Is Your Fibromyalgia Pain Stealing Your Sleep?

Up to 96% of the people around the world who suffer from the musculoskeletal condition known as fibromyalgia are women. Researchers don’t know exactly why women are more often — and more severely — affected than men. They’re also unsure of what exactly causes fibromyalgia in the first place.

This real condition can dramatically lower your quality of life. Worse, the chronic pain associated with fibromyalgia may keep you up at night. You may never feel comfortable and relaxed enough to fall deeply asleep. Or you may wake up often due to pain in some part of your body. 

At Advanced Medical Care, we take pain and sleep seriously. Our expert providers also know that they’re intimately interlinked. Is fibromyalgia pain stealing your sleep? A sleep medicine evaluation can help you understand why and help you figure out how to break the cycle.

Your pain is real… and disruptive

Doctors once dismissed diffuse musculoskeletal pain as being “all in your head.” That’s not entirely wrong; the way your nerves and brain transmit and interpret pain is abnormal in fibromyalgia. But that doesn’t make the pain any less real.

Chronic pain makes it difficult to focus on the things you love to do — the pain makes it difficult to focus in general. When your body always hurts, it can’t even relax and it’s often challenging to sleep.

Fibromyalgia and insomnia go hand in hand. You feel as if your fibromyalgia won’t let you sleep, but the problem may be reversed. It could be possible that undiagnosed sleep problems are at the root of your fibromyalgia.

Why insomnia makes your pain worse

During sleep, your body is hard at work repairing itself. However, both your brain and your muscles must be relaxed in order for your cells to do their work. You must breathe fully and without obstruction all through the night, suffusing your cells with the oxygen and nutrients your blood carries.

When your sleep is disrupted or short, your body can’t fully relax and it can’t repair itself. Losing sleep also lowers your threshold for pain. When you can’t sleep, you feel irritable and groggy the next day and you feel your pain more acutely.

So where do you start: With the chicken or the egg? In the case of fibromyalgia and sleep, it’s best to address both at once.

You’re more than symptoms

Pain isn’t “all in your head,” but neither is it only outside your head. Your brain interacts with all of your other organs, nerves, and tissues to influence the way that every system in your body functions.

If you have fibromyalgia, our experienced physicians conduct a thorough physical exam and take a personal and family history. We may do imaging studies as well, to identify any underlying injuries. 

If you have issues with sleep, we also recommend a sleep study. Even if you don’t have a sleep breathing disorder, such as sleep apnea, you could benefit from lifestyle changes that improve your sleep hygiene, including dietary changes and supplements.

Give your body what it needs

When you're in chronic pain, your body is crying out for help. Our aim is to give your cells the ingredients they need to become as strong and healthy as possible.

If your sleep is disrupted by poor breathing, we may recommend a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine. This allows you to breathe fully and deeply all through the night.

We may also recommend intravenous (IV) glutathione therapy. Glutathione is a powerful tripeptide antioxidant that can counter the oxidative stress that your body undergoes with a chronic pain condition. 

With restored glutathione levels, the mitochondria that fuel your cells have the power to rebuild and renew themselves. Inflammation that precedes pain diminishes, and your cells can repair broken DNA.

Healthy cells lead to healthy sleep, which leads to healthier cells — that’s a cycle you can live with.

Reclaim your sleep and your well-being with fibromyalgia and sleep treatments at Advanced Medical Care. Schedule an appointment by phone or online to see our caring team in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn or Forest Hills, Queens, New York.