Fibromyalgia:
Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain condition characterized by widespread pain throughout the body. It affects twice as many women than men and it affects about 2% of the population or 4 million adults in the United States. Fibromyalgia can also be flared up by illnesses, physical trauma or emotional stress. According to the CDC, fibromyalgia symptoms can include:
- Musculoskeletal pain and stiffness, often through the entire body.
- Fatigue and tiredness.
- Depression and anxiety.
- Sleep issues.
- Memory, thinking or concentration issues.
- Tension headaches or migraines.
- Digestive issues (i.e. irritable bowel syndrome)
- Pain in the face or jaw.
- Tingling or numbness in the hands and feet.
What Causes Fibromyalgia?
The cause behind fibromyalgia is still uncertain, but the most researched theory behind fibromyalgia pain is that at some point in a person’s life, their nervous system changes in a way that this person experiences an increased sensitivity to pain. This can happen numerous ways, such as:
- One can have increased levels of chemicals that signal pain, resulting in inaccurate pain signals.
- Pain receptors develop a memory where they overreact to both painful and non-painful
- stimuli.
How can Chiropractic Treatment Help?
The nervous system coordinates and regulates the function of every tissue, organ and system in your body. As we saw, in the case of fibromyalgia patients, there’s an issue in the functioning of the nervous system that affects how your brain processes pain signals.
Chiropractic treatments are all about optimizing the communication of your nervous system. The aim is to correct vertebral misalignments that put pressure on the nerves that relay information to and from the brain. By removing this nerve interference, chiropractic adjustments can improve the functioning of your nervous system which in turn can help support people suffering from fibromyalgia. By restoring structural integrity, chiropractic care can also help to alleviate pain, increase range of motion and increase sleep in people who suffer from this chronic condition.
On the other hand, practice members who come in with fibromyalgia tend to be different from those coming in with typical neck pain or low back pain in the sense that they sometimes require us to modify their adjustment. Because people with fibromyalgia tend to have a lower threshold for pain signals, they tend to do better with a more specific and gentle adjustment.
If you want to learn more about how to manage fibromyalgia pain through conservative and alternative means, reach out to your local chiropractor!
