Going Grey?

New Research shows that people with fibromyalgia may have greater premature ageing risks.

When comparing healthy vs FM patients, it was noted that:
- Both groups contained the same volume of white matter in the brain.
- FM patients however had significantly less grey matter.

What does this mean?
White matter is the tissue through which messages pass between different areas of grey matter within the nervous system. Using a computer network as an analogy, the grey matter can be thought of as the actual computers themselves, whereas the white matter represents the network cables connecting the computers together.

It has been found that every year of fibromyalgia was equal to approximately 9.5 times loss in the normal ageing process.

What is the implication of this?
- The brain undergoes structural changes in response to chronic pain and stress.
- This means our brains for those of us with fibromyalgia, could potentially be 20 years older than our actual age.

Read more at: www.examiner.com/article/brain-grey-matter-atrophy-seen-fibromyalgia

Cognitive Dysfunction & Fibromaylgia

Do you struggle with fibromyalgia and have a bad memory? Do you find it difficult sometimes to be able to get a whole thought out before it disappears? It could be linked to your fibromyalgia.

New research suggests that fibromyalgia patients perform more poorly than the counterparts of their age, in three areas:

1. Free recall: remembering words
2. Working Memory: everyday info
3. Vocabulary tests - accessing words from memory

Research also suggests that blood pressure, anxiety and depression have no effect on fibromyalgia patient's cognitive abilities.

Sad news: There is currently nothing available to help improve this.

However, there is some hope: Here's some tips that may help us as we battle our own cognition:

1. Establish regular routines: Eat and sleep at the same time regularly.
2. Snack every three hours, rather than eating full meals.
3. Use reminders and to-do-lists.
4. Take breaks when you find your concentration waning.
5. Avoid multitasking, as it reduces your effectiveness.
6. Pace, pace, pace.
7. Avoid loud noises, bright lights and other distractions in your environment, particularly where you sleep.

Do you have any strategies that work for you?

Source: www.examiner.com/article/cognitive-dysfunction-and-fibromyalgia

It's Not all in your Head after all..

Researchers have new reached a new breakthrough in relation to fibromyalgia.

Previously, researches believed fibromyalgia to be a psychological problem. Approximately 20 years ago, it was believed to be a change in the way the brain processed pain, causing hyperactivity in pain centres, although the cause was unknown.

Now researchers have gone one step back and discovered something that may cause the hyperactivity in your brain.

Your hands... sounds too simple to be true? The culprit is thought to be our arteriole venule shunts. How do they work? They work to keep our hands and nerves at the right temperature, kind of how a car radiator works. In warm conditions, the shunts close, which forces blood into the capillaries at the skin surface to radiate heat from the body. Under cold conditions, the shunts open allowing blood to bypass the capillaries to conserve heat, which is why our hands get cold.

Excessive nerve fibers concentrated in these areas are thought to cause mismanaged blood flow, causing muscle pain, acheyness and hyperactivity in the pain centre of the brain.

So does it explain all our symptoms? Probably not. Is it an important breakthrough? Yes. It shows progress.

It means we are one step closer to figuring out how this madness began and how we might cure it or ease the suffering from it.

Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112879104/fibromyalgia-is-not-all-in-your-head-new-research-confirms/