General fatigue.
Elimination of other diseases.

If this seems subjective, it’s because it is. Fibromyalgia is a collection of symptoms, not a specific disease. This has led some skeptics to wonder if it really exists. This is a significant question, because an estimated two percent of the U.S. population is thought to suffer from fibromyalgia, with women seven times more likely than men to have it.

Common complaints of “fibros” (people with fibromyalgia) are chronic achiness, morning stiffness and sleep disturbance. But those are common complaints of a lot of people.

Exercise helps improve the symptoms, but fibros are reluctant to exercise because of the pain. However, pain typically shows up one to three days later, not during exercise. This is also common in people starting exercise programs, especially if they are out of shape, and most fibros are in rotten shape.

Weighing in on the side of organic problems are recent studies indicating fibros are deficient in growth hormone or insulin-like growth factor, IGF-1, indicating hormonal dysfunction. This seems to be tied into the problem of sleep disturbance and non-restorative sleep. So far this knowledge has not led to effective treatment. Most fibros use some sort of alternative medicine, which indicates that conventional treatments don’t work.

And what about the most popular type of conventional medicine — drugs? Some fibros are helped by antidepressants, but just as many respond to a placebo drug.

Someone from the Arthritis Foundation told me that there is a theory that men have fibromyalgia almost as much as women; they just drink their way through it. I hasten to add that this in no way is meant to reflect the position of the Arthritis Foundation or the person who told me about it.

Fibromyalgia is lumped in with arthritis, so the Foundation knows a lot about it. The representative was just giving me an example of the theories that abound. I passed this along to a chiropractor friend who said in no way did men have fibromyalgia in as any numbers, because the people who came to see him with that complaint were all women.

He missed the point, which is that men are reluctant to seek treatment for this condition (according to this theory). And health professionals do have their stereotypes about fibromyalgia, which is too bad, because they don’t seem to be able to help much with what they know.

Anything that’s diagnosed by excluding other diseases is bound to be questioned. The pivotal 18 tender points may be tender on healthy people. We just don’t test them out if we feel good. (This is not tenderness to touch. It is tenderness to 10 pounds of pressure. Try it out.)

Even if this collection of symptoms masquerading as a disease is not caused by bacteria or hormonal dysfunction or genetics, apparently it really does hurt. In time, more will be known about fibromyalgia, and treatments will become available. If you have this condition, don’t sit around and wait for that time. Get somebody who is expert in exercise to help you with a workout program and get as fit as you can. That will help.

In 2007, the cost of treating arthritis was more than 15 billion dollars; the overall cost in lost productivity was 150 billion. It is estimated that in an average family, a diagnosis of arthritis in the primary wage-earner will lead to a 50% drop in income over the first 10 years.

Source:Arthritis Insight

The Level of Inflammation in RA Remains Stable

A study conducted by the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Disease-Arthritis Research Center Foundation, has determined that the level of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis is determined early and remains stable over the longterm course of the illness.

Over ten years, the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) was analyzed to measure inflammatory activity in 1,897 patients with RA. Scientists found that the ESR decreased by 4 mm/h over the first 10 years of disease, remained stable over the next 25 years, and increased slightly thereafter.

This is disappointing since earlier theories suggested that RA tended to “burn out” or lessen in severity over the years. However, the good new is that the very recently diagnosed who were receiving combination therapies did show marked improvement in symptoms, rather than remaining stable.

RA is a “New” Disease

Contrary to earlier reports, rheumatoid arthritis is a “new” disease, not described until the mid-1700′s. There have been many reports that RA existed in ancient times, but there is no scientific evidence that the disease existed in ancient Europe, Asia or Africa.

However, in Alabama, six skeletons of Native Americans–3,000 to 5,000 years old–show changes typical of RA. Scientists believe that some infectious agent was introduced and confined to a small geographic area before 1700′s.

Why is this important? If RA did appear recently, that suggests some environmental change could have triggered RA because the human gene structure has not changed in the last 250 years.