Guide To The Causes, Risk Factors, And Triggers For Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia is a debilitating syndrome that mainly affects an individual's soft tissue and muscle, resulting in pain throughout the body and mental distress. Classic fibromyalgia symptoms include stiffness and pain in the jaw, stiff joints and muscles, irregular sleep, painful menstruation, restless leg syndrome, concentration and memory problems, widespread pain, muscle tiredness, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, numbness and tingling in extremities, temperature sensitivity, and fatigue. A fibromyalgia diagnosis cannot be made based on any type of lab test. This disease is usually distinguished from others through means of eliminating other potential causes for an individual's symptoms, which must have been persistent for three months or longer. Treatment for fibromyalgia focuses on pain management and quality of life through self-care and medications. A change in diet is also often used in the treatment of this disease. While the causes of fibromyalgia are not entirely clear, there are numerous risk factors and triggers for the disease. Learn about them now.

Emotional Or Physical Trauma

Emotional or physical trauma can cause the development of fibromyalgia and trigger symptom flare-ups. The mechanism behind this is associated with the affected individual's hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Emotional stressors can cause the physiological stress response to become activated, and lead to the delivery of sensory input information to the brain. Repeated and excessive stimulation of the functional units of this response in an individual can cause their effector systems to become more sensitive. Greater sensitivity causes alternative or less significant stressors to activate the stress response easily.

The combination of the stress response, emotional reactions, physiological responses, and biological reactions that occur and interact with each other due to physical and emotional trauma can cause the development of fibromyalgia. Of the population of fibromyalgia patients, around half has existing post-traumatic stress disorder, and two-thirds of these individuals had developed fibromyalgia after the commencement of their PTSD. Some individuals may be at an increased risk of developing fibromyalgia due to the failure of certain psychological buffers to work effectively on emotional stress that is caused by everyday life events. Physical trauma contributes because it causes emotional stress. These mechanisms related to the patient's brain may primarily drive the chain of neurophysiological responses known to cause fibromyalgia.

Uncover more information on the causes, risk factors, and triggers for fibromyalgia now.