What exactly is Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia is a disease that affects the central nervous system. It causes a central nervous system to become overly sensitive and abnormally sensitive to sensations of pain. This is a disease that causes chronic pain in all areas of the body.
As it is a disease of the central nervous system, the pain caused by fibromyalgia is usually hard to pinpoint to any actual physiological problem. Fibromyalgia also affects a patient’s sleep pattern and wreaks havoc on it.
People suffering from fibromyalgia cannot experience long and uninterrupted sleep due to the chronic pain. This in turn, causes them to be continuously fatigued and tired.
What are its symptoms?
Fibromyalgia causes a host of problems that are linked to the central nervous system. These problems are both physiological and psychological. The physiological problems of fibromyalgia include, chronic pain in nearly all areas of the body, irregular sleep patterns, cognitive deterioration, an inability to multitask effectively, bowel malfunctions and gastric distress and joint pain.
The psychological problems of fibromyalgia include depression and anxiety attacks. These problems are all liked to the basic problems that arise from fibromyalgia. The chronic pain makes it difficult for patients to sleep and relax.
This causes them to remain in a state of continuous stress, reducing the time they sleep and also causing interruptions of sleep due to sleep apnea and other symptoms like restless leg syndrome.
This sleep deprivation in turn causes all the problems that naturally arise when the body and brain don’t get enough sleep. Cognitive deterioration involves the inability to perform tasks that require a lot of thinking. This also affects the patient’s ability to engage in healthy social interaction. In addition to this, the attention span of a patient is also greatly reduced.
The patient is unable to prioritize his or her actions and work performance also suffers. Fibromyalgia can either be triggered suddenly or it can accumulate and present itself at a later stage in life.
What are the treatments of Fibromyalgia?
Even with the best minds in science and medicine working on it, fibromyalgia remains a disease whose main cause is not known with certainty. This is because it is a disease of the central nervous system, a system that has yet to be understood in its entirety.
While the symptoms of fibromyalgia have been studied in depth, as there is no definite cause, the only successful treatments that exist work to alleviate the symptoms of the disease.
The most important thing that needs to be done when a person suffers from fibromyalgia is pain management. Pain management is the goal of a lot of the drug therapies and medical therapies that are prescribed to patients of fibromyalgia. Muscular and skeletal pains can be greatly reduced and helped by following the right diet and medication regimen in addition to physical therapy.
There are several natural and home treatments that greatly help people suffer from this disease. One good thing to do is to make a significant change in lifestyle and avoid caffeine, alcohol, and smoking. Having a good and balanced diet is also great way to alleviate the symptoms of fibromyalgia. This disease tends to affect nearly every system and the human body including the digestive system.
Medications and drugs that are prescribed to patients suffering from fibromyalgia are designed to alleviate the pain and malfunctions of the various systems of the body. Medications that help soothe the digestive system and restore proper bowel functions are frequently prescribed to deal with the digestive problems caused by fibromyalgia. Another dietary element to refrain from is gluten as it can cause a flare up of a large number of symptoms that are associated with fibromyalgia.
The psychological problems associated with fibromyalgia like depression, cognitive deterioration, shortening of the attention span etc. are treated using drugs that have the effect of blocking certain receptors in the nervous system. Depression is treated by a mixture of psychotherapy and anti-depressant drugs.
It is also advisable to work in a healthy amount of exercise into your schedule. One of the best ways of managing physical pain and some of the other symptoms of this disease has been effective chiropractic care.
Chiropractic care consists of physical therapy that can include massage and electrical stimulation of the extremities which is found to be helpful in eliminating pain.
This is the essence of all the current treatments for fibromyalgia. The mitigation of the pain and other symptoms is the primary way in which this disease can be combated.
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