Solutions for Sleep | Fibromyalgia Self-Help

by Dr Alex Jimenez | Chiropractic, Scoop.it

Sleep problems are one of the most common complaints among people with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. With both conditions, poor sleep is a major source of intensified symptoms.

Regardless of the number of hours slept, sleep is usually not restorative, meaning that people wake up tired rather than refreshed. This is likely due to an insufficient amount of the deepest and most restorative type of sleep, called delta sleep. When healthy volunteers in a research experiment were deprived of delta sleep, they developed symptoms of fibromyalgia in a few days: fatigue, cognitive difficulties, irritability�and muscle aches.

Other sleep problems include:

• Difficulty getting to sleep
• Frequent awakenings or waking early
• Phase shifting (hard to fall asleep until early morning hours)
• Oversleeping (8 to 10 hours is ideal)
• Vivid dreams
• Feeling “tired but wired”�(feel exhausted but mind is racing)
• Restless legs
• Periodic leg movements

In addition, many people with CFS and�FM�experience�intensified fatigue, achiness and mental fogginess that lasts one to two hours after rising. In addition to sleep problems due to CFS and FM, a majority of people with the two conditions experience sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and restless legs syndrome.

Addressing sleep problems is a good initial focus for symptom management because treating sleep can both improve quality of life and reduce other symptoms. Sleep management plans usually include a combination of strategies from three categories:

1. Sleep environment and habits
2. Medications
3. Sleep disorders

Sleep Environment and Habits

Most people with CFS/FM can improve their sleep by changing their sleep habits and their sleep environment, matching a solution to a problem. Common problems include:

• Irregular hours for going to bed or getting up / no schedule
• Noisy environment (including snoring by sleeping partner)
• Lack of control over light and temperature
• Uncomfortable bed
• Tension and worry
• Not allowing time to wind down
• Eating or drinking caffeinated products too close to bedtime

A starting point for better sleep is to address these and other aspects of your sleep hygiene.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.cfidsselfhelp.org

When you’re experiencing symptoms of widespread pain as a result of fibromyalgia, getting a good night’s rest can be difficult. Aside from following through with treatment procedures to manage the pain and discomfort an individual may feel, getting proper sleep can also help reduce the symptoms. Following several of the above recommendations can help those affected with fibromyalgia, achieve a bountiful slumber.

For more information, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .

The Link Between Fibromyalgia and Sleep

by Dr Alex Jimenez | Chiropractic, Scoop.it

There’s some important news for millions of people-most of them women-who suffer from the syndrome fibromyalgia: a new study suggests that sleep deprivation is associated with an increased risk of developing fibromyalgia.

The study was conducted at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The study included 12,350 women. At the outset of the study, all the women were free of physical impairment, musculoskeletal pain, and fibromyalgia. A decade later, 327 of the women-2.6% of the study population-had developed fibromyalgia. Researchers asked all the women in the study to report on their sleep habits and their sleep problems. They found that women who reported sleep problems were significantly more likely to have developed fibromyalgia than women without sleep problems. The researchers also found that the risk of fibromyalgia increases with a woman’s age, and with the severity of sleep problems:

• Women who reported having difficulty sleeping “always” or “often” had nearly 3-� times greater risk of fibromyalgia as women who did not have problems sleeping
• Women age 45 and older who “always” or “often” had sleep problems had more than 5 times the risk of developing fibromyalgia as women without sleep problems
• Younger women, ages 20-44, who “always” or “often” had difficulty sleeping were at 3 times greater risk of developing fibromyalgia than their counterparts who didn’t have trouble with sleep

It’s important to make clear that this study does not prove that sleep deficiencies cause fibromyalgia. What it does do-for the first time-is establish a strong connection between sleep problems and fibromyalgia, by showing the increased risk of fibromyalgia that is associated with lack of sleep.

What is fibromyalgia? It’s a syndrome whose main characteristic is chronic pain. Pain is often felt throughout the body, in muscles, tendons and soft tissues. With fibromyalgia, the pain is often felt at certain trigger points, and radiates from those points outward. People with fibromyalgia often experience daytime fatigue, which can be severe, as well as depression, anxiety, and memory problems. Women ages 20-50 are at the highest risk for fibromyalgia. Men do develop fibromyalgia, but women are more than 10 times as likely as men to develop the syndrome.

Fibromyalgia has a history that’s both contentious and mysterious. For a long time, there was no consensus in the medical community about whether it even existed, whether it was a “real” disorder or an “imagined” one. This has changed, and the medical establishment now overwhelmingly accepts that fibromyalgia exists as a very real disorder. But much about the syndrome-including and especially what causes it-remains unknown. For this reason, and because there is no single test that can positively identify fibromyalgia, it remains difficult to diagnose. Since it can’t be tested for, a diagnosis of fibromyalgia comes by way of eliminating other possible conditions.

There are signs of possible genetic and environmental links, since fibromyalgia seems to sometimes run in families. Researchers have explored links between fibromyalgia and other diseases and disorders, including arthritis, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, and restless leg syndrome, but no conclusive evidence has been found to demonstrate a causal link between fibromyalgia and these conditions. That said, all of these disorders are found more often in people with fibromyalgia than in the general population.

Is sleep a cause of fibromyalgia? Again, we just don’t know, and this current study doesn’t answer that question. The relationship between sleep and chronic pain is complicated, and there is a lot we do not understand about cause and effect. Here’s some of what we do know.

The presence of chronic pain, such as with fibromyalgia, makes falling asleep and staying asleep more difficult. Sleep deprivation, in turn, can make people more sensitive to pain. Evidence that disrupted sleep can lead to a lower pain threshold includes this study. Researchers took a group of healthy, pain-free middle-aged women and disrupted their sleep cycle, depriving them of deep, slow-wave sleep, for three consecutive nights. They then tested their threshold for musculoskeletal pain, tenderness and also mood. After only a few nights of disrupted sleep, the women experienced a significantly decreased pain threshold (meaning they felt pain more quickly and intensely), as well as increased fatigue and general discomfort.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.psychologytoday.com

While fibromyalgia can develop after trauma or injury from an accident or failed medical procedure, or simply from misunderstood causes, recent research has concluded that sleep deprivation can cause symptoms of the condition to develop, particularly in women, whom are more prevalent to develop fibromyalgia in the first place. Several studies have also linked sleep habits and issues with the painful condition.

For more information, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .