What Does My Family Need to Know About My Fibromyalgia Treatment? (1:13)
Your family may not understand the symptoms you're feeling from fibromyalgia. In this video, Devi Nampiaparampil, MD, a pain expert at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, discusses what your family needs to know.
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Well, Fibromyalgia is something that is probably generated within the brain. That doesn't mean it's a psychiatric disorder, it means that the brain has had changes which cause the body's threshold for pain to be lower for example, there are some studies looking at spinal fluid, and we found that substance P is increased in people who have Fibromyalgia.
So substance P is the substance that cause pain. The thing that's important about knowing that is that a lot times people with Fibromyalgia have a hard time because their family members or people close to them wonder, why do they always complain of pain or why do they complain of all these different things?
I have that problem too, I have my flakes too, but it's really very different because the severity of the pain and the nature of the pain is different in people who have Fibromyalgia and there's not anything that they can specifically do in terms of that threshold, but they can try by using exercise and improving their sleep and [xx] strategies to try to reflect that.
Fibromyalgia is a condition that affects muscles, joints and tendons. Get tips about fibro symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. Learn how a healthy diet and stress management can help ease fibro symptoms, such as pain, fatigue and poor sleep.
