Introduction
Fibromyalgia is a body disorder characterized by severe pain in the muscles and connective tissues. It makes one feel pain when touched on the affected area. Other characteristics of the disorder include stiffness of body joints, lack of sleep, and general body fatigue although in addition to these symptoms an affected person may also experience difficulties when swallowing and dysfunction of the bowel and the bladder (Wallace, 2000).
Sometimes an individual may experience cognitive problems and the level of anxiety also increases. It should however be noted that the disorder is not considered to be a disease because its diagnosis is not subjected to any laboratory test. Today, the term ‘Fibromyalgia Syndrome’ is commonly used o refer to the disorder. The name came after it was discovered that Fibromyalgia has more to it than ordinary pain. Nonetheless, not everybody who suffers from the disorder exhibits all these characteristics of Fibromyalgia.
Main body
This disorder makes a person feel generally tired, pains in the face, headaches in the morning, and may at times lead to poor memory and a problem in thinking and lack of concentration. A person suffering will also exhibit an abnormally low speed in the course of executing his or her duties. A person may also have pains in the eyes; he or she may develop poor sight characterized by blurred vision, poor visual clarity, being over sensitive to light (Lurie, 1990).
As a consequence, fibromyalgic people who use sight glasses will be forced to change to new ones every now and then. It is not clear yet as to what causes fibromyalgia and it is believed that anybody can get it (Lurie, 1990). The disorder is very common among women in there mid-years. It is also common among people suffering from autoimmune disorders like arthritis and rheumatoid. Since there is no known cure for Fibromyalgia, medics can only give the affected tips on how to manage the symptoms such as doing a lot of physical exercises (Lurie, 1990).
Recent research indicates that stress plays a crucial role in the development of the disorder. It leads to disruption in the functioning of hippocampus. An experiment carried on some apes indicated that stress leads to changes in some tissues of the brain such as the atrophic tissue and eventually leads to Fibromyalgia (Glass, 2006).
One of the theories that try to explain the disorder is ‘Dopamine’. This theory asserts that the symptoms of fibromyalgia arise from a disturbance of the normal neurotransmission which is usually dopamine-related. This condition is known as hyperdopaminergic (Glass, 2006). Dopamine has a central role in perceiving pain. When dopamine is fully active, one is usually over-sensitive to pain and vise versa.
Another theory that explains the phenomenon asserts that fibromyalgia symptoms that are brought about by stress and associated with the hypothalamus may contribute to lack of sleep and consequently to low production of Human Growth Hormone (Lurie, 1990). This mostly happens during slow-wave sleep. A person suffering from fibromyalgia usually experiences a low production of the hormone.
It has also been evidently determined that depression is associated with the disorder though the degree of there association is not clearly known. In a test, there was found to be something in common in the levels of abnormality of neuroendocrine in both fibromyalgia and depression. Even though, it can not be conclusively be said that fibromyalgia and depression mean the same thing and are not therefore substitutes of one another (Wallace, 2000).
Sensitivity to pain usually has two dimensions. These dimensions are the sensory and the affective-motivation respectively. The first dimension deals with the processing of the pain’s magnitude and the second deals with the processing of the unpleasantness brought about by the pain (Lurie, 1990). This is the psychological aspect related to fibromyalgia. Frequent disruption of stage four of sleep leads to pain in the muscles after sometime; this is one of the symptoms of fibromyalgia. However, the muscle pains start subsiding when one resumes proper patterns of sleep free of disruptions.
Fibromyalgia victims have also been observed to be oversensitive to cold, stimulation resulting from chemicals, pressure and heat among some other things. The disruption of neuroendocrine, which is a feature observed in patients of the disorder is an element of a weak hypocortisolemia (Lurie, 1990). Research done in the recent past shows that the disorder is an attribute of an abnormality in the central nervous system that have affected some regions of the brain responsible for detecting pain (Lurie, 1990 ).
Conclusion
There is no established cure for the disorder and therefore the only treatment that is given is the management of pain strategies, intervention in ones behavior and undertaking a lot of exercises. Sometimes, medical prescriptions are also given to ease the pain. Prescribed medications involve the use of drugs that control seizure otherwise known as Anti-seizure such as pregabalin and gabapentine (Lurie, 1990).
References
Glass J,M. (2006).Cognitive dysfunction in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome: New trends and future directions, Cornell University.
Lurie M,et.al (1990). Respiratory function in chronic primary fibromyalgia. New York.
Wallace D,J. et.al. (2002). Fibromyalgia: the gastrointestinal link. Los Angeles.