Fibromyalgia - How To Handle It?

Fibromyalgia is a cause of widespread body pain along with fatigue, sleep deficits, memory loss and mood problems.

Symptoms may be triggered by surgery, physical trauma, infection, or stress. Women are much more vulnerable to this disease than men. Patients with fibromyalgia often suffer with other conditions such as headache, backache, depression, anxiety, stress, temporomandibular joint disorder, restless legs and irritable bowel syndrome.

Most of these individuals undergo multiple specialist consultations and many tests but no explanation of their symptoms is found. This can often lead to a situation where doctors and family members become dismissive of patients symptoms.

Symptoms of Fibromyalgia:

1. Extensive Pain - Pain related to fibromyalgia is often described as a dull pain that does not go away. Pain can involve any body part like back, neck, chest, arms, legs and is generally widespread. Pain distribution can change with time.

2. Fatigue - Patients affected with this disorder feel tired even after sleep or in other words the sleep is non-refreshing. They may sleep for longer hours than usual but their sleep is interrupted by various factors such as pain, mood disturbances, restless legs etc.

3. Cognitive Difficulties - These patients often find it difficult to concentrate at work and suffer from memory deficits especially affecting the short term memory.

4. Other Symptoms - They may have symptoms like numbness, loss of appetite, tingling sensation, diarrhoea, constipation, depression, anxiety, etc.

Diagnosis of Fibromyalgia:

There are no specific tests to diagnose fibromyalgia. Diagnosis is made by a doctor specialised in Pain Medicine based on symptoms and examination findings. Blood tests like Haemogram, Thyroid function test, RA Factor, ESR, CRP, x-rays etc are requested to rule out other diseases which can present similarly.

Treatment of Fibromyalgia:

1. Education of the patient, family members regarding the condition and the do's and don'ts is essential in the overall management

2. Lifestyle changes such as supervised graded increase in activity levels form an important component of treatment. Exercises such as swimming, yoga, tai chi are helpful

3. Conventional painkillers may not achieve significant success and hence specialised medications prescribed by a Pain Specialist are used for controlling flare up episodes

4. Psychological support to deal with any coexisting mood disturbances is helpful. It can help develop coping & pain management strategies and correct any maladaptive beliefs

5. Complementary and alternative therapies such as medication, acupuncture can benefit especially when used in combination with the above modalities