Monday, November 21, 2011

Facts About Fibromyalgia

By John Gardner


In the medical field, fibromyalgia has always been a secretive disease. There is not much understanding about fibromyalgia which makes it a difficult disease to be diagnosed. In fact, fibromyalgia is categorized as a syndrome and not a disease. It has many, many symptoms. Some of the symptoms like migraine can be an illness on its own. But there are also times where they are related to fibromyalgia. As these symptoms may lead to the diagnosed of other health issues, it is difficult for a doctor to be sure when he is diagnosing for fibromyalgia.

There is no specific medical test to determine if fibromyalgia is present on a patient. Most commonly, fibromyalgia is related to symptoms that causes pain at several tender points of a person. So, the American College of Rheumatology have come up with two distinctive requirement to confirm the diagnose of fibromyalgia. There must be pain all over the body that has been going on for at least 3 months and the pain must be felt in 11 out of 18 tender points of the body. Tender point pains are strong indicators to show that fibromyalgia is present in the patient\'s body.

3 main symptoms that always comes with the pain are fatigue, lack of sleep and memory abilities decreased. You will be able to see that the patient will always seem tired and having trouble doing the simplest task. If you give them new information, they will have trouble remembering them. So this is difficult for them if they get distracted. This condition is called \"fibro fog.\" Patients have difficulty gong to sleep as well as staying asleep. There are also other symptoms which includes dizziness, numbness and tingling in various areas of their body, difficulty to find balance as well as weak muscles. There are also other symptoms that come along with fibromyalgia and they are depression, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, rheumatoid, lupus as well as osteoarthritis.

The levels of the symptoms are uncertain as they may be serious some days and light on other days. The length of the pain will also vary from a few hours and sometime lasting the entire day. Because of this, it is difficult for patients to lead a normal life like going to school or work. Even if they plan out their schedule well, they will not have a guarantee that they can complete the task. The pain can sometimes be so excruciating that the person is unable to engage in any activity. This pain affects all the parts of the body. It can be felt in every muscle and joints and tendons in your body. The pain may be caused by the simplest things like the change of temperature, tiredness or use of excessive strength.

Based on reports, 3-5% of the population in America are suffering from fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a syndrome that may happen to people of all sorts of age but the likeliest age group would be during early or middle of adulthood. It is not gender specific although it occurs more often in women than in men. There are also cases that have influence from genetic factors. Parents with fibromyalgia may pass it on to their children. You are more likely to get fibromyalgia if you are already suffering from rheumatic disease which includes arthritis, lupus and rheumatoid. About twenty-five percent of the people who are diagnosed with it are too disabled to work. It is difficult to treat fibromyalgia. The drug Lyrica was approved in the year 2007 by the FDA as the first drug used to combat this syndrome. There are no other medications yet on the market except Lyrica. However, drugs like Neurotin and Vioxx was able to reduce the pain for fibromyalgia sufferers. Other drugs like Prozac and Elavil was also found to be useful in relieving the symptoms for the patient.




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