What Causes Fibromyalgia?
The exact cause of fibromyalgia is unknown. The way my doctor explained it to me is there is a problem with the way the brain and central nervous system processes and interprets pain. The brain and nerves have a sort of miscommunication between them and pain is amplified. A prick of a pin may feel similar to being stuck with a needle, a papercut may feel like being sliced by a razor. Everyone interprets the pain differently, it’s not the same for everyone.
In some cases, symptoms begin following an event such as surgery, intense physical stress or infection. Severe psychological stress may also lead to symptoms. In other cases, symptoms develop slowly and a cause cannot be pinpointed. In some studies, brain scans have shown altered pain processing in individuals with fibromyalgia. Researchers have also found deficient levels of serotonin in the nervous system and subsequent imbalance in a spinal fluid involved in pain signaling. Usually, people only experience pain when the body is subjected to direct injury or damaged by a condition such as arthritis. In fibromyalgia, the pain is not the direct effect of such damage or injury to the body part where the pain is felt. Since the pain seems to be the result of pain signals from the affected area being processed differently, rather than a result of direct damage that can be treated, it is difficult to stop and the condition is therefore chronic.(Dr. Ananya Mandal, MD https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Fibromyalgia.aspx)
As you have just read fibromyalgia isn’t a typical disease that you can specify why or what it is. Drs have many theories as to why someone develops fibromyalgia, but nothing has been proven yet. I developed fibromyalgia after I had a heart attack. The drs said because the heart attack was not natural and was bought on by tainted migraine medication it cause a shock to my central nervous system which confused my brain. I couldn’t understand what they meant because it didn’t make sense to me. It was as if they were speaking a foreign language. I thought my brain was screwed up and something was terribly wrong with it. As soon as you hear your brain miscommunicates with your nerves, who in the work would take that as is? Only after years of suffering in pain I began to understand what they told me many years ago.