Fibromyalgia is a condition
Fibromyalgia is a condition which is characterized by severe fatigue, aches, and pain throughout the body. The symptoms include sleepiness, drowsiness, clumsiness, and memory problems also called fibromyalgia fog. Patients mostly have trouble sleeping and tend to develop problems with the hormones’ balance as well. Fibromyalgia tends to affect women more than men. The day-to-day activities are severely affected by pain, overtiredness, absence of sleep accompanied by Fibromyalgia. Effective treatment can aid in relieving the pain, and preventing the development of flared-up symptoms.
Does it get better with time?
The fibromyalgia might get better with time. Since fibromyalgia is a chronic condition, it seems to last for the entire life. But fibromyalgia is not a progressive disease, which means it does not get worse over time. It should also be kept in mind that this disease doesn’t damage the joints, muscles, or organs of the body.
Worsening with age
Fibromyalgia is usually not a progressive disorder, indicating that it doesn’t get worse with time. However, in a few cases, it worsens with time. Nonetheless, it is not a disease with a predictable course. In most people the symptoms of fibromyalgia range from flares (the exacerbated symptoms) to remissions (when the symptoms are in a mild form or completely absent). Some individuals find successful treatments which greatly decrease the acuity of their flares as well as decreasing their incidence. The course of fibromyalgia cannot be determined beforehand, and so it is difficult to claim with certainty if fibromyalgia will worsen with age in some people, or get improved in others. However, what we know for sure is that worsening with age, might be one of the courses of action of this disease, it is not the only one and is not a mandatory one. Many fibromyalgia patients have shared their experiences of getting better with age, or they may just learn to manage the disease better with time. Whichever the case is, all we know is that fibromyalgia is not a foreseeable condition, but various other factors, like triggers, treatment, diet, activity levels, and sleep levels do guide the path of this disease. So, if a patient takes all the necessary precautions and gets effective physical and medical combinatorial therapy, the chances of better life quality and improved disease management will increase.
Can I be cured?
A few people get to a point in the disease, where they think they are cured, or refer to their fibromyalgia as being reversed. However, it is nothing more than a long-term remission, because a variety of people who reach the symptom-free or almost symptom-less phase does get the symptoms back in the course of their disease. Now the exact time duration of this said long-term remission is not known, what we do know is the fact that fibromyalgia is there to stay more or less for the whole life, and if a patient feels relieved at the absence of symptoms, he shouldn’t overdo the physical exertion as the symptoms will return at some point in the disease course.
Remission and patient’s experience
A fibromyalgia patient has shared her personal opinion regarding this long-phased remission stating that she went into a lengthy remission phase that lasted for several years. Then she developed acute pain due to an overlapping condition, and that pain served as the trigger for the relapse of fibromyalgia. The most effective strategy to cope with fibromyalgia is to seek treatments that combine physical therapy with medications and meditation. However, patients will always need to be on the lookout for cognitive dysfunction and fatigue which work their way in secret and tend to appear when the patients overwork themselves. In the absence of an effective therapeutic strategy, symptoms might continue to be the same long-term or they may even get worse.
Research, age, and fibromyalgia
In a study conducted by Mayo Clinic, it was observed that young and middle-aged fibromyalgia patients reported worsened symptoms and quality of life as compared to the older patients. Fibromyalgia mostly affects women and is marked by severe musculoskeletal pain with fatigue, memory problems, sleep lack, and mood swings. The research indicates that this disease plays out differently in different age groups.
This research studied about 1000 fibromyalgia patients and then separated them into three age groups: the first one comprising younger adults up to 39, the second one from 50 to 59, and the third one 60 and older. The younger and middle-aged patients had more chances of being unmarried, having a job, being highly educated, possessing lower BMI, more abuse history, and lesser fibromyalgia symptoms duration than the older ones.
The symptom severity, quality of life, and triggering factors all differ in these three age groups of young adults, middle-aged individuals, and older people. The results are surprising as quality of life, and body health are considered to be negatively related to age. It was also noted that the women in all these age groups recorded a lower life quality as compared to the average women. The contrast between the physical health of these patients and those of the average individuals was more pronounced when compared to the mental health comparisons.
Fibromyalgia for the elderly
Fibromyalgia affects people of different age groups in a different manner. For elder individuals, especially the physical changes related to age and other health problems triggered by age might cause various problems especially when it is about managing this disease. The challenge doesn’t stop at the disease management but continues as the elderly become more vulnerable for flares and pronounced fibromyalgia symptoms.
Due to this fact, special focus should be given while designing a therapeutic strategy for older individuals suffering from fibromyalgia. The estimated peak time for the disease as corroborated by research is when the person is around 50 years old, however, the symptoms can continue extremely well in the ’60s and ’70s. As the person ages, he/she faces health problems and conditions that he/she has never encountered before, and these conditions might have a tremendous influence on the fibromyalgia therapy as decided by that person and the physician.