Fibromyalgia - The Invisible Disorder

Fibromyalgia or Fibromyalgia Syndrome as it is often called, is a disorder that shows no physical characteristics, therefore goes unnoticed and possibly not recognized as plausible, but to the individual who has been diagnosed, it is very real. Fibromyalgia affects a small percentage of people, (2% to 4%), and of that small percentage, women are the majority.

Fibromyalgia is the feeling of widespread pain, even pain from a light touch to the body. Thankfully it is not a life-threatening disease but can become very severe as the symptoms can worsen or flare up at any given time, even from day to day. Many sufferers of Fibromyalgia also exhibit some of the same symptoms as those with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome such as stiffness, fatigue, IBS and insomnia. There are times when it is difficult for those diagnosed to be functional due to the pain involved in performing simple day-to-day tasks.

It is believed that Fibromyalgia is a condition related to how the brain processes pain. There have been studies performed on diagnosed patients that did show some abnormalities of brain function which had to do with blood flow. If the blood flow was above normal it affected how the pain was felt and if there was below normal blood flow it affected how the patient dealt emotionally with the pain.

Because Fibromyalgia is not a specific disease, rather a cluster of individual problems each with their own characteristics, it is not easily diagnosed. This is also not something that can be detected by any testing done in a lab or by X-ray, thus the term “invisible syndrome”.