Fibromyalgia is a chronic illness that makes the patients frustrated. The symptoms of this disease are never-ending pains, muscle tightness, headaches, sleepless nights, day time fatigue, and depression. The patients suffering from this long-term illness are not able to perform their day-to-day activities proficiently. They faced lots of problems in performing their daily tasks. They need assistance to perform their normal day-to-day activities. Through medicines, these aches can be controlled. It is considered a disease in which the patient lives with pain. In some cases, patients suffer from muscle pain or some suffers from joint pain. It is very important to diagnose the specific pain which is troubling the patient.
7 major types of fibromyalgia pain
In most of the fibromyalgia patients, it has been seen that they suffered from 7 major types of pains. These types are discussed here:
Myofascial pain
Myofascial pain in simple words is widespread muscle pain. Stiff muscles are the reason for this kind of Pain. It hurts the patient all over the body. It is persistent, and causes severe pain in your muscles and soft tissues. In fibromyalgia, your muscles are shortened and become painful and tight in your whole body. These muscles are joined with your bones with the tendons via bony ropes. This tightness keeps pulling these tendons that results in the muscle and joint pains. The most complained muscles pains by the fibromyalgia patients are lower back pain, neck pain, and chest wall pain.
Allodynia
It is a type of pain which starts from a simple touch. It can be triggered with a slight or mild touch. The patient can suffer from this pain while wearing a dress or even a gentle or careful massage can hurt the patient badly. Massage therapy can make this pain worse. Some patients complain that this pain feels like a sunburn. This pain develops most of the times in the later stage of the fibromyalgia disease.
Neuropathic pain
This pain often comes in the fibromyalgia patients due to the nerve being pinched by tight muscles. This pinch compresses the joints they pass through. It is like the same that occurred in the carpal tunnel syndrome. With this nerve sensation patients feel the tingling, itching, crawling, burning, and numbness in legs and arms. In some situations it becomes painful. The best part of the neuropathic pain is that it never damage a patient’s nerve system. His nerve system works normally. It just only causes pain. There are various medicines are available in the market that can help the patients in decreasing this nerve pain or sensation.
Hyperalgesia
Fibromyalgia patients complain about hyperalgesia pain. It is a medical term that refers to the amplified pain. You can understand it with a simple example. If a normal person stabs his toe he will feel the pain for a few minutes. But in fibromyalgia patients, they will feel the pain for around 3 to 4 days. To reduce this pain there are medicines that can help the patient in managing his hyperalgesia pain. Drugs like antidepressants, muscle relaxants, analgesics, and anticonvulsants help to reduce the hyperalgesia.
Headaches
Headaches are very common in different illnesses. It is also common in fibromyalgia patients. The headaches are very terrible in this chronic illness. Fibromyalgia patients suffer from two types of headaches. One is tension headaches and other is a migraine. In the tension headaches, the patients feel a dull tightening pressure sensation that goes all around the head. It makes the patient nagging and uncomfortable. As compared to tension headaches migraine is more painful. It occurs on one side of your head and can be related to both sound and light sensitivity. Few fibromyalgia patients also affected with the migraine aura. It is a neurological disturbance that most of the times involve the vision changes. In this, patient see the things flashing or experienced the shimmering lights, zigzag lines, or kaleidoscopic shapes.
Abdominal and pelvic pain
There are more than 50 percent chances of the fibromyalgia patient to develop irritable bowel syndrome as compared to other people. This syndrome affects the digestive system and causes bloating and abdominal pain. Along with abdominal pain, they also suffer from pelvic pain. Most of the time, this pain comes from the bladder. These pains make the patient uncomfortable and irritated.
Joint pain
Fibromyalgia is a chronic illness that causes severe joint pains. Sensation, swelling, and aching in the joints are common in the patients. In joint pains, temporomandibular joint (TMJ) affects most of the people with fibromyalgia. This joint joins your jaw with your skull on both sides of your face. This pain is stated as a persistent and dull ache that move to the temple, ear, back of the neck, lower jaw, and around the eyes.
Bottom Line
Fibromyalgia is a chronic and long-term disease. Patients suffer from pains and they start to live with these pains. With medicines and treatment, these can be controlled but cannot be ended.
