Truth of Fibromyalgia

Truth of Fibromyalgia

By: Bridget Ishmael

We as a society are at a mecca of diseases and syndromes overtaking our world. What if one day you woke up in pain and couldn’t move to go to the bathroom, hours later you finally found the strength to get up out of the bed. What if you got up to go to work found yourself in intense pains all over your body, you had to leave work early due to the fatigue you were feeling? From there you go home and try to sleep it off, only to find yourself in a non-restful state. Down the road things don’t get better, they get worse. Only now you start forgetting words or conversations, headaches have become regular, pelvic pain increases, you obtain skin rashes, and as a result depression or anxiety step in. It’s gotten to the point where there's a need to search for help, and find what the underlying cause may be. You go to the doctor tell them the symptoms that have been going on for months and months. The Doctor tells you “This sounds like Fibromyalgia, and there is no cure. We can help with the pain with with medications, but you will never fully heal from this disease,” behind your doctor's mind is the thought that this is a made up disease and its all in the patients head. So you do as the doctor prescribes and giving your best to move forward in a low quality of life with no added answers.

To truly understand Fibromyalgia we must understand the Muscular System. The Muscular System is a organ system consisting of skeletal, smooth and cardiac muscles. It promotes movement of the body, maintains posture, and circulates blood throughout the body. The Skeletal Muscular System is our primary focus when looking into Fibromyalgia Syndrome. Skeletal muscles are voluntary muscles that attach to the bones and nervous system. The skeletal muscles are complete with muscular tissue, connective tissue, nervous tissue, and blood vessels. Within the skeletal muscles we have muscle cells.

Muscle cells are romantically activated myosin and actin, also known as our long beloved drama Romeo and Juliet. Actin and Myosin are proteins that convert into chemical energy adding active ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) generating energy, and a force of movement; also known as romance. This changes chemical potential energy to mechanical energy, done by two things called contracting and relaxing. Did you know there are more than 600 muscles in the body? Muscle could essentially be considered its own organ consisting of muscle tissue, connective tissue, blood vessels, and nerve fibers becoming constant energy hogs. Due to having our muscle being energy hogs, each one is made up with its own personal nerve that stimulates contraction, including its very own artery and vein. This gives all the blood, oxygen, and nutrients the muscles needed to operate.

The anatomy of a skeletal muscle consists of fibers upon fibers, and layers on top of layers. Skeletal muscle is like a very sturdy piece of rope, filled with thousands of myofibrils, thick protein filaments, composed of our romantic couple mentioned earlier myosin and actin. Myofibrils are inside the muscle cell containing the muscle fiber. Those muscle cells have multiple nuclei, sarcolemma (translucent tubular sheath), mitochondria (your energy producer), and cellular membrane called sarcolemma. All that muscle cells form larger string like cells called Fascicles, which combine to form the overall muscle organ like the deltoid, making a sturdy yet flexible outcome.

Every muscle contains emplisium, perimysium, and endomysium also known as connective tissue creating a round tissue form. Now it's time to move, how do we do that? The answer is proteins. Proteins enjoy changing shape when stuff binds to them, also changing shapes allows our proteins to bind or unbind with other stuff. Those tiny fibers we know as myofibrils are segmented into tiny spaghetti lengths called sarcomere. Sarcomere contains even smaller myofilaments called actin and myosin, our romantic Romeo and Juliet story. How do our Romeo and Juliet stars finally collide together, thought you would never ask. Actin is thin strands and Myosin is thicker lumpy looking strands, then we have sarcomeres which are separated by what we call Z lines (filaments) creating a strip like appearance. Sarcomeres contract bringing Z lines closer together when used.

Now the romance, actin and myosin do not touch but they really want to, making this a star crossed lover dance. Myosin wants to get as close to actin as possible, but to do this myosin must get past the bodyguards called tropomyosin and troponin. With a little bit of ATP (molecular currency) and calcium those bodyguards can be bought off to let go, allowing the myosin to finally attach to actin. With mitochondria, a constant source that creates our ATP, and sarcoplasmic reticulum loaded with calcium pumps, we can utilize these to help our star crossed lovers connect. Say you want to move your arm, the brain sends a signal with neurons until it synapsis with the muscles in the arm. Those channels of synapsis open up and create a rush of sodium into the cells, creating an action potential. The action potential leaks into the sacolema membrane, which has a lot of tubes into the cell called T-tubules. The action potential sends down synapsis into the T-tubules eventually triggering the voltage sensitive proteins that are linked to the calcium channels in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Now the calcium finally rushes into the cell and myosin can finally reach out to actin, which by now myosin is so very ready to be apart of this romantic dance.

Troponin binds to calcium causing a pull on tropomyosin, pulling up the link all together. ATP connects to myosin and myosin slingshots its way to actin, releasing all the stored energy, then shrinks the whole sarcomere creating our sliding contraction. The myosin then takes a turn and releases its ATP and unbinds, making our romance of myosin and actin a true Shakespearean drama. New ATP comes in to take myosins place. Myosin then breaks down and retains a new

ADP getting ready for it’s next romantic story, this repeats itself thousands times per minute, making the myosin and actin love story a constant constituent. Now we know how the muscles are creating the contracting and releasing protocall we can understand how the neurons connect to the muscles and create movement.

What does this have to do with Fibromyalgia? The word Fibro comes from the connective tissue muscle, and Myalgia is another word for pain. Fibromyalgia is a long term or chronic disorder, associated with widespread pain in the muscles and bones, areas of tenderness, and fatigue. Fibromyalgia patients commonly have at least thirteen out of nineteen trigger points. This controversial disease comes with its own contingencies. The controversy for years with Fibromyalgia was due because no causes were found with this disease, doctors came to believe that this disease was usually made up in the patient's mind. Recent findings say otherwise.

Prevalence of Rheumatic Disorders in the United States alone are at a all time high. FIbromyalgia being one of them, what was once a uncommon or unnoticed disease is now affecting five million in the US alone. That is 2%-8% off the earth's population, making sixteen million people around the world affected from Fibromyalgia Syndrome. This deemed psychosis syndrome has multiple symptoms including widespread pain, fatigue, and non-restful sleep, which are the top three symptoms. To be properly diagnosed you have to have twelve out of nineteen trigger points affected, since there is no way to properly test for this disease we must rely on what the patient is experiencing. Among pain and fatigue there is also cognitive difficulties, headaches, TMJ pain, chest pain, irritable bowel syndrome or IBS, pelvic pain, numbness and tingling, skin rashes, skin sensitivity, chemical sensitivity, vision problems, urinary problems, depression, and anxiety. What is the cause of Fibromyalgia? Is it real? Where does the pain come from? What is the prognosis? What can we do to treat it?

Is Fibromyalgia real? This is a very real disease and just now only being proven and known about. Its cause comes from abnormalities in the endocrine and nervous system. The overactive autonomic nervous system induces large amounts of hormones that sensitize pain receptors, causing pain and tenderness. Muscle tissue abnormalities may be contributing due to disturbance in the endocrine system, and musculoskeletal pain may be caused from the central nervous system. Fibromyalgia also is caused by trauma whether emotional, physical, or mental trauma we as health professionals must do our best to treat our patients no matter what the reasoning may be. Genetics also have a role in what may be a contributing factor in this disease. Now that we have an idea of where this disease comes from and how the muscular skeletal system works we can now treat our patients.

Since most of the Fibromyalgia patients are women, although there are men and younger children affected, we must look at how to treat this syndrome. Traditional medicine has various ways to help treat patients with this painful disease. The treatment status proco is medications. Medications like antidepressants which help hit the nerve signals of pain receptors, dual reuptake inhibitors like Cymbalta, Effexor, and Savella are commonly prescribed. Cymbalta is a anti depressant and anxiety medicine with duloxetine to help nerve pain receptors, side effect include dry mouth, nausea, constipation, dizziness and lightheadedness, rise of blood pressure, decreased sexual ability, muscle cramps, weakness, serotonin syndrome and toxicity. Effexor and Savella (more commonly used for Fibromyalgia) are also similar in treatments and side effects. Other medications include gabapentin, pregabalin, cyclobenzaprine, tramadol, nsaids (advil), corticosteroids, benzodiazepines (ambien), and opiates. Traditional medicine has made is so the patients can function with lower or high doses of medications. Most patients end up taking at least five or more medicines due to other side effects of medications. Other recommendations like exercise, and diet are added to aid symptoms of Fibromyalgia. These are just some the of practices used to help, but what if there is a better way to treat and diagnose this disease.

What if the real cause of Fibromyalgia is posture and diet. My hypothesis is that elongated poor posture and poor diet are the root cause of Fibromyalgia. Elongated poor posture can cause stress in muscle soreness, muscle tightness, fatigue, chronic pain, damaged spine, increased depression, digestive problems, headaches, increase stress, nerves become constricted causing pinching of nerve pain. Bad posture can cause pain some days worse than others, just like those suffering from Fibromyalgia. According to an article Neck Posture a Key to Pain Relief, Joann Brayden (1998) quotes Dr. Gordon “Fatigue or disuse of these muscles causes the characteristic poor posture of fibromyalgia patients. Dr. Gordon quoted from a 1985 study by Friction et al that found these abnormal postures common in patients with FMS, Myofascial Pain Syndrome, and Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction: poor standing and sitting position (96 percent), forward head posture (85 percent), and forward and rounded shoulders (82 percent). Dr. Gordon said that these are all at least partially due to the fatigue of the small muscles that hold up the head.” Looking at this research we must take poor posture into consideration when looking at Fibromyalgia. With more and more desk jobs, texting, and low activity lifestyles we can see that posture has a lot do to do with these symptoms.

We’ve seen what bad posture can do to the human nervous system and the connectors, now what about diet? Although the government does not support food a natural remedy or that it may even have a contributing factor in Fibromyalgia, there are arguments that it does make a difference. Obesity is prevalent in FMS patients consisting of 30 to 50 percent of patients. People with obesity have side effects consisting of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, joint pain, sleep apnea, cancer, cardiovascular disease, psychological problems, neurological problems, depression, headache, circulatory issues, musculoskeletal problems, gastrointestinal amongst many other problems and symptoms that arise. Nutrition for Fibromyalgia may include Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) helps with cell damage, antioxidant that helps protect our cells sending messages from our brain neurons that help move our muscles, activating our romantic couple myosin and actin. Food that you can get CoQ10 from is fish and meats, oils, nuts and seeds, also comes in supplement form. D-Ribose an organic compound produced by the body also a simple sugar containing vitamin B2, you can find this in plant and organic grass fed meats. Fibromyalgia shows that diet helps relieve or reverse symptoms and side effects; this shows that diet is everything.

With all of these alternative practices mixed with traditional medicine we can be confident that one day this complex and controversial disease will have remedies for those that suffer from Fibromyalgia. Despite the tramas involved in causing this disease, we now have tools to counteract our poor musculoskeletal and nervous system alike . Change in diet, exercise, and mind we can solve most of our worlds diseases and reverse effects that these disease hurt in our daily lives. Creating our own romantic story of a healthy life and longevity therein.

References:

Second Edition:

Anatomy and Physiology: For Health Professionals

Chapter 9 Muscular System

Article:

Neck Posture a Key to Pain Relief

Brayden,Joann

Seattle, February 13, 1997

Website

Fibromyalgia Causes

Kowlowitz, Edward J. MD

https://www.spineuniverse.com/conditions/fibromyalgia/fibromyalgia-causes

Website:

Fibromyalgia Mayo Clinic

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/fibromyalgia/symptoms-causes/syc-20354780

Fibromyalgia and Diet: A Beginner's Guide to Natural Treatment

Leech, Joe Dietitine

December, 6 2017

Video:

How to Reverse Fibromyalgia

Bergman, Dr. John

April 4, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY49nmHaano