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Fibromyalgia must have been in our midst for millenia - new diseases are rarities - but it has taken on nearly epidemic proportions in the past few decades. There are still physicians among us who "don't believe in fibromyalgia"; that may be one of our finer examples of those who may be failing to acknowledge the presence of the elephant in the room.
Fibromyalgia is often bundled together with chronic fatigue syndrome. They have commonalities - severe fatigue and generalized pain are among the symptoms of both and it appears (perhaps only to me but we can get back to that, if you like, a little later) that they may also share a specific abnormality in cellular function. In contrast to the sudden, cataclysmic onset that seems to characterize CFS, fibromyalgia appears to arise in someone who has had to deal with a lengthy succession of physical stressors (such as a persistent injury or loss of sleep) or emotional ones (such as family or financial worries).
Different from CFS?
I believe so. I think that it is very likely that CFS is, as it often so appears to be , a sudden onset condition, resulting from some event having caused a global metabolic shutdown. FM can be devastating to the lives of those afflicted. I think, however, that FM, unlike CFS, is more like a straw-that-broke-the camel's-back situation, resulting from the effects on the individual of an accumulation of physical +/- social +/- emotional stressors. Loss of a parent, neglect or abuse in early life are potent stressors, often for the full lifetime of those affected. Older children, adolescents, teenagers and young adults may experience an array of worries, conflicts in and out of their family lives and an array of social crises as they transition toward becoming adult. Adults superimpose career, work, marital, financial, worldview and attitude issues onto what ever baggage they may have dragged along from their earlier years. Fibromyalgia and depression are probably generated by similar onslaughts; they may be, respective;ly, the physical and mental manifestations of a similar body process.
I think that there is a "good news" part to this story. Since I believe that FM is, to a considerable extent, a state maintained by an ongoing exposure to stressors, whether external or internal, I believe that the impaired metabolic functioning that is seen in FM is reversible. I am not sure that the same can be said of CFS, at least at the time of this writing.
(February 21, 2012) Later ...
For the consensus opinion, try http://www.iasp-pain.org//AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home, (under Publications, Clinical Updates, September 2003 and June 2010).