Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that is characterized by severe pain in the body. We have known about fibromyalgia since the 1970s, but despite the massive advancements that have been made in scientific and medical technology, scientific researchers still have very limited knowledge on what causes fibromyalgia, what all of the symptoms are and how it can be cured.
However, recent research has revealed one interesting aspect of fibromyalgia: that there is a definitive link between fibromyalgia and the central nervous system.
Scientific Study
The University of Michigan conducted a study where they examined thirty participants to find out if any issues in the central nervous system would impact fibromyalgia sufferers. This study was conducted because they realized that no studies had previously been done to show if there was a relationship between the two. In addition to finding the relation between fibromyalgia and the central nervous system, the researchers also looked into how fibromyalgia sufferers react to pain from the disease.
Sound Perception
It was discovered that the participants in the program had a heightened perception to auditory tones, claiming that they were experiencing sensitivity in sounds that they heard in their everyday lives. This revealed that the sensitiveness to acute sounds in fibromyalgia patients could have been caused by a physiological mechanism.
When describing the intensity of the auditory sounds they heard, the patients with fibromyalgia did report much greater intensity than the healthy control group…and the sounds were the exact same in intensity. This was persuasive enough to convince the researchers that the link between fibromyalgia and sensory perception was stronger than previously thought.
All in all, the researchers concluded that a deficit in sensory processes in the central nervous system is linked to an increased level of fibromyalgia in a patient. However, more research will need to be conducted in the future before the medical researchers can flesh out all of the details, such as the mechanism of how fibromyalgia patients respond to sound and touch when compared to otherwise healthy individuals. What we do know is that fibromyalgia is a stress disorder because of the onset of pain symptoms, which could make a patient more susceptible to sound and touch.
Brain Disorder?
However, just because a person with fibromyalgia is more sensitive to sounds and touch does not mean that they are suffering from a brain disorder. In fact, scientific studies and analysis suggest the exact opposite.
This is because there is no established scientific link between chemical activity in the brain (also known as neurotransmitters) and sensory perception. However, fibromyalgia could still result from stress and pain on the central nervous system, which means that the sensitivity to touch and sound would be a brain circuitry rather than a brain disorder. These findings have been supported by brain imaging studies that reveal to us disturbances in the central nervous system.
The Nervous System
Brian neurotransmitters are a very fascinating subject, mostly because each individual transmitter can perform a great diversity of different functions. While they obviously interact with each other in the brain, they have the ability to create another neurotransmitter by using another.
A chemical messenger that’s found in the brain’s nervous system, called serotonin, plays a very large role in the pain and fatigue levels of people. An individual who has lower levels of serotonin will be susceptible to fibromyalgia, among other disorders. While it hasn’t been found that simply having lower levels of serotonin will automatically result in the patient being afflicted with fibromyalgia or another disorder, it can lead to increased fatigue, more sensitivity to pain and touch, and more stress in the fibromyalgia patients who do have it.
Pain
Therefore, the reason why patients with fibromyalgia are more sensitive to touch and sounds could be because they experience pain. People who have fibromyalgia will feel pain in a different manner than people who don’t have fibromyalgia, just like the case we saw where patients with fibromyalgia react very differently to touch and sounds. So why do patients with fibromyalgia feel pain differently than people who don’t have it?
Well, abnormalities that exist in fibromyalgia patients’ brains are visible in scans at hospitals and medical clinics, revealing that the patients have three times the level of substance P that they should have. Substance P is a chemical messenger dealing with pain perception. What’s more is that these findings have been discovered to occur in areas of the brain that determine how intense the pain is to the person. When more blood flow occurs, the patient feels more pain. When less blood flow occurs, they may feel less physical pain, but they’ll still feel stressed out and anxious.
Oversensitivity
In short, patients with fibromyalgia feel and react to touch and sound differently than other people due to the physical and mental aspect of pain sensations. When a patient feels physical pain, they hurt! And even when they don’t feel physical pain, that doesn’t eliminate the mental aspect of fibromyalgia, such as fatigue, anxiety and even depression.
Since fibromyalgia patients are oversensitive to pain, they are much more aware of even the smallest pain problems in the body, such as limited movement due to an aching pain in the leg. They also have less tolerance of the pain; to give you an idea, people with fibromyalgia and people without it were both used in a light study.
The people without fibromyalgia were put in a room where there was an average amount of light; the fibromyalgia patients were placed in a room that was more dimmed. Despite this, the fibromyalgia patients still reported the same intensity levels in the dimmed room as the people in the slightly more lighted room reported.
Since we know that people with fibromyalgia suffer from a greater pain response due to disturbances in the central nervous system, this greatly aids in medical researchers working to understand fibromyalgia and treat it with the proper medications.
Further reading:
Fibromyalgia and Sensory Perception: http://www.fibromyalgia-symptoms.org/heightened-sensory-perception-fibro.html
Sensory Perception and Fibromyalgia: http://www.fibromyalgia-symptoms.org/sensory-perception-and-fibromyalgia.html
Fibromyalgia – Causes: http://www.healthcentral.com/ency/408/guides/000076_2_3.html
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