Not that it’s news to those of us who have it, but it’s good to be validated!
Fibromyalgia often has been misdiagnosed as arthritis or even a psychological issue. Increasingly, though, the scientific knowledge about fibromyalgia is growing, and a new paper from the University of Michigan Health System says there are “overwhelming data” that the condition is real, is characterized by a lower pain threshold and is associated with genetic factors that can make some people more likely to develop fibromyalgia. …
“It is time for us to move past the rhetoric about whether these conditions are real, and take these patients seriously as we endeavor to learn more about the causes and most effective treatments for these disorders,” says Richard E. Harris, Ph.D., research investigator in the Division of Rheumatology at the U-M Medical School’s Department of Internal Medicine and a researcher at the U-M Health System’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.
The name of one of the authors of the paper, Dr. Daniel J. Clauw, will be familiar to many of you from other studies on fibromyalgia. He says that, “In people without pain, these structures encode pain sensations normally. In people with fibromyalgia, the neural activity increased. These studies indicate that fibromyalgia patients have abnormalities within their central brain structures.”
ScienceDaily: Pain From Fibromyalgia Is Real, Researchers Say
From a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Press Release about findings being presented at the International Congress of Neuroendocrinology June 19-22, 2006:
Stressful or traumatic events experienced during pregnancy can have long-lasting effects on the fetus, yet these effects may not become apparent until many years later, according to a study suggesting that girls born of such pregnancies may be at greater risk for developing a painful muscle condition called fibromyalgia as adults.
The details sound very much like recent findings regarding abnormalities in reactions to stressors in chronic fatique sufferers. That could lend credence to those who believe fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome are related conditions.
From BBC News via the Net-Gold list:
Research has confirmed listening to music can have a significant positive impact on perception of chronic pain.
US researchers tested the effect of music on 60 patients who had endured years of chronic pain.
Those who listened to music reported a cut in pain levels of up to 21%, and in associated depression of up to 25%, compared to those who did not listen.
While I doubt the IRS is going to let us claim iPods as medical equipment for tax deductions any time soon, it’s well worth experimenting to see what music soothes each of us.
Dyspareunia is one of the common symptoms of fibromyalgia, or as a co-existing problem. I don’t usually look at Wired for this kind of thing, but the article When Sex Is a Pain has some good ideas for dealing with dyspareunia.
My Pain, My Brain by Melanie Thernstrom gives us a look at a study being done at Stanford University. Subjects view an area of the brain that is involved in the perception of pain via a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, and undergo training similar to biofeedback in which they practice directly controlling that part of the brain. Doing so can allow the subject to control the perception of chronic pain.
Thernstrom touches on several other interesting studies in the article, including Irene Tracy’s Oxford University study on the effects of distraction on chronic pain.
Where do I sign up?