Beyond Pain: How to Cope With Rare Fibromyalgia Symptoms
Confused by your fibromyalgia symptoms? Learn about lesser-known symptoms and get expert tips for managing them.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic, or long-term, disorder defined by pain and tenderness throughout your body, accompanied by fatigue. While these are the most common symptoms, fibromyalgia can be accompanied by a wide range of symptoms, some of which are better known than others. Knowing about these rare fibromyalgia symptoms is the first step toward learning how to cope with their effects.
“Our body has to process all of the information that’s constantly coming in by way of the senses and filter out 99 percent of it,” says Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, the author of From Fatigued to Fantastic. “Separating the signal from the noise, so to speak, takes energy, and energy is precisely what people with fibromyalgia don’t have.”
Experiencing these heightened sensitivities, alone or in combination with one another, can quickly become overwhelming and make day-to-day activities difficult.
To start with, it’s important to be very gentle with your body, says Aly Cohen, MD, a fellow of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the founder of Integrative Rheumatology Associates and TheSmartHuman.com health education platform. “I counsel my patients with fibromyalgia or any kind of chronic pain not to push themselves too hard,” Dr. Cohen says. “Learn to say ‘no’ to events and requirements if you can get away with it and give your body an opportunity to rest.”
Sleep is especially important. She adds: “If you don’t get enough sleep, your perception of pain is often elevated regardless of health conditions, but because of the heightened sensitivities that can come with fibromyalgia, it’s especially important to get high-quality sleep, and a lot of it.”
Besides attending to lifestyle factors such as sleep and nutrition, there are treatments you can apply to cope with heightened sensory sensitivities. For instance, medications for fibromyalgia or migraine can also alleviate these symptoms.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be a powerful tool for coping with these symptoms by changing your thoughts and transforming your experiences.
Paresthesia, or a feeling of “pins and needles” — including tingling, burning and numbness — often accompanies neurological disorders, though the exact cause remains unclear. It is important to speak with a healthcare provider if you experience paresthesia because it could be caused by another condition like small fiber polyneuropathy.
Attending to your mental and emotional health, such as with meditation, deep breathing, and a mindfulness practice, can help you cope with paresthesia.
“The mind-body connection is very real,” says Cohen. “Go out for a walk in nature, turn off your technology, hang out with friends who make you laugh.”
Physical therapy and gentle exercise can also help, but be cautious. “Only do what is comfortable — if you overdo it, you’ll crash and burn,” warns Teitelbaum.
Fibromyalgia can render you more sensitive to headache triggers, including stress, sleep disruptions, and hypersensitivity to sensory input as described above.
Tension headaches, caused by muscle tension or stress, commonly accompany fibromyalgia. People with fibromyalgia also frequently live with migraine, as previously noted.
Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) — a group of conditions that cause pain and dysfunction in the jaw and surrounding tissues — can also accompany fibromyalgia.
Stress management techniques can prevent or alleviate headaches associated with fibromyalgia. One such technique is progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR, which involves tensing and relaxing your muscles to induce a relaxation response.
For short-term pain relief, Teitelbaum recommends acetaminophen (Tylenol) and creams like Icy Hot or Tiger Balm.
Like heightened sensitivities, Teitelbaum says it results from trying to manage too much sensory input with too little energy. Cohen adds that there can be a closely linked emotional component: “When we’re overwhelmed, we can have a harder time pulling from memory and performing functional tasks.”
Before relying on medical treatments, Teitelbaum advises attending to lifestyle factors, particularly sleep and nutrition. Strategies for organizing your tasks and time — learning to work at a comfortable pace, and using lists and other techniques to manage your work and life — can also be helpful.
Fibromyalgia can cause a vast range of symptoms, many of which overlap with other conditions. But one thing that many of the symptoms above have in common is that they’re related to your gut health.
“Managing gut health is a major aspect of managing fibromyalgia,” Cohen says. “Drink plenty of water, avoid unnecessary medications, eat fiber, fast occasionally so your gut can rest. To prevent POTS, make sure you’re getting enough sodium.”
Teitelbaum and Cohen both emphasize that proactively managing lifestyle factors, as described above, is the most important step you can take.
Besides pain and fatigue, fibromyalgia can be accompanied by a wide range of symptoms, including hypersensitivity to sensory input, brain fog, headaches, and digestive symptoms, to name just a few.
A healthy diet, good sleep, good hydration, and a gentle exercise regimen can go a long way toward alleviating or preventing many of these symptoms.
Teitelbaum and Cohen recommend visiting the websites of the Institute for Functional Medicine and the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine to find a physician who can help you identify and treat any unexplained symptoms you might experience.
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