Fibromyalgia: Little understood, often frustrating
You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but at any given moment Dana Poole hurts all over.
“It’s kind of like a burning, but an ache. It’s almost like you have the flu,” said Poole, 31, a receptionist from Canton, Georgia.
Poole is one of almost 6 million Americans who suffer from a chronic condition called fibromyalgia.
In addition to widespread pain, patients may complain about fatigue and sleep disturbances, depression, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome and heightened sensitivity.
“Dana is typical of a lot of fibromyalgia patients,” said Dr. Jefrey Lieberman, an Atlanta, Georgia-based rheumatologist. “She came into my office complaining of a lot of diffuse pain all over her body and fatigue. She really didn’t know why she was getting it.”
That’s part of the frustration of having fibromyalgia. Experts aren’t sure what causes it, but many believe many factors are involved.
Some think the condition, which is not progressive or life-threatening, may be triggered by an emotional or traumatic event.
Lieberman believed it is related to a disordered sleep pattern and poor exercise. “It appears to be more of a neuro-chemical process,” he said. “In other words, there really is no inflammation in patients with fibromyalgia.”
Getting a proper diagnosis can sometimes be just as frustrating as finding out what’s behind the disease.
“Fibromyalgia is to some extent a diagnosis of exclusion,” Lieberman said. “There are lot of things it can be confused with such as thyroid disorders, metabolic disorders and certain rheumatologic inflammatory conditions.”
For almost five years, Poole jumped from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was causing her symptoms. “They were constantly saying I’m a tall, thin female. ‘You’re getting older — your body is going to change,’ and it was frustrating.”
Lieberman understood Poole’s frustration. “Sometimes fibromyalgia is used as a wastebasket term if a patient has pain and they don’t know what it is from,” he said. “It is frequently misdiagnosed. In fact, it is overdiagnosed and it is underdiagnosed.”
Specialists such as Lieberman can make a proper diagnosis based on criteria set by the American College of Rheumatology.
“Those criteria are diffuse pain in three or more quadrants of the body and the presence of what are called tender points in the body,” Lieberman explained. “There are 18 total tender points, and by definition we like to see 11 of those tender points being present.”
It’s estimated that up to 90 percent of patients are women. Most of them start feeling symptoms in early and middle adulthood.
Poole remembered that the pain first started when she was 20. It wasn’t until she met Lieberman about five years ago that she got some relief.
She took part in a drug study for Cymbalta, one of two medications approved for the management of fibromyalgia. The other drug is called Lyrica.
“Both of them are geared toward the patient’s well-being as well as improving their pain,” Lieberman said.
He also encouraged Poole to control her condition through a healthy diet, stress reduction, getting enough sleep and regular low-impact exercise.
We think that aerobic exercise helps to stimulate endorphins and enkephlins from the body which are your own natural pain relievers,” Lieberman said.
The doctor is quick to point out that even with proper medication and adequate exercise, fibromyalgia has no cure.
Although Lieberman said some of his patients report the symptoms tapering off in their mid-50s and -60s, others are faced with years of managing the condition.
“For most of my patients, I tell them that I can get you 50 to 75 percent better and many of those patients will jump at that,” he said.
Poole is one of them, but knowing that she’ll need to follow a careful daily regimen can be daunting, she said. “It wears you out, mentally, physically and emotionally.”
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How do you come up with all of this? You must have some good foundation on the subject right?
I really liked reading your post!. Quallity content. With such a valuable blog i believe you deserve to be ranking even higher in the search engines :). Check out the link in my name. That links to a tool that really helped me rank high in google. This way even more people can enjoy your posts and nothing beats a big audiance
GrEeTiNgS, http://www.fibromyalgia-solution.com!
Y9AetK Excellent article, I will take note. Many thanks for the story!
GrEeTiNgS, http://www.fibromyalgia-solution.com!
kaufen viagra ohne rezept
Very great report, very clear, deep analyze and easy to understand.
Thank for your share.
Thank you for this information. You have done a great job. So many figures, everything is so exactly. Now we can see all demografic picture of the alection.Thank you for highlighting this. Keep up your work.
Really informative post. Thanks for sharing
I was so frustrated beacuse I couldn`t resolve this issue. Then I found your site in google and problem is solved. Thanks!
I know this is really boring and you are skipping to the next comment, but I just wanted to throw you a big thanks - you cleared up some things for me!
I respect your honesty and your opinion. I’m a man. I never read comic books. I don’t know if i could have pointed to Iron Man in a lineup of comic book characters. And i don’t particularly like movies based on comic books. BUT I love Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges, so i decided to give the movie a chance.
заказать виагра
GrEeTiNgS, http://www.fibromyalgia-solution.com!
[url=http://win4mass.net/members/eclaribl.aspx]yarrrr[/url]
Yhanks for your great website! ^^
Lesbian Hentai
Hi, I can’t understand how to add your site in my rss reader. Can you help me, please
I know this is really boring and you are skipping to the next comment, but I just wanted to throw you a big thanks - you cleared up some things for me!
Interesting idea but I’m not sure it would work
[url=http://www.freekendrawilkinsonsextape.com/]Watch Kendra Wilkinson Sex Tape[/url]
You own a very interesting blog covering lots of topics I am interested as well.I just added your site to my favorites so I can read more in the future… Please continue your marvellous work
So why you do this?
Hello.
[url=http://hukilxxxru.com]hukilxxxru[/url]
And Bye.
I usually don’t post in blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful !
Thanks for the informative post. It helped me a lot. May the Force be with you.
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so! really nice post.
You own a very interesting blog covering lots of topics I am interested as well.I just added your site to my favorites so I can read more in the future… Please continue your marvellous work
Sertne bewartder
I think this web site’s theme is made well.
Hello, I think this is the coollest wordpress powered blog I`ve seen. I really like your theme
Thank you for keeping us updated. I really enjoy it and find all the data very useful.
Thanks for the informative post. It helped me a lot. May the Force be with you.
I can see that you are an expert at your field! I am launching a site soon, and your data will probably be incredibly intriguing for me.. Thanks for all your aid and wishing you all of the success.
знакомства харьков лариса 1vstvipsone
This is my first time visiting your site. I do envy you since you seem to get a lot more comments then I do. Do you have any secret tips on how I can get more comments or do I just have to be paitent? Anyway, keep up the good work.
Hoodia gordonii cactus diet pills [url=http://beidurchtic.info/57-diet-hoodia-pill.html]Hoodia p57 buy[/url].
Is that true? I’ll spread this info. Anyway, awesome posting
I know lots of blog authors also have written an e-book. For those who have you can monetize your e-book by utilizing http://www.ebooked.org which is a website that enables e-book authors to share their function for free with people following someone completes a survey. Once they complete the survey the author makes some money.
I’m pleased I located this web page,
Hmmm for some reason only half the article might be seen. I tried reloading but still exact same.
Your site offers a lot of unique insights and information. I haven’t really thought about it like that.
Good blog, lots of helpful facts.
I discovered this on page 25 in Yahoo which unfortunately is without question a shame. I am no pro still what you are publishing in this case makes sense. Way more people today really should be aware of it.