Living Inside a Flare: When Pain Becomes the Center of Everything A fibromyalgia flare is often described as a sudden intensification of symptoms, but that definition barely captures what it feels like in real life.…
Fibromyalgia Conditions
Explore the conditions associated with Fibromyalgia, their symptoms, and how to manage them for improved well-being.
How to find meaning again when fibromyalgia and chronic illness upends your life
You’re sitting in the doctor’s office, being told you have an incurable illness. Maybe you have to leave your career, or pull back on your workload, with set accommodations. You can’t live up to being…
The Emotional Effects of Fibromyalgia
Living with fibromyalgia can affect you physically and emotionally. Fibromyalgia is stressful. The pain and stress of fibromyalgia raise your body’s level of cortisol, a stress hormone. Adjusting to the disease and finding treatments that…
4 Conditions That Can Mimic Fibromyalgia
If you have symptoms that point to fibromyalgia but haven’t been diagnosed, you are not alone. Many people spend years working with doctors to rule out other diseases. That’s because a number of other conditions…
What People With Fibromyalgia Wish They Could Tell You
Fibromyalgia affects about 5 to 6 million people in the United States, mostly women. Yet, so little is known about the condition and people with fibromyalgia often feel misunderstood. Here, three women share their thoughts…
How to Face the Day During a Fibromyalgia Flare
When you wake up in a fibromyalgia flare—with that feeling that you can’t move, as if a 500-pound weight has been dropped on you in your sleep—you can’t help but wonder how you can possibly…
Hypersensitivity to Non-Painful Events and Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is often described as a pain condition, but that description only captures part of the picture. Many people living with fibromyalgia experience something broader and more disruptive than pain alone: an amplified sensitivity to…
Cognitive Dysfunction and Fibromyalgia
When the Mind Feels Slower Than It Should Cognitive dysfunction in fibromyalgia is often described using the term “fibro fog,” but that phrase can make it sound softer or less disruptive than it actually is.…
How to Explain Fibromyalgia Fatigue to Other People
Anyone who lives with fibromyalgia has struggled to try to explain the chronic pain and fatigue they experience to their friends and loved ones, and even to strangers. Explaining fibromyalgia is no easy task. Sometimes…
Fibromyalgia Pains and Allodynia in Fibromyalgia
Understanding the Nature of Pain in Fibromyalgia Fibromyalgia is best understood not as a condition of damaged muscles or joints, but as a disorder of how the nervous system processes pain. This distinction is important…