A comprehensive guide on chronic pain, its causes, symptoms, and effective management strategies to improve your quality of life.
Fibromyalgia a disorder that causes widespread chronic pain and tenderness affects 2 to 4 percent of women and men in the United States (women ages 20 to 50 are the most affected) and impacts patients in many different ways. Thus, fibromyalgia remains mysterious, and questions still linger like why are more women affected by fibromyalgia than men? And why is fibromyalgia so hard to diagnose and treat? Why do some patients with fibromyalgia have more back pain…
The muscles between the ribs are formed in such a way to allow our chest to expand and relax with breathing, and they perform their job many times a day, because adults breathe about 20 times per minute.. Many fibromyalgia (FM) patients and some chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) patients complain of chest wall pain and restriction of movement. Often this restriction and pain is misdiagnosed by the health care provider as costochondritis, which is inflammation of…
Like most in the chronic pain community I was excited to hear that Lady Gaga was speaking out about her recent diagnosis of fibromyalgia. I have been hoping for years that the fibromyalgia/chronic pain community would have a celebrity spokesperson. It isn’t that I was hoping someone would get fibro but I was hoping that if they did they would use their celebrity status to shed some light on what most call the “invisible disease”.…
New research indicates that a disruption of brain signals for reward and punishment contributes to increased pain sensitivity, known as hyperalgesia, in fibromyalgia patients. Results published in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology, suggest that this altered brain processing might contribute to widespread pain and lack of response to opioid therapy in patients with fibromyalgia. Click Here to Visit the Store and find Much More…. Fibromyalgia is a chronic, musculoskeletal…
It may seem counterintuitive, but young and middle-aged fibromyalgia patients report worse symptoms and poorer quality of life than older patients, a Mayo Clinic study shows. Fibromyalgia most often strikes women. It is characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain with fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. The research, one of several Mayo studies being presented at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting, suggests the disorder plays out differently among different age groups. Researchers studied 978…
More than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. But treating and studying chronic pain is complex and presents many challenges. Scientists have long searched for a method to objectively measure pain and a new study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital advances that effort. The study appears in the January 2013 print edition of the journal Pain. “While we need to be cautious in the interpretation of our results, this has the potential to be…
A recent University of Iowa study reveals a biological link between pain and fatigue and may help explain why more women than men are diagnosed with chronic pain and fatigue conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Working with mice, the researchers, led by Kathleen Sluka, Ph.D., professor in the Graduate Program in Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, found that a protein involved…
Lupus patients have been waiting a while for some good news. Only one drug, belimumab (Benlysta), has been FDA-approved for lupus in more than 50 years — and that happened back in 2011. Since then, scientists have been trying to develop additional therapeutic agents (and failing for various reasons). But research presented at the 2019 American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Professionals (ACR/ARP) Annual Meeting in Atlanta suggests that a new lupus medication, anifrolumab, might…
“Giant cell arteritis requires ongoing management, but it does not necessarily require continuous treatment.” In 2017, tocilizumab (Actemra), a biologic drug that inhibits interleukin-6 (IL-6), was FDA-approved for giant cell arteritis — an inflammation of the lining of the arteries. At the time there was sufficient research showing that tocilizumab was better than prednisone (a steroid) for helping many patients reach remission in GCA. Yet it was unclear whether those who had reached remission should…
Some people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) take a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) and/or a biologic and reach remission. Others try drug after drug after drug and never find one that’s effective — or that treats their symptoms without causing intolerable side effects. At the same time, other patients with active disease refuse to take the most powerful and effective medications on the market or can’t take them because of their medical history or personal risk…