Celebrate the resilience of Fibromyalgia warriors, sharing stories of strength, tips for managing symptoms, and resources for support and empowerment.
The anti-malarial drug lowers cholesterol and blood sugar makes blood less sticky, which is good for reducing blood clots and heart attack risk. If you take the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) as part of your treatment for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis (RA), you may be getting cardiovascular protection as an added bonus. That’s welcome news because it’s estimated that about half of lupus patients experience heart complications, and heart attacks occur at younger ages in…
Screening is important because silent hepatitis B and C infections can spring to life when you start biologics or new synthetic DMARDs. Before you start taking a biologic drug or one of the new targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), several screening tests are recommended. These include tests to see whether you have hepatitis B or C in your body that isn’t causing symptoms but might be reactivated after you start these powerful immune-suppressing drugs.…
As the temperature increased, so did the risk of rash, joint inflammation, kidney problems, and other lupus symptoms. Shifts in weather patterns have long been associated with a variety of health ailments, from seasonal allergies to migraine and joint pain. Now a new study suggests that changes in the outdoor environment may make people who have lupus more susceptible to flare-ups of specific symptoms. The study, presented at the 2019 American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology…
New data compares what happens when the dosage of DMARDs such as methotrexate is tapered or kept steady. For most rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, sustained remission (inactive disease) is the goal of taking methotrexate or biologic DMARDS to manage their disease. However, what to do after reaching that goal hasn’t been clear. Should RA patients stick with the medication dose that’s working or gradually taper the dose — and thus lessen both the expense of…
Although biologics cross the placenta, research shows they lead to few infections in babies after they’re born. The prospect of pregnancy can be daunting for women with inflammatory arthritis. Not only can disease flares occur, but a host of medications — including the commonly prescribed methotrexate — are off-limits because of concerns about birth defects and complications. There’s also a worrisome information gap on the effects of many medications during pregnancy, since pregnant women are…
Surprisingly, stronger opioids were the worst at relieving pain in a new multi-study analysis. Despite concerns about safety and addiction, lots of people with osteoarthritis (OA) take opioids to address their chronic pain. A recent study in Sweden, for example, revealed that one in four patients with OA had been prescribed an opioid in the previous year — despite the fact that the drugs aren’t on the list of recommended treatments except in extreme circumstances…
“This may have implications for management decisions beyond treating to disease activity targets alone.” Pain and inflammation often go hand in hand, especially for people with inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). So it logically follows that when inflammatory markers decrease, less pain would follow. But according to a new study that isn’t always the case. The study, which was presented at the 2019 2019 American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals Annual Meeting…
And a few factors seemed to be responsible, including being obese and also having fibromyalgia. When most people think about rheumatoid arthritis (RA), they focus on joint pain, swelling, and stiffness. While those issues are certainly common, they tend to co-exist with another symptom — overwhelming fatigue — that can be harder for friends and family to understand. Click Here to Visit the Store and find Much More…. Fatigue is more than being a little…
‘Art enables me to face my body and my life with courage.’ Chronic 24/7 pain, fatigue, swelling, and a host of other symptoms are all part of my journey with rheumatoid arthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions I’ve been living with for years. I’ve loved drawing since I was a child, and after my RA diagnosis in 2011, I started to create art more regularly. As my diseases progressed and multiplied, my…
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…