Do you know and understand your fibromyalgia symptoms?
Fibromyalgia symptoms vary for everyone. This means that fibromyalgia can affect everyone differently and fighters will suffer differently. There are different pieces of fibromyalgia that many fighters feel:
Mild: Fibromyalgia patients will still hurt but relieve the pain and stiffness through stretching, exercise, and diet.
Moderate: Fibromyalgia patients hurt and have a harder time managing their chronic pain and other aliments through diet, exercise and rest.
Severe: Fibromyalgia patients deal with severe pain and definitely have a harder time to managing their fatigue, chronic pain, and stiffness. Usually these patients aren’t able to function normally or freely.
Some doctors may recognize the different levels of fibromyalgia, however many don’t. Many doctors treat fibromyalgia patients are treated the same and therefore many patients feel left abandoned and miss understood.
Fibromyalgia has many different symptoms as it is important to know them and your body. These symptoms of fibromyalgia include:
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Chronic muscle pain, muscle spasms or tightness
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Moderate or severe fatigue along with decreased energy
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Insomnia or waking up feeling just as tired as when you went to sleep (if you ever get to sleep)
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Stiffness upon waking or after staying in one position for too long
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Short term memory loss due to difficulty remembering, concentrating, and performing simple mental tasks ("fibro fog")
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Abdominal pain, bloating, nausea, and constipation alternating with diarrhea (irritable bowel syndrome)
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Tension or migraine headaches
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Jaw and facial tenderness
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Sensitivity to one or more of the following: odors, noise, bright lights, medications, certain foods, and weather (either cold/hot or both, also this includes rain)
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Feeling anxious or depressed
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Numbness or tingling in the face, arms, hands, legs, or feet
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Increase in urinary urgency or frequency (irritable bladder)
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Reduced tolerance for exercise and muscle pain after exercise
Most importantly, it’s also important to know that fibromyalgia symptoms will intensify for some depending on the time of day. Normally in the evening your symptoms, will tend to be the worst. Another factual reality is that your symptoms may become worse with fatigue, tension, inactivity, changes in the weather, cold or drafty conditions, overexertion, hormonal fluctuations, stress, depression, as well as other emotional factors.
If the condition of fibromyalgia is not diagnosed and treated early, your symptoms can go on indefinitely. There is a chance symptoms may disappear for a certain time period, however eventually they will recur.
