Fibro-What? Discover the Condition Millions Suffer From and How to Treat It

Medical advancements in recent decades have brought significant developments for patients, including those who didn't even realize they were ill. That's precisely what we want to discuss. Until recently, conventional medicine didn't recognize extreme fatigue accompanied by symptoms like headaches and mood changes as a 'disease.'

Doctors used to assign little importance to these phenomena, if any at all. The treatment given to 'patients' suffering from these symptoms hardly addressed the real issue or its origin. However, as global reports increased, doctors began to understand that 'there's something to it' and started to take patient complaints seriously.

Today, this condition has a name—fibromyalgia (in Hebrew: muscular rheumatism). It's referred to as a 'syndrome' because typical muscle pain is often accompanied by various symptoms occurring simultaneously in the body. As a result, it creates confusion among many doctors who cannot easily diagnose it (since symptoms like migraines, fatigue, and depression can accompany other illnesses as well).

In medical terms, fibromyalgia is also called 'fibrositis,' meaning inflammation that can cause swelling, fever, skin irritation, redness, and severe pain. Since fibromyalgia affects muscles and their connections to bones, some patients tend to think it's a type of arthritis or inflammation and seek treatment based on their feelings.

In reality, since it doesn't cause joint deformities, fibromyalgia is not classified as a type of arthritis but leans more towards muscle and joint disorders (rheumatism).

Despite the perceptual shift in recent decades regarding the condition's legitimacy and diagnostic ability, the field is still lacking. Diagnosis primarily relies on patient reports rather than empirical and scientific evidence. As a result, doctors often underestimate the issue and dismiss the patient's complaints and feelings as unimportant or incorrect.

Disease Symptoms

1. Pain that can occur throughout the body or in specific areas like the neck, shoulders, or back. Patients describe the pain as a burning, paralyzing sensation, a kind of 'gnawing' inside. The pain may occur at varying intensities and times, changing based on physical activity, weather, sleep patterns, and stress levels.

Most patients describe the pain as persistent muscle ache that 'never lets go,' following them everywhere. Others report a flu-like feeling and continual sinus pain.

2. In regular medical examinations, most patients appear healthy externally, giving the impression of complaints without basis. The sensitivity is often discovered through a more meticulous examination focusing on body muscles. Conventional medical tools are relatively limited, so consulting a rheumatologist, who knows how to diagnose and confirm the sensitivity, is advisable.

3. Generalized muscle pain (presenting on both sides of the body simultaneously).

4. Excessive fatigue and sleep disturbances, including shortness of breath, light sleep, muscle contractions during sleep, frequent waking during the night, etc.

5. Chronic headaches

6. Extreme mood swings and frequent changes, with many patients reporting non-functionality due to deep sadness, difficulty concentrating, trouble with simple mental tasks, and more.

7. Numbness, tingling in various body parts (mainly hands, feet, arms, and face) that may indicate developing multiple sclerosis. This is why rheumatologists often refer fibromyalgia patients for tests to detect multiple sclerosis or other similar presenting diseases.

8. Depression and anxiety, though only about 25% of fibromyalgia patients reach this stage.

9. Cognitive and hormonal changes

10. Urinary system issues (rare but possible)

11. Eye hypersensitivity

12. Irritable bowel

13. Allergies

14. Functional disturbances in the nervous system

15. Excessive exercise

16. Chemical inhalation

Causes

The causes of the disease can be genetic but not necessarily. Sometimes it develops due to factors accelerating its development, such as physical or mental trauma, hormonal changes, irregular sleep, daily stress, various diseases, etc.

Incidentally, trauma includes flu that took time for the body to overcome, for example. Data from studies conducted over the past decade show that excessive physical activity can cause the body 'trauma' and unilateral muscle damage.

Diagnosis

As mentioned earlier, due to the inability to diagnose symptoms in a laboratory or X-ray, diagnosis is still relatively difficult but not impossible. A thorough examination of medical history and exclusion of other disturbances can trace the disease, allowing for accurate diagnosis. Moreover, after consulting a conventional doctor, it is advisable to have a second opinion from a rheumatologist specializing in diagnosing and treating the disease.