A new study debunks the myth that fibromyalgia is all in the patient’s head. Fibromyalgia has been a mysterious disease, causing pain throughout the body and deep tissues with no apparent cause.
People always say that it is in people’s heads, but research has found that the pain is actually in your skin, NOT in your head! A large proportion of the medical community has believed that the disease was psychosomatic and people essentially think that they are in pain. But a small biopharmaceutical company, Intidyn, or Integrated Tissue Dynamics, has found what they believe to be the root cause of the disease.
Researchers from the company and from Albany Medical College have found that there is a unique neurovascular structure, or blood flow to the nerves, in the skin of female patients who reported pain from fibromyalgia. This, the scientists believe, may be the ultimate cause of the pain experienced in the condition.
“Instead of being in the brain, the pathology consists of excessive sensory nerve fibers around specialized blood vessel structures located in the palms of the hands,” said Dr. Frank L. Rice, president of Intidyn and the senior researcher on the study, in a press statement.
These fibers in the skin can cause blood flow and control the dilation and constriction of vessels to regulate body temperature, Rice says, as well as direct nutrients to muscles during exercise. Women have more fibers than men, he says, perhaps explaining why they are much more likely to get the disease.
“Blood vessel nerve fibers are an important target that haven’t been in our line of thinking to date in chronic pain conditions,” says Rice. “This poorly managed blood flow can be the source of discomfort and muscle aches and sense of fatigue, presumably due to the accumulation of lactic acid and low levels of inflammation in patients with fibromyalgia. This, in turn, can contribute to hyperactivity in the brain.”
This news is outstanding! Rice and Oaklander are hopeful that this will lead to better treatments, which are now little more than antidepressants and painkillers. Which, of course, just masks the pain instead of actually treating the problem.
“When there is something that does not fit into their understanding, some doctors underestimate their patients and tell them that they are crazy. The prescription of SSRIS against fibromyalgia is not the answer, it was nothing more than a lobotomy or hysterectomy,” says one of the scientists involved in the study.
If you are or know somebody who is suffering from the disease, I truly hope this made your day just a little bit brighter. Please share this and get the information around.