FIBROMYALGIA: any group of nonarticular rheumatic disorders characterized by pain, tenderness, and stiffness of muscles and associated connective tissue structures.
Fibromyalgia is a baffling disease characterized by chronic generalized muscle pain, stiffness, and weakness, which tends to be worse in the morning. It afflicts women ten times more frequently than men. Patients with the condition, which is very hard to diagnose, were once simply dismissed as neurotic. Fibromyalgia is now recognized as a medical syndrome, but the cause and cure still remain mysteries.
According to the Merck Manual, fibromyalgia may be induced or intensified by physical or mental stress, poor sleep, trauma, or exposure to dampness or cold and occasionally by a systemic, usually rheumatic, disorder. A viral or other systemic infection (eg, Lyme disease) may precipitate the syndrome. It is often associated with unrelated minor changes of vertebral osteoarthritis. Men are more likely to develop localized fibromyalgia in association with a particular occupational or recreational strain. Symptoms can be exacerbated by environmental or emotional stress or by an uncaring physician who gives the patient the message that it is "all in the head."
For unknown reasons, the muscles start making too much fibrin, the stuff the body uses to protect itself. The fibrin is what makes the muscles painful to the touch. Often physical pressure that doesn't hurt at the time is quite painful a couple of hours later. The condition usually begins when a person who is already under stress undergoes some further trauma -- the woman already run down with chronic fatigue or stress who gets in a car accident or has a bad fall -- prompting the body to overreact in producing its protective fibrin.
CONVENTIONAL TREATMENT: Until recently, conventional treatment was symptomatic, with analgesics, antidepressants, anesthetics, or corticosteroids -- drugs that merely mask or suppress the problem without addressing the underlying cause. Recently, drug treatment has been developed involving glycerol glycolate, the main ingredient in Robitussin cough syrup. Taken in very high doses over a long period of time, the drug dries up the fluids in the body and stops fibrin production. One problem is its side effects, which can be more daunting than the disease. Another problem is that for a large percentage of patients it does not work. It is also an expensive and lengthy therapy that has to be used daily. If you skip a day or two, you're back to where you started. Still, it does work for some people.
HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT: British studies have shown that the homeopathic remedy Rhus tox is effective in reducing the pain of fibromyalgia.
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