Undercover Fibromyalgia: Why is all my bones, muscles, and/or skin hurting?

Overview of the stress syndrome

“Doc!! It is not my joints, literally every point in me is hurting and aching. I have a lot of things I cannot explain. My stomach hurts. I have constipation AND diarrhea. My head hurts. It’s hard to pee. At times out of the blue I feel scared, and it gets hard to breathe. I cannot focus. I am forgetful. I feel foggy. I am so tired.” Rheumatologists call what you have fibromyalgia. Gastroenterologists call it irritable bowel syndrome. Cardiologists call them panic attacks. As you notice all diagnosis here are descriptive. Just finding a word that tells you what the symptoms are but not why. When we explain these issues to medical students, we tell them these are FUNCTIONAL disorders. Meaning that if you probe and poke on the patient you cannot see a distorted look on the biology of the organ. For example, the gastroenterologist would put a tube with a camera through your mouth (endoscopy) and another through the other end of the bowel (colonoscopy) and look at your food pathway and cannot find any redness or anything that can EXPLAIN your symptoms. Maybe the doc will find some polyps, but they do not explain your symptoms. Let us know dig more into fibromyalgia and functional syndromes/symptoms.

More on functional mumbo jumbo

“What is this functional mumbo jumbo. Are you telling me doc that I am imagining?” not you are NOT imagining. You are having these issues. The good news is that these issues in themselves will not permanently harm you or your organs UNLESS you allow it. What I will say now might be somewhat controversial but subliminally agreed between health care providers. YOU CAN INDUCE SYMPTOMS BY STRESS AND HOW YOU DEAL WITH IT. When I say stress, I mean any stress. Physical(work), medical(diabetes), psychological (depression, schizophrenia), and social (death, accidents, annoying significant other). What I am saying first is you need to find out if you have this fibromyalgia thing. I prefer to call it “heightened alert disorder”. What do I mean by that? I mean that because of some sort of stress in your body, I speculate your nervous system cannot handle the stress it is going through, so it offloads that stress into other systems. It can offload it to the stomach, peripheral nerves, muscles, urinary bladder and others. You get the idea.

Example of functional symptoms

When your nervous system offloads this stress to bowels you get abdominal, constipation, and diarrhea. When it offloads to your heart it, the beats feel funny, and you feel them stronger – palpitations. When it offloads to muscles and joint, it makes you feel every bump or issue in them that the average person won’t be bothered by it or even feel at times. “Doc, I am worried I have lupus or cancer or thyroid disease. Well, each of these other diseases have different ways the symptoms present. Lupus joint pains are mainly associated with 2-3 hours morning stiffness. I do not mean the feeling stiffness, which confuses even seasoned docs at times. I mean INABILITY to close and open joints (such as hand joints) in the morning for 2-3 hours. “But doc I feel stiff all the time in my muscles”. Again, when I say stiffness, I mean the bending areas that is the joints. “But doc, my autoimmune work up is positive, and my primary provider said I have autoimmune”. I have another article on autoimmune labs, but long story short do NOT worry about them. “Doc, I was told I have had fibromyalgia for 10 years, maybe I will get lupus later as now I have positive ANA” well doctors have shown in research that rarely do fibromyalgia with positive ANA do develop autoimmune disease.

Digging deep for cause of your fibromyalgia stress

“Why I am feeling these feelings. What is my stress?” You tell me. Common stuff is common. Go to your primary provider and let them ask you a few questions. If they suspect something serious, let them do their homework. YOU ALSO DO YOU HOMEWORK. No, I do not mean to run to google randomly. The internet has tons of inaccurate information, hence this blog. Unfortunately, I have my face on a lupus magazine and when I read the symptoms mentioned in the magazine by the “medical writers” it says abdominal pain as lupus symptoms. My feelings were anger at myself and confusion. Going back to you. I mean dig into your life and sift through your life. What stresses you? Your job? Are you working 12 hour shifts for 16 years carting 200lb parcels from one corner to another? Are in you a high paced mentally demanding job dealing with volatile stocks? Have you had any psychological trauma as a child, young adult, or older adult? Did you have a car accident? Did a close friend die? Did you immigrate and have cultural shock? Do you sleep well, or do you linger on thinking about bad things?

Perception of fibromyalgia stresses

Regarding the last point, research has shown that even your body response is different depending on how you perceive stress. 2 people can be stressed the same way, and one looks at it as exciting things and their heart vessels will relax. Another will think about that stress as a mountain that cannot be climbed, and their blood vessels will spasm out. So please evaluate how do you think and deal with stress. If you are having issues with doing that, a clinical psychologist could help. These are people who got PHD in psychology and part of their PHD is seeing patients for cognitive behavioral therapy or psychoanalysis. If you are in America, call your insurance and ask if they cover such services. In future articles will discuss different ways to think and deal with fibromyalgia.

Wong F, Rodrigues A, Schmidt S, Vierck CJ, Mauderli AP -Pain research and treatment(2010)

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