The answer to “What causes Fibromyalgia?” certainly isn’t a clear cut one. Consult with your doctor to help find a pattern or talk about what was going on in your life at the time that you got sick. There are several different theories about what causes this. Finding this out is the key to your fibromyalgia relief. After researching each theory I was able to better understand where my particular fibromyalgia may have come from.
Pain Signals:
In layman’s terms there may be something wrong with the pain receptors in the brain where they go on a constant loop of being in pain. This theory also involves neurotransmitters. The idea of neurotransmitters has gained in popularity in the past few years especially now that Lyrica is on the market. Whether the medication works for you or not it has worked well in providing information to the general public about the treatment and possible causes of this disease.
Genetics:
Fibromyalgia often occurs in women and sometimes it seems to run in the family. Naysayers of this theory have said that possibly it is because women in families usually will have the same experiences and environment which is why more than one of them would get sick. Make sure that your doctor knows about anyone else in your family with this illness. While I don’t understand the complicated field of genetics I do know that I was the first person in my family and extended family to get this. Recently another family member has been diagnosed.
Trauma:
When I was diagnosed in the 1990s the common thinking was that it was either a stress disorder or it somehow came on after trauma. This doesn’t mean that the disease isn’t real. The trauma somehow engages the central nervous system and neurons. Around this time there was a study of over 2000 patients and 65% of them got fibromyalgia after some sort of trauma.
This could include being hurt on the job or being in a car crash. It also states that it’s possible that the pain starts wherever the person was hurt and then kind of radiates throughout the entire body.
This doesn’t seem to have been the case in my situation. It just randomly showed up on a day when I was happy and feeling relatively well. I have been in a car crash but it was after I got sick.
Autoimmune Disorders:
When I was diagnosed 15 years ago there was a tendency to think of this as an autoimmune disease. Many people theorized it was close to arthritis. This is basically where the immune system attacks healthy parts of the body because they are viewed as a threat. While it hasn’t totally been disproven it’s a theory that is coming up less and less.
The Sleep Theory:
When participating in a sleep study many fibromyalgia patients will find out that they don’t actually get into a stage of deep sleep no matter how long they sleep. This could either be a cause or a symptom of the disease. It’s the stage four restorative sleep that’s missing so it makes sense that this could also attribute to or even cause widespread pain.
My personal experience has been that this is the case. My symptoms always get much worse when I don’t sleep well. Was my insomnia that never responded that well to any medications or natural treatment the reason I got sick? I don’t know, but I do know that it is a major factor in my day to day life now.
My non-medical opinion is that it could be a combination of all of these things that set off the central nervous system. Hopefully in the next few years research will develop more and we’ll finally be able to answer, “What causes fibromyalgia?”