Explore mental illness, its common symptoms, causes, and treatment options. Learn how to support mental health and seek help when needed.
I wish I had been prepared for the impact of what was going to happen in my life from chronic illness being newly diagnosed. Realistically. I had a firm belief back then that I could limit the impact by choosing a specific job and as long as I was engaged mentally, it didn’t matter if I was hindered physically. I didn’t think of the radius pain has. It never occurred it would get worse, complex…
The Flare-up (see here for my article on it) is one of the worst fibromyalgia experiences. I fell into it sometime last night and woke up with the most unpleasant pains. In the hips, shoulders, and back, not to mention all over aches. I was very fatigued yesterday and perhaps that was some prediction of impending doom. Here is the thing we can pace and moderate but we cannot avoid all flares. Sometimes they just…
Fibromyalgia has some pretty distinctive sleep disturbances associated with it not to mention comorbid sleep issues. It is one of the key factors in the syndrome… our inability to attain refreshing sleep. I wrote a post about it here. So it interests me that they have done some recent research in this area. One of the important things about our sleep dysfunction is that since it isn’t presenting like regular insomnia the treatment likewise has…
I have been struggling with work lately. And by lately I mean always. Always struggling to function through the pain. Always not quite doing it. My psychologist said well I cannot compare apples to oranges. I cannot compare myself to people doing the same job perfectly healthy. Nor to myself when I was healthy-er. And it did occur to me that this job I am now doing wouldn’t even be a challenge to me when…
So there are a lot of issues with sleep and fibromyalgia. I also have other chronic pain and vertigo, but seriously since I was young sleep and I have not been on speaking terms. Yes, this is how I look when I sleep. Child-like and innocent and buried in glitter. Here are some of the random things you can look forward to with fibromyalgia and sleep: Click Here to Visit the Store and find Much…
As most fibromyalgia patients know, there are no approved tests to diagnose this chronic pain condition. A new study has taken science a step forward in this direction. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have identified a brain signature that is able to predict fibromyalgia with 93% accuracy. Functional MRI scans were used to compare brain activity in 37 fibromyalgia patients and 35 healthy controls as they were exposed to multiple sensory sensations (visual,…
The Spanish study in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology called “Cognitive complaints in women with fibromyalgia: Are they due to depression or to objective cognitive dysfunction?” recurited105 women with fibromyalgia for their analysis. Fibromyalgia is characterized by widespread pain, cognitive dysfunction, sleep dysfunction and fatigue. However, the cognitive dysfunction of fibrofog with its concentration issues has not always been thought of to be from the FM. Studies have shown it is from the…
If it means significant restrictions to your daily activities, then, according to medical and government guidelines, yes, you have a disability. This may challenge the ability stereotypes you might have absorbed from the media, where disability is usually linked to the need to use a wheelchair because of a spinal cord injury or limb impairment. This might get you wondering about what exactly the definition of disability is, how do we usually understand it and…
The world lost a woman yesterday.A boy lost his grandmother, three people lost their mother and a man lost his wife.This woman was a pistol, tough and strong and a force to be reckoned with.I grew up with her tales of adventure, living overseas while young and newly married, her husband in the military.I learned of a day in 1929 when this girl took a shoebox of money she was saving to the bank, to…
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear” , Mark Twain Neuroscientists can now tell us amazing things about the brain, they are the experts on the nervous system. The argument that there is or is not a ‘mind’ is no longer relevant. A mind without a brain and a brain without a nervous system are not feasible. It is the mind that alerts us to fear, which may or not be…