Lane County Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia Support Group

Fibromyalgia (FM, FMS) is a chronic pain disorder characterized by widespread pain throughout the body and problems with chronic fatigue, unrefreshing sleep, morning stiffness, cognitive difficulties, exercise intolerance, sensory sensitivity, numbness, tingling, and burning sensations in various parts of the body and impaired coordination, among other symptoms. Patients with fibromyalgia have pain amplification: they feel non-painful stimulus as painful (allodynia) and feel mildly painful stimulus as extremely painful (hyperanalgesia).  This is not a psychiatric condition, but a central nervous system dysfunction₁.
Although fibromyalgia is increasingly recognized as a neuroendocrine condition, for the most part it is still diagnosed and treated by rheumatologists.  The American College of Rheumatology's guidelines for the diagnosis of fibromyalgia is that the patient should have widespread pain in all four quadrants of the body for a minimum duration of three months and tenderness or pain in at least 11 of the 18 specified tender points when pressure is applied.  Most healthy individuals experience pain in only a small number of tender points in response to this test.  This test is not definitive, as it is possible to have fibromyalgia with less than 11 out of 18 tender points_2.  Fibromyalgia is NOT a diagnosis of exclusion, and it is possible to have fibromyalgia with CFIDS or other chronic illnesses. Approximately 70% of people with fibromyalgia meet the diagnostic criteria for CFIDS.

The symptoms of fibromyalgia are highly variable and fluctuate in severity, complicating treatment and the ill person’s ability to cope with the illness.  Like CFIDS, most symptoms are invisible.  Also like CFIDS, most fibromyalgia patients have a variety of co-morbid conditions, such as migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, irritable bladder, chronic pelvic pain issues, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, dysautonomia, TMJ, restless leg syndrome, and others.  Fibromyalgia, like CFIDS, has been shown to onset after physical trauma (accidents - particularly car accidents or other trauma involving the neck and upper back, surgery), illnesses of many kinds (sinus infections, mono, unknown viral infections, bacterial infections), and childbirth.  Often though, symptoms appear with no preceding event, and there is no evidence that any one particular event causes fibromyalgia. 

As with CFIDS, although many people with fibromyalgia have anxiety or depression, there is not a higher rate of psychiatric disorders pre-diagnosis than in the general population.  There are numerous detectable abnormalities in fibromyalgia patients, including central nervous system abnormalities visible on SPECT imaging, a three times higher rate of substance P (a neurotransmitter that lowers the pain threshold) in the cerebrospinal fluid₃, immune system abnormalities4_,accelerated loss of grey brain matter₅, and other neurological and endocrine abnormalities.