How does fibromyalgia trigger headaches?

Like fibromyalgia, severe headaches have a central nervous system and myofascial component. This is how fibromyalgia may trigger a headache or vice versa, a severe headache can also trigger other symptoms associated with fibromyalgia. Understanding this connection is important for finding a resolution. 

Cervicogenic migraine is a severe headache that is perpetuated or preceded by neck pain, which many fibromyalgia patients also have. If you start to feel the marble or golf ball starting to form at the base of your skull, if you can feel a tiny knot in your scalp or on your face, particularly around the eyes or temple, or you have pea size knot or taut neck muscle, you have a myofascial component to your headache. What you are feeling is knotted up pieces of muscle fiber. They can be easily felt unless behind bone or other large muscle, and they radiate muscle and nerve pain, tingling and numbness in a specific pattern.

Tension has been associated with fibromyalgia and tension type headaches are both the result of muscles that don’t respond correctly.  Find a physician that understands fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome.  Bringing the myofascial component under control will help by blocking the peripheral input to the brain. In fibromyalgia the pain is intensified and other conditions such as teeth grinding, a central mediated disorder that results in development of more myofascial trigger points, and TMJ, which can result from myofascial trigger points pulling the jaw out of alignment can feed off of each other.   

Alonso-Blanco C, et al. 2012. Muscle trigger point therapy in tension-type headache. Expert Rev Neurother. 12(3):315-322.

Alonso-Blanco C, et al. 2012. Characteristics of referred muscle pain to the head from active trigger points in women with myofascial temporomandibular pain and fibromyalgia syndrome. J Headache Pain. 

Ge HY. Prevalence of myofascial trigger points in fibromyalgia: the overlap of two common problems. Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2010 Oct;14(5):339-45
Fernandez-de-las-Penas C. 2010. New evidence for trigger point involvement in tension-type headaches. J Musculoskel Pain. 18(4):354-360. 

Küçükşen S, et al. The prevalence of fibromyalgia and its relation with headache characteristics in episodic migraine. Clin Rheumatol. 2013 Feb 27. [Epub ahead of print]