SymptomsComplaints
At the word Fibromyalgie syndrome can be derived that it concerns with the complaint picture a whole pot of most diverse symptom complexes. The expression of the different complaints is weighted differently for each patient. The onset of the disease is often at the end of the 20th century, the peak of the symptoms is often before and during the menopause (climacteric). In older patients, the symptoms are often dismissed as age-related and are therefore not investigated further.
Symptoms locomotor system
- Pulling, burning pain in the entire musculoskeletal system
- Pain intensification during physical or psychological stress
- Pain intensification at night and in the morning
- Morning stiffness and stiffness after prolonged sitting
- Loss of strength in the musculature
- Muscle cramps, especially at night and in the morning and after exercise
Symptoms nervous system
- Tiredness, after waking up as if you were tired
- Exhaustion
- Tingling or burning in the extremities, restless legs
- Problems of concentration
- Irritable stomach, irritable bowel, irritable bladder
- Tinitus (ringing in the ears)
- Dry mucous membranes
- Hypersensitivity to cold and wet
- Slightly elevated temperature
- Functional (non-organic) heart complaints
- Increased sweating with cold hands and feet
- Increased water retention (edema)
- Loss of libido (Declining sexual interest)
Psychological-eurological symptoms
- Anxiety, depression, mood swings
- Sensations like burning or tingling
- Muscular weakness
- balance disorders, double images
Causes
After a diffuse and unspecific onset of the disease, which is often characterized by persistent fatigue, sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal problems and pain in the spinal column, the full picture of the disease fibromyalgia develops after a few years with pulling pain in the back, shoulders, arms and legs and accompanying vegetative and/or neuropsychological symptoms = pain everywhere. Frequently the clinical picture does not worsen continuously, but increases in certain phases, e.g. after infectious diseases or severe physical and/or psychological stress. More severe pain attacks are replaced by lighter pain phases, small stimuli of various kinds (e.g. cold and wet, touch, stress) can cause major reactions, as the overall pain threshold is generally lowered when the sensitivity of the affected person is increased.
Physical and psychological stress seems to be an important trigger of the disease pattern. However, there are no tangible studies and data on this. The question of the hen and the egg remains.
Are the psychological stress triggers of fibromyalgia, or are fatigue and depression the result of constant pain. New findings offer an approach to explain the origin of pain. On the one hand, the strong pain sensations and hypersensitivity could be due to a disturbance in the brain‘s reward center and thus to a disturbed pain processing – pain is not sufficiently filtered in the brain and thus perceived excessively – and on the other hand, fibromyalgia seems to belong to the “small fiber neuropathies” in which the peripheral nerve fibers are damaged. In contrast to inflammatory rheumatic diseases (rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis), fibromyalgia does not lead to joint or other tissue destruction, but the disease often leads to increasing immobility (loss of physical fitness endurance, withdrawal with restrictions on recreational activities), which in turn leads to a considerable reduction in quality of life and often to the loss of employment.
