How to Manage Fibromyalgia in the Heat and Humidity - Fibromyalgia Center. Summer is in full swing, and the thermometer is climbing. But while many people look forward to warmer temperatures, those with fibromyalgia may face the turning of the seasons with a sense of dread. Some fibromyalgia patients know they can expect a flare-up in fibromyalgia symptoms from heat and high humidity; others agonize during cold weather months. One Portuguese study found that 70 percent of patients with various rheumatic conditions, including fibromyalgia, felt that weather changes had an influence on their pain. "A lot of studies have shown that patients have sensitivity to pain with both temperature extremes," says Lynne Matallana, founder and president of the National Fibromyalgia Association. "I know people who have packed up and moved their families because they felt another part of the country would be more comfortable for them.
It can be that intense. " Why Temperature Affects Fibromyalgia Muscle pain Headaches Fatigue Anxiety Depression Problems regulating body heat. Brazilian study shows creatine helps fibromyalgia patients - MedCity NewsMedCity News. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Creatine, a supplement favored by bodybuilders, modestly boosted muscle strength in patients with fibromyalgia, Brazilian researchers report. Apart from helping with muscle weakness, though, the treatment had little effect on other symptoms of the mysterious disorder, such as chronic pain, fatigue, memory loss, depression, anxiety and sleeplessness.
“The improvements in muscle function did not reflect improvements in general symptoms as we hypothesized,” said senior study author Bruno Gualano, a professor at the University of São Paulo School of Physical Education and Sports in Brazil. As many as one in 50 Americans suffers from fibromyalgia, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The condition typically strikes in middle age, affects women more often than men and is thought to be triggered by stress. Non-drug treatments for fibromyalgia include exercise, massage and meditation. Fibromyalgia Pain: Study Shows a Calcium and Magnesium Deficiency. 2015-05-27 21:09:25 - A calcium deficiency can lead to muscle cramping, aches, pains and insomnia: signs of low calcium and also of fibromyalgia Fibromyalgia (pronounced fy-bro-my-AL-ja), is a condition that affects five to six million Americans.
Eighty to ninety percent of those diagnosed with fibromyalgia are women and most people are diagnosed during middle age. Fibromyalgia presents itself as widespread chronic pain, multiple tender points in joints and muscles, sleep disturbances and insomnia, extreme fatigue, stress, anxiety, and an interference with basic daily activities. The Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, a leading chiropractic and nutritional journal, published a study titled “Hair calcium and magnesium levels in patients with fibromyalgia – a case center study.” In order to understand the results of this study, it’s important to clarify that when a hair analysis finds a high amount of calcium, it usually indicates a deficiency of calcium in the body.
Lidocaine Injection May Help Treat Fibromyalgia, Study Suggests. But experts wonder how much of the benefit is due to placebo effect WebMD News from HealthDay By Mary Elizabeth Dallas HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, Aug. 5, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The pain of fibromyalgia might be eased with injections of the painkiller lidocaine, a new study suggests. People with fibromyalgia complain of chronic pain throughout their body as well as an increased sensitivity to pain.
Doctors often have trouble treating this pain because it's unclear what causes it, the study authors noted. In the new study, injecting lidocaine into peripheral tissues -- such as the muscles in the shoulders or buttocks -- effectively reduced pain sensitivity, the researchers found. "We hypothesized that if pain comes from the peripheral tissues, and we can take this pain away by injecting local anesthetics, then this would be indirect proof of the importance of peripheral tissues for the clinical pain of these individuals," study lead author Dr. The study involved 62 women with fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is not all in your head, new research confirms. Fibromyalgia is a severely debilitating affliction characterized by widespread deep tissue pain, tenderness in the hands and feet, fatigue, sleep disorders, and cognitive decline. However, routine testing has been largely unable to detect a biological basis for fibromyalgia, and standard diagnosis is based upon subjective patient pain ratings, further raising questions about the true nature of the disease.
For many years, the disorder was believed to be psychosomatic ("in the head") and often attributed to patients' imagination or even faking illness. Currently approved therapeutics that provide at least partial relief to some fibromyalgia patients are thought to act solely within the brain where imaging techniques have detected hyperactivity of unknown origin referred to as "central sensitization. " However, an underlying cause has not been determined, leaving many physicians still in doubt about the true origins or even the existence of the disorder. Nerve Endings Come In Many Forms. Fibromyalgia has central nervous system origins -- ScienceDaily. Fibromyalgia is the second most common rheumatic disorder behind osteoarthritis and, though still widely misunderstood, is now considered to be a lifelong central nervous system disorder, which is responsible for amplified pain that shoots through the body in those who suffer from it.
Daniel Clauw, M.D., professor of anesthesiology, University of Michigan, analyzed the neurological basis for fibromyalgia in a plenary session address at the American Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting. "Fibromyalgia can be thought of both as a discreet disease and also as a final common pathway of pain centralization and chronification. Most people with this condition have lifelong histories of chronic pain throughout their bodies," said Clauw. "The condition can be hard to diagnose if one isn't familiar with classic symptoms because there isn't a single cause and no outward signs. " Yoga can counteract fibromyalgia, study suggests -- ScienceDaily. According to new research conducted at Oregon Health & Science University, yoga exercises may have the power to combat fibromyalgia -- a medical disorder characterized by chronic widespread pain.
The research is being published in the November 10 online edition of the journal Pain and will appear online on Oct. 14. "Previous research suggests that the most successful treatment for fibromyalgia involves a combination of medications, physical exercise and development of coping skills," said James Carson, Ph.D., a clinical health psychologist and an assistant professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine. "Here, we specifically focused on yoga to determine whether it should be considered as a prescribed treatment and the extent to which it can be successful. " In this study, researchers enrolled 53 female study subjects previously diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
The women were randomly assigned to two research groups. About fibromyalgia About fibromyalgia. Study: Fibromyalgia Sufferers Have Trouble Processing Sight, Sound, Touch. In a paper published earlier this month in Arthritis & Rheumatology, Marina Lopez-Sola of the University of Colorado, Boulder, showed that people suffering from fibromyalgia are hypersensitive to everyday sensory stimulation.
This includes sight and sound cues as well as touch. Fibromyalgia causes feelings of general malaise in addition to severe aches and pains. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers showed a decreased response in visual and auditory regions of the brain in fibromyalgia patients, where one would expect to see an increase. Instead, their sensory integration regions showed increased activity.
“Our study provides new evidence that fibromyalgia patients display altered central processing in response to multisensory stimulation, which are linked to core fibromyalgia symptoms and may be part of the disease pathology,” Lopez-Sola said in a news release. The study included 35 women with fibromyalgia and 25 healthy, age-matched controls. Brain study provides clues at how fibromyalgia works. Brain scans show that people with the pain disorder fibromyalgia react differently to what others would consider non-painful sights and sounds, new research suggests. The small new study provides clues to what might be going wrong in the nervous system of people with fibromyalgia, along with possible new approaches to alleviating their pain.
“If we understand the mechanism, we may come up with new and potentially better forms of treatment,” said lead author Marina López-Solà of the department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Fibromyalgia, which patients experience as widespread muscle pain and fatigue, affects as many as five million Americans, most commonly middle-aged women, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Its cause is unknown and there is no cure, but medications can treat the symptoms. But evidence for a neuro-anatomical basis for fibromyalgia is growing, said Geisser, who was not part of the new study. Hyperbaric oxygen shows promise against fibromyalgia. Researchers in Israel and Texas say a series of treatments in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber led to improvements for a group of women suffering from fibromyalgia. An analytical method developed by one of the researchers is bolstering the theory that changes in areas of the brain associated with pain play a role in fibromyalgia, a disorder that primarily affects women and has been a source of controversy within medicine for years.
According to a report in the open-access journal PLoS One, all 48 of the female fibromyalgia sufferers who underwent two months of hyperbaric oxygen therapy showed improvements. The treatment were conducted at the Sagol Center of Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, near Tel Aviv. Sagol Center researchers discovered the possible positive impact of hyperbaric oxygen on fibromyalgia while studying people with post-traumatic brain injury, according to neuroscientist Shai Efrati.
TNX-102 SL may improve sleep, pain scores in patients with fibromyalgia. Sublingual TNX-102 SL improved sleep quality and other symptoms of fibromyalgia, according to research presented at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual European Congress of Rheumatology. Researchers studied 205 patients with fibromyalgia in the BESTFIT 12-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial at 17 U.S. locations. Patients were randomly assigned at 1:1 ratio to receive TNX-102 SL (cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride, Tonix Pharmaceuticals) or placebo and kept a daily diary related to sleep and pain. Patients were administered the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ-R), Patient Global Impression of Change (PGIC), PROMIS Sleep Disturbance scale (PROMIS) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for mood.
The mean change in scores from baseline was calculated with Mixed Effects Model Repeated Measures (MMRM). Transient tongue or mouth numbness were the most common adverse events and occurred in 42% of patients. Reference: Lederman S, et al. The Link Between Fibromyalgia and Sleep: How CBT Can Help. June 10, 2015 The Link Between Fibromyalgia and Sleep: How CBT Can Help SEATTLE, WA—At SLEEP 2015, Jack Edinger, PhD, of the National Jewish Health, Denver, CO, presented research demonstrating that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may indirectly improve fibromyalgia symptoms via improved sleep. The presence of insomnia has been shown to worsen the fibromyalgia symptoms, including myalgias, tenderness, and fatigue. A team from the School of Nursing at the University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain, examined whether treating and improving sleep with CBT would lead to a positive and enduring effect on other fibromyalgia symptoms.
A total of 61 patients (mean age 51.6 [9.2], 51 female) were randomized to: treatment as usual (TAU; n=21), TAU plus sham therapy (n=20) or TAU plus CBT (n=20). The mean total wake time (TWT) hours derived from sleep diaries for two weeks at post-treatment was considered the primary sleep outcome. Extended-Release Gabapentin May Hold Promise for Treatment of Fibromyalgia.
Effective treatments for fibromyalgia are notoriously few and far between. A number of studies have shown that gabapentin, developed to treat epilepsy, is effective in treating postherpetic neuralgia and painful diabetic neuropathy. Now, a new—although admittedly limited—study has revealed that gabapentin may hold promise for treating fibromyalgia as well. This isn’t the first study to measure the effectiveness of gabapentin to treat fibromyalgia pain. A literature review published in PubMed Health in 2014 pointed to the many limitations of current research. Fibromyalgia Mystery Resolved Organically. Results of the latest clinical trial conducted on patients suffering from fibromyalgia have increased possibilities that the chronic pain could be resolved organically using oxygen therapy. This has caught the attention of many people around the world suffering from the chronic disorder identified by widespread musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and tenderness in localized areas of the body.
The trial which involved 60 women, all of whom were diagnosed with fibromyalgia at least two years prior, successfully reduced or in some cases, completely eliminated the volunteer’s need for pain medication following therapy given within a hyperbaric oxygen enclosure. During a previous study on post-traumatic brain injury subjects, researchers at the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, realized that hyperbaric oxygen therapy had the potential to help sufferers with fibromyalgia. By Ankur Sinha. Fibromyalgia causes victims pain, headache, loss of sleep - Champion Newspapers: Special Section. Fibromyalgia is an oft-unpleasant condition that can cause pain and tenderness throughout the body. While fibromyalgia can affect anyone, the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases notes that between 80 and 90 percent of fibromyalgia sufferers are women.
While there is no consensus among medical professionals as to the cause of fibromyalgia, there are several recognized symptoms. Women who learn to recognize these symptoms may be more quick to seek treatment, which can include a combination of medication and physical therapy and possibly additional treatments depending on the plan designed by a woman’s physician. ● Pain: Widespread pain is the most common symptom of fibromyalgia. The pain may begin as a dull ache, but it also may be sharp or throbbing. Pain resulting from fibromyalgia will be felt in muscles, tendons and ligaments around the joints. Pain can be intermittent and affect different parts of the body at different times. New Research on Chronic Pain. Fibromyalgia awareness gets help from Patriots' Dominique Easley.
A New Approach in Fibromyalgia Exercise Programs: Balance Training. Fibromyalgia comes with a suicide risk: study. Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia.