Fibro

One of the most common symptoms of fibromyalgia is widespread pain. This pretty much means that we feel pain from head to toe (literally)! This pain is mostly caused by muscle pain, nerve pain and joint pain. And before I had fibromyalgia, I never really felt any of this pain. I was only used to hip pain and growing pains really. So developing all this very suddenly was a lot for my body to handle, and made me realise I could feel pain in places I couldn’t before!

I thought it’ll be quite handy to share a few of the places we feel pain to gain that greater awareness! This isn’t a complete list - because trust me, it would go on for a longggg while 😂

People with fibromyalgia have tender points, which are 18 areas of the body which are more sensitive to touch and can cause pain. These areas include specific points on the back of the head, elbows, shoulders, knees and hips. It’s safe to say, I didn’t experience these points before I had fibromyalgia!

Similarly with these tender points, fibromyalgia can cause allodynia, which is where the skin is so sensitive, that the smallest touch can really hurt. For me, I feel that this is quite similar to the tender points in the sense that the skin is so sensitive. But allodynia can cause clothes to hurt, which is definitely something I didn’t ever imagine hurting!

Specific areas I experience pain now thanks to fibromyalgia (rather than my other conditions) include jaw pain (which means I cannot eat without pain 🙃), rib cage and breastbone pain and scalp pain! All very very annoying 🤣 of course, there are many more places I feel pain, but that’ll be a good topic for a future post as I could keep listing them all off 😂

Is this something you relate to aswell? What pain do you experience now that you didn’t before? How would you describe ‘widespread pain’ to someone who doesn’t have fibromyalgia? Let me know below 👇👇