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Itchiness is one of the most unusual symptoms associated with fibromyalgia. Many doctors who deal with fibromyalgia frequently have never even heard of it.
But to people who suffer from fibromyalgia itching, it’s an infuriating and stressful symptom to live with. Their sleep is disturbed even further by the constant feeling of itching or bugs underneath the skin. And many people with fibromyalgia itching are willing to try anything to put a stop to it. Some people say that when it comes to antihistamines fibromyalgia itching just doesn’t respond. Others say that antihistamines for fibromyalgia itching are very effective.
So, are antihistamines fibromyalgia itching cures or useless placebos? Let’s find out.
What Causes Fibromyalgia Itching?
No one is sure what exactly causes people with fibromyalgia to feel itchy. There are a few theories that might explain it.
Some people think that the explanation might be an accumulation of heavy metals in the body through diet, which contributes to general fibromyalgia symptoms including itching.
Others argue that the cause if formication, which is a disorder where your brain imagines feelings that aren’t there. In this case, it imagines the sensation of itching or bugs under the skin.
What Do Antihistamines Do?
Antihistamines are a class of drug that is designed to block your body’s natural allergic response. You see, when your body is exposed to allergens, it begins to release histamine. Histamine is a chemical that encourages your body to release fluids from cells which lead to stuffy noses and inflammation in the cells. This also contributes to a feeling of itching, which happens when the cells of the skin are irritated.
Usually, your body’s immune system is a good thing as it protects you from dangerous substances in the environment. The histamine your body releases is designed to clog up your nose and respiratory system so that things that are bad for you can’t get in. But often your body begins releasing histamine because it mistakes a harmless substance for something dangerous.
Antihistamines block this reaction so that you can continue to breathe comfortably. But when it comes to antihistamines fibromyalgia itching doesn’t necessarily respond the same way allergies do.
What Causes Fibromyalgia Itching?
Doctors don’t know exactly what causes fibromyalgia. But there are a number of theories about how exactly it works. Some doctors argue that fibromyalgia is essentially an autoimmune disease. An autoimmune disease is caused by your body’s immune system attacking healthy cells. This causes healthy tissue to break down and begin to hurt. And the fact that your body constantly thinks it’s sick makes you feel fatigued.
And if fibromyalgia is an autoimmune disease, then the itching could be caused by the sort of inflammation that is common with autoimmune diseases. But that wouldn’t explain why fibromyalgia itching is usually not related to inflamed skin.
Other doctors think that the itching from fibromyalgia is caused by nerve damage which is related to fibromyalgia. Lots of diseases cause this kind of nerve damage and the result is often chronic itching.
In an interview with NPR, one of the countries leading doctors in the field of chronic itching, Dr. Gil Yosopovitch talked about how diseases like fibromyalgia can cause chronic itching:
There are a lot of overlaps of people who have some types of chronic pain and they’re in the same spectrum of chronic itch, and they could have chronic itch. This is not well mentioned, but for patients who have, for example, fibromyalgia, if it causes chronic pain, a lot of times they complain also of chronic itch. So it won’t surprise me, people who have irritable bowel syndrome, which is another form of – all these aspects of disease have something in common – they have a hypersensitization of the nerve fibers and it’s very similar to what I described before, with a patient with chronic itch is that the nerves are acting wacky; they’re just firing all over. And that’s why it’s so severe and why it’s so difficult to treat these patients
So, essentially, chronic itching is caused by a misfiring in the nervous system.
Are Antihistamines A Fibromyalgia Itching Cure?
There isn’t a lot of good, peer-reviewed data on the subject, which makes it difficult to argue whether antihistamines are really effective for fibromyalgia itching.
But anecdotal information from fibromyalgia sufferers suggests that they may be effective in limited ways when it comes to relieving the itch. But it also suggests that not all antihistamines are equally as effective.
Sufferers have reported that general antihistamines like Benadryl are sometimes effective in preventing itching. This seems to be especially true at night when the drowsiness that is usually a side effect of using antihistamines for fibromyalgia itching makes sleeping easier and also lets them sleep through the night even if they do feel itchy.
But they have also reported that other antihistamines don’t work as well. In particular, topical antihistamines, which are rubbed directly on the skin, don’t seem to provide much relief when it comes to the itching that fibromyalgia sufferers feel.
Other things like keeping the skin hydrated and healthy and limiting medications that can lead to itching, like aspirin, are also reported to be effective ways to manage the itching with fibromyalgia.
But using antihistamines for fibromyalgia itching may not be the most effective cure. Using antihistamines for fibromyalgia itching limits the amount of histamine in your body, but in a condition like fibromyalgia, histamine isn’t really the cause of the itching. The nerves seem more likely. And drugs that are designed to help limit the interactions between nerves like Gabapentin, and other anticonvulsants, are probably more effective than antihistamines for fibromyalgia itching.
Anything that works for you is worth a try, and antihistamines are easy to pick up over the counter and safe, so there is little harm in testing it for you.
Again, there’s little scientific data in peer-reviewed journals on this issue, so please help us out. Do you suffer from itching with your fibromyalgia? If so, what works for you?
Let us know in the comments.
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