Sunday, May 27, 2007

Sensitive to Pain?

Study: Fibromyalgia Patients Are More Sensitive to Pain

Fibromyalgia patients are more sensitive to pain than people who do not have the condition. After reviewing 111 fibromyalgia studies published between 1970 and 2006, researchers concluded that fibromyalgia patients may process pain differently and seem to have lower pain thresholds than the general population. According to the review published in the May 15, 2007 Annals of Internal Medicine, the increased sensitivity to pain is derived from problems with how pain is processed in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord).

Fibromyalgia affects approximately two percent of the United States population (3.4 percent of women and 0.5 percent of men), according to researchers. Based on what is already known and supposed about fibromyalgia, researchers also felt that emotional or psychiatric disturbance or both may alter pain processing to produce fibromyalgia in many patients.

~ By Carol & Richard Eustice, About.com Guides to Arthritis

Photo by Pauline Vos (iStockphoto)

Thursday May 17, 2007