Tens of millions of Americans suffer from fibromyalgia, those who are young, middle aged, and old, and so if you are one of those millions of Americans who have had to endure the pain of fibromyalgia, the good news is there are various medical treatments available to help you relieve the pain.
None of these treatments are an official cure for fibromyalgia. In fact, we have yet to discover any cure for fibromyalgia, but hopefully scientific and medical advancements and study will yield results in the near future.
Fortunately for today, doctors have much better and clearer information about fibromyalgia than what they had before, and armed with this information, medical professionals have been able to determine what types of pain medications are best suited for treating the painful symptoms of fibromyalgia. To name just a few: antidepressants, pain relievers, sleep aids; sleep medication, and anxiety and depression drugs.
The overall goal of these various medications is to help fibromyalgia patients live better lives instead of doing nothing but suffer from the day to day symptoms of fibromyalgia.
When Pain Medication is Necessary to Treat Fibromyalgia
There are many fibromyalgia symptoms, but when doctors need to prescribe pain medication to a fibromyalgia patient, they will often only select the medication that will treat the most painful of the symptoms, usually one to three.
You should tell your doctor which of the symptoms you feel is causing you the most pain, telling your doctor no less than one but no more than three or four of those top symptoms so that the top pain in your body can be addressed.
Pain Medication Options
You’d probably like to know what specific kinds of medication there are out there to help you with your fibromyalgia. For example, anticonvulsants are very commonly used to treat fibromyalgia. Anticonvulsants were first made as a treatment for seizures, but they can also alleviate other pains. Anticonvulsants were the first drug in medical history to be approved to fight fibromyalgia.
Another common medication for treating fibromyalgia are antidepressants, which not only work for alleviating the pain of fibromyalgia, but also for helping people get better sleep at night (poor sleep is a common symptom of fibromyalgia).
Seratonin is another approved drug for treating fibromyalgia, and work by helping to relieve the pain of fibromyalgia and depression. Seratonin is particularly effective since it can help with getting a patient with fibromyalgia better sleep at night and alleviating their pain during the day.
As a result, a fibromyalgia patient who takes serotonin will have less fatigue during the day and less pain from any of the eighteen pressure points of fibromyalgia. However, serotonin, along with other types of antidepressant medications, cannot help very much with anxiety or other mood disorders that many patients with fibromyalgia have.
Common pain relievers are yet another medication for treating fibromyalgia. They alleviate the pain, reduce spasms, make the patient feel less pain when pressure is applied to the pressure points, and make the patient also get better sleep at night and thus feel less fatigued during the day. Another technique to try is to inject painkillers directly at or near to the pressure points in order to break the cycles of pain that the patient might feel throughout the day.
Of course, you should always consult with your doctor first before taking any of these medications. You may have an allergic reaction to the medications, or could be taking other medications that would interfere with these medicines, or there could be other factors involved that don’t make these types of medications suitable or safe for you. Always check with your doctor first.
Sleep, Fatigue, Mood and Depression
The medications that we’ve gone over are best suited for relieving the pain of fibromyalgia. But pain isn’t the only issue with fibromyalgia either. Poor sleep, fatigue, depression and mood are other factors with fibromyalgia as well.
The good news is that most of the medications that we have already gone over are good for getting more sleep at night, but there are still other medications that work far better. Getting enough sleep at night also mean that you’ll feel significantly less fatigued during the day, much more rested, and thus have less dramatic mood swings and if you are suffering from depression simultaneously, your symptoms of depression might also be alleviated.
Amitril is an excellent antidepressant made for restoring sleep at night. In addition, Sonata, Lunesta and Ambien all either help you to fall asleep more quickly or to make sure that you stay asleep at night. There are other antidepressant drugs that can help to both alleviate the pain and help you get more sleep at night. Prime examples include Lyrica and Xyrem. These drugs can also help you feel less fatigued during the day not only by getting you more sleep at night, but also by eliminating as much of the ‘daytime sleepiness’ that you may feel as well.
Lastly, there are other things that you can do to help your fibromyalgia besides medication. You should also try getting plenty of exercises in order to boost the natural production of serotonin by your body and to increase blood flow.
Your muscles getting plenty of blood means that you will feel significantly less fatigued and less painful throughout the day, which could be more effective than all of the pain medications we’ve talked about all together. Plus, you can also try to relax as much as you can. Relaxation techniques will get as much of the stress out of your body as possible.
Having less stress means that you can live a more fulfilled live, and combined with exercise and pain medication to alleviate the pain and fatigue symptoms, you’ll also feel motivated in continuing your fight to eliminate the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
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