Fibromyalgia can cause generalized weakness, affecting all your muscles at once, or weakness in a particular muscle. Your muscles may be easily exhausted and respond by trembling or twitching.
That's called a muscle spasm, and a lot of people with fibromyalgia have this problem. 1 In fact, some researchers consider it a major source of our pain. Spasms are different from muscle twitches, which are brief and usually painless.
Trembling, shaking, and vibrating commonly occur due to a lack of sleep. The combination of a anxiety, stress, hyperstimulation, and sleep deprivation can cause a wide range of symptoms, including those that affect the body's muscles and nervous system.
Diseases or disorders, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, or Parkinson's disease. Mercury poisoning from food or the environment. This can cause muscle weakness, tremor, and poor coordination.
Muscle weakness is commonly due to lack of exercise, ageing, muscle injury or pregnancy. It can also occur with long-term conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. There are many other possible causes, which include stroke, multiple sclerosis, depression, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (ME).
Fibromyalgia can cause fatigue (extreme tiredness). This can range from a mild, tired feeling to the exhaustion often experienced during a flu-like illness. Severe fatigue may come on suddenly and can drain you of all your energy. If this happens, you may feel too tired to do anything at all.
Chronic, widespread pain throughout the body or at multiple sites. Pain is often felt in the arms, legs, head, chest, abdomen, back, and buttocks. People often describe it as aching, burning, or throbbing. Fatigue or an overwhelming feeling of being tired.
Paresthesias are a common symptom of fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Paresthesia is defined as abnormal sensations such as tingling, crawling, itching, numbness, and prickling. Most of the time, paresthesias aren't painful.
Mild hand tremors that do not affect a person's daily life are not usually a cause for concern. However, if a person experiences severe or persistent hand tremors that interfere with their daily activities, they should see a doctor to help determine the cause.
When you're feeling anxious, your muscles may become tenser, since anxiety primes your body to react to an environmental “danger.” Your muscles may also twitch, shake, or tremble. Tremors that are caused by anxiety are known as psychogenic tremors.
Myasthenia gravis affects the voluntary muscles of the body, especially those that control the eyes, mouth, throat and limbs. The disease can strike anyone at any age, but is more frequently seen in young women (age 20 and 30) and men aged 50 and older.
But research has since shown that there are no abnormalities in the musculoskeletal system in people with fibromyalgia. Instead, the problem appears to lie in the pain processing pathways of our central nervous system—the bailiwick of neurologists. Today, both rheumatologists and neurologists treat fibromyalgia.
The pain from fibromyalgia is what typically prompts people to visit a neurologist, and this specialist may prescribe medications to control your pain. Pain Management doctors treats all forms of pain, including that caused by fibromyalgia.
Abnormal pain messages
One of the main theories is that people with fibromyalgia have developed changes in the way the central nervous system processes the pain messages carried around the body. This could be the result of changes to chemicals in the nervous system.
Brain imaging and studies have shown that fibromyalgia is a disorder of the central nervous system. "It's a neurological disease driven by the central nervous system," says Clauw.
Other researchers believe fibromyalgia is caused by a lack of deep sleep. It is during stage 4 sleep that muscles recover from the prior day's activity, and the body refreshes itself. Sleep studies show that as people with fibromyalgia enter stage 4 sleep, they become more aroused and stay in a lighter form of sleep.
4. Don't overdo it on good days. But don't “make up” for lost time on days that you're pain- and fatigue-free. “Trying to do too much when you feel great can trigger a flare,” says David Edelberg, M.D., a Chicago integrative-medicine specialist and author of The Triple Whammy Cure (Atria).
The drugs amitriptyline, duloxetine, milnacipran and pregabalin can relieve fibromyalgia pain in some people. They may cause side effects such as a dry mouth or nausea. Normal painkillers like ibuprofen or acetaminophen (paracetamol) aren't recommended for the treatment of fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia can be associated with ocular symptoms (foreign body sensation, irritation) and visual disturbances (blurred vision), coexisting with dry eye syndrome and reduced corneal sensitivity. Cases of scleritis, including the necrotizing form, accompanying fibromyalgia have been reported.
What does fibromyalgia leg pain feel like? If you're suffering from fibromyalgia leg pain, you may experience throbbing, shooting, achy, or burning sensations in your legs. Often, you'll feel the pain at your fibro tender points, particularly inside of each knee and on the hip just behind your hipbone.
It's unlikely that you'll need an MRI for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome unless your particular set of symptoms is similar to that of a neurological illness that requires evaluation with an MRI. You may also need an MRI at some point to diagnose an injury or a different illness.