now the threshold for recognizing pain is far lower than it should be. This means that stimuli that would not in the non-fibromyalgia population be recognized as pain are stimuli that indeed do express themselves as painful in fibromyalgia population.
This makes sense to me, lowered threshold to activate the sensation of pain is why these patients have a heightened response to noxious stimuli. Chronic pain also leads to elevated stress hormones which is another topic. So for you sufferers, keep trying to get better. Next article will be about methods to manage this condition from a non-pharmaceutical perspective.
Tags: chronic pain, fibromyalgia
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