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Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and fibromyalgia are both painful, chronic conditions that can severely reduce your quality of life. But despite the fact that both are actually pretty common, not that many people know much about either condition.
For instance, did you know that RA and fibromyalgia seem to be linked, with a significant percentage of RA sufferers also being diagnosed with fibromyalgia? And understanding that link between the two conditions might help us find a cure. But in the meantime, it might also help people with the conditions learn to manage their pain better.
That’s why knowledge is so important when it comes to chronic pain disorders. So what is Rheumatoid arthritis exactly? What is fibromyalgia? How are they linked?
What Is Rheumatoid Arthritis?
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease which means that it is caused by the body’s immune system going haywire. In a normal immune system, the white blood cells produce something called antibodies that identify and attack foreign cells like bacteria and viruses. But in someone with an autoimmune disease like RA, the immune system instead begins attacking them.
The antibodies begin to mistake their own cells for foreign intruders and start destroying them. This leads to damaged tissues, which become inflamed and swollen. In cases of RA, the immune system is attacking the joints, causing the protective tissue (or synovium) around the joints to thicken and eventually destroying the cartilage or even bone itself.
In the worst cases of RA this leads to irreversible joint damage which results in deformities of the joints or even an inability to move them.
What Is Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia is another condition that leads to chronic pain. In cases of fibromyalgia, patients experience widespread pain that affects the muscles in 18 specific tender points located mostly near the joints of the body. This pain is more or less constant, but things like too much exercise or stress can lead to painful “fibro flares” that significantly increase the severity of the pain.
And during these fibro flares, the other symptoms get worse as well. One of the most common symptoms is fatigue. People with fibromyalgia have a hard time sleeping because of the pain and the fibromyalgia induced insomnia. But even when they do get enough sleep, fibromyalgia causes chronic fatigue that leaves patients feeling so drained that it’s tough to handle even daily routines.
This fatigue contributes to another of fibromyalgia’s most significant symptoms: mental confusion or “fibro fog” as it’s often called by sufferers. Fibrofog takes the form of an inability to concentrate on basic tasks and a tendency to forget simple information like people’s names or where you left something a few minutes before. And it might sound like a minor symptom, but persistent fibro fog can be embarrassing and extremely frustrating to people who deal with it.
How Are They Linked?
We mentioned before that people with RA often have fibromyalgia as well and we know that having an autoimmune condition like lupus or arthritis makes you more likely to develop fibromyalgia.
So the link between these two conditions may boil down to the immune system. After all, many of the symptoms of fibromyalgia, like fatigue, chronic pain, and the tendency for symptoms to suddenly flare up, are associated with autoimmune diseases. That and the fact that autoimmune conditions occur so often in fibromyalgia patients implies that the roots of fibromyalgia may lie in the immune system, as many researchers have speculated, but we just don’t know for sure yet.
And there is another possible explanation for why RA and fibromyalgia might be linked. It’s possible that the reason that arthritis patients often develop fibromyalgia is that the widespread pain of arthritis is actually leading to something called central nervous system sensitization.
This is actually a common complication in people with chronic pain conditions. Essentially, the nervous system works by relaying pain signals to and from the brain when cells are injured. This is how your brain knows to avoid things that hurt your body. But this connection between brain and nerves can actually get hyper-sensitized from over-exposure to pain, which leads to your nerves sending pain signals to your brain constantly, even when there is nothing actually hurting you.
It’s a condition that might explain why people with RA tend to develop fibromyalgia so frequently. But obviously, it wouldn’t explain why fibromyalgia develops spontaneously in so many people who aren’t exposed to chronic pain. Until more research is done we won’t know for sure what causes the link between these conditions.
But every day brings hope that we may finally figure out this link and it will help us develop an effective cure. So, what do you think? What is behind the link between fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis? Let us know in the comments.
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