Pain Relief - How To Tell If You Have Fibromyalgia? Nurse's Guide

Years ago, after much suffering, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Even though I was a nurse, I suffered along with everyone else I knew who'd been diagnosed with it and sought various natural methods of pain relief. But through a sheer stroke of luck I cured myself! I no longer suffer from fibromyalgia and many years have passed now.

Fibromyalgia, also called fibromyositis and fibrositis, is a condition which causes long-term pain throughout the body and in the tender points (not trigger points) in joints, muscles, tendons, and other soft tissues. Sufferers also can have fatigue, morning stiffness, sleep problems, headaches, numbness in the hands and feet, depression, and anxiety, which may or may not be due to all the symptoms they have.

Fibromyalgia can also coexist with other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.

Although the cause of this disorder is unknown there are all sorts of expert guesses as to the cause including physical or emotional trauma that may play a part in the development and abnormal pain transmission responses.

It's been theorized that sleep disturbances, which are common in fibromyalgia patients, may actually cause the condition or that maybe the cause of fibromyalgia is waking patients up. In my case I would wake up for two hours between 2 A.M. and 4 A.M. every night and be wide awake.

This disturbance wreaked havoc with my daily activities because I don't think my endorphins were getting released properly. The endorphin release to repair the body and initiate healing happens around 2 A.M.

Another one of the theories is that the disorder may occur with changes in skeletal muscle metabolism, which may be caused by a diminished blood flow causing chronic fatigue and weakness similar to chronic fatigue syndrome.

Others experts have guessed that it might be a virus that has initiated fibromyalgia or even that it's inherited. But I don't believe any of that.

Although women and men have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia it's more common among women especially in the 20 through 50 years old age group.

Fibromyalgia pain can sometimes be confused with arthritic pain. But it doesn't have the deformity of joints as seen in arthritis.

The pain can be described best as deep-aching pain, like mine was, or radiating, burning or shooting pain and can be severe at times. The pain can be present during the night when one wakes up or throughout the day to various degrees. This pain can drive people to find all sorts of methods, treatments and therapies to try to get pain relief usually with no pain relief.

Pain can get better or worse throughout the day. As well as mild generalized pain through the body I noticed severe pain in specific areas such as my quadriceps muscle that I used while driving making long distance driving impossible. My upper arm would ache so bad that I thought I would keel over.

People complain of back pain, lower back pain, chest pain, muscle pain, joint pain etc. And usually try pain medications and various other pain pills which don't work.

Your doctor can diagnose fibromyalgia by pressing on your tender points.

The doctor will want to know how long you've been enduring the widespread pain and/or pain and tenderness in 11or more of the 18 tender points. If it's been more than three months it would be considered chronic and would help make the diagnosis. The tender points are located in fibrous tissue or muscles of the neck, shoulder, rib cage, chest, thighs, knees, lower back, arms and buttocks.

When the doctor presses on these points they may or may not hurt. So it's fairly easy to diagnose except the doctor has to determine if there are any other disease present that is causing your pain. So he/she may do some other tests to rule out infections, thyroid problems, rheumatoid arthritis, sleep disorders, cancer and other conditions.

Besides sleeping problems, muscle aches or joint aches or general body aching and fatigue, there can be facial muscle pain or aching. And a reduction in exercise is common. I found it difficult to walk more than 20 minutes at a time without severe aching and fatigue.

Fibromyalgia has been a common problem for many years. In some pain sufferers the symptoms may get better then return out of the blue.

I suffered with fibromyalgia along with arthritis and many other ailments and sought pain relief until I changed my diet due to breast cancer, which I cured naturally. Changing my diet was the key to getting rid of fibromyalgia and many years later I still no longer suffer from it.

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