A detailed guide to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), including its symptoms, causes, and effective treatment strategies to improve energy and well-being.
No matter who you talk to in the chronic pain, arthritis, and musculoskeletal disease community — patients, clinicians, researchers, public health experts — medical marijuana is controversial. Is it safe? Is it effective for treating pain and inflammation? Should it be legal? While more clinical trials are sorely needed to understand the benefits and side effects of using medical marijuana to treat conditions like arthritis, it’s important to understand how patients think about and use…
Methotrexate (MTX) is considered a “first-line” therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and is also used to treat psoriatic arthritis (PsA). But despite the well-known benefits of helping to reduce symptoms and prevent disease progression, methotrexate has a very mixed reputation among arthritis patients. Perhaps because MTX is so commonly prescribed, many inflammatory arthritis patients start to worry about whether or not they’ll have to take it almost as soon as they’re diagnosed. “For anyone with…
One of the main reasons people with arthritis visit the rheumatologist frequently — every three months is common among patients with inflammatory arthritis — is for doctors and patients to assess how arthritis patients are managing their disease. Typical check-ins may include a doctor’s physical exam and assessment as well as reviewing the results of blood tests and imaging tests. What’s also critical at these visits is something arthritis researchers and doctors call PROs, or…
Fibromyalgia and lupus are both chronic diseases with no cure, can both cause some similar symptoms, and can both take a long time to get the right diagnosis. But fibromyalgia — often called fibro — and lupus are two very distinct health conditions with very different causes and treatments, despite having some features in common. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder that involves widespread inflammation and impacts many organs throughout the body. Fibromyalgia a disorder that…
If you’ve had a nagging sore throat, your doctor may take a swab to check for strep. If you’re suffering from a high fever and bad cough, your doctor may order a chest X-ray to look for pneumonia. But not all diagnoses are that straightforward. Case in point: Fibromyalgia, a condition that causes widespread chronic pain — as well as fatigue, sleep disturbances, and cognitive difficulties — is often challenging for a physician to pinpoint.…
When you think of arthritis, you might think of creaky knees, stiff hips, or painful, swollen fingers. Yes, arthritis commonly attacks joints in the hands, knees, and hips. But it can happen anywhere you have joints — including the toes. So, if you can’t bend your big toe or have swelling around your toes, this toe pain may be caused by arthritis too. Toe arthritis can be caused by wear and tear of the cartilage…
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, fibromylagia 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…
If you have ankylosing spondylitis or psoriatic arthritis, you may be familiar with the pain of enthesitis, an inflammation where tendons and ligaments attach to the bone — even if you aren’t aware it has a name. “I didn’t know what it was called!” Monica D. told us on Facebook. “I have pain all the time. Makes it difficult to walk very far.” What Is Enthesitis? “Enthesitis is inflammation of the ‘enthesis,’ which is where…
Fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis are both chronic diseases with no cure. Fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis can both cause some of the same symptoms. They can both take a long time to get the right diagnosis. They’re both more common in women. But fibromyalgia — often called “fibro” — and multiple sclerosis (MS) are two very distinct health conditions with very different causes and treatments, despite having some features in common. Read on to find out…
When you think of arthritis, you might think of creaky knees or painful, swollen fingers. But if your wrist is feeling swollen and stiff, this wrist pain may be caused by arthritis too. The wrist is a complex joint that connects the hand to the forearm. It is formed by the two bones of the forearm — the radius and the ulna — and eight small carpal bones that sit between your fingers and your…