Fibromyalgia Symptom Checklist

We hope this fibromyalgia symptom checklist will help you to determine if you may have fibromyalgia or one of the many related illnesses.

The universal symptom of fibromyalgia is pain. The pain in fibromyalgia is not caused by tissue inflammation. Instead, these patients seem to have an increased sensitivity to many different sensory stimuli, and an unusually low pain threshold caused by misfiring nerve signals. Minor sensory stimuli that ordinarily would not cause pain in individuals can cause disabling pain in persons with fibromyalgia. The body pain of fibromyalgia can be aggravated by noise, weather change, and emotional stress.

Fatigue occurs in 90 percent of those with fibromyalgia. Fatigue may be related to abnormal sleep patterns. It has been observed that many, if not most, with fibromyalgia have sleep problems. This leads to many other problems.

Some of the most common symptoms include:
•    Aching
•    Fatigue
•    Depression
•    Anxiety
•    Moodiness
•    Restless sleep
•    Disturbed sleep patterns
•    Grinding teeth while sleeping
•    Awakening feeling tired
•    Morning stiffness
•    Recurrent headaches
•    Poor concentration
•    Tender lymph nodes
•    Bowel or bladder disturbances
•    Sensitivity to heat or cold
•    Gastrointestinal disturbances
•    GERD (acid reflux)
•    Dizziness or feeling faint
•    Occasional racing heart beats
•    Decreased coordination
•    Environmental allergies
•    Costochondritis (pain in chest)
•    Ligament Pain
•    Irritable bladder
•    Irregular heart beat or palpitations
•    Hypersensitivity
•    Hypermobility
•    Tension headaches
•    Dry or burning eyes and mouth
•    Irritable Bowel Syndrome
•    Numbness or tingling of different parts of the body

This fibromyalgia symptom checklist is by no means all inclusive.

Mental and/or emotional disturbances occur in over half of Fibromyalgia patients. These symptoms include poor concentration, forgetfulness, mood changes, irritability, depression, and anxiety. This is often referred to as being in a ‘mental fog’ or ‘brain fog’.

Abnormal anxiety and depression are common. Some say that they are the result of fibromyalgia and others say that anxiety or depression could be the cause of the other fibromyalgia symptoms. It could go either way.

The pain and sensitivities can be aggravated by external conditions such as going to bed too late, doing too little or too much physical activity, taking on added stress. Even an approaching cold front can trigger symptoms. I've also had fibro flares after changing to or from Daylight Savings Time. If you have had this experience please tell us about it below.

Since a firm diagnosis of fibromyalgia is difficult, and no confirmatory lab tests are available, patients with fibromyalgia are often misdiagnosed as having depression as their primary underlying problem.

Another common co-illness is irritable bowel syndrome. Like fibromyalgia, IBS can cause chronic abdominal pain and other bowel disturbances without detectable inflammation of the stomach or the intestines. It is basically fibromyalgia in the colon muscle.

Each patient with fibromyalgia is unique. Any of the symptoms in the fibromyalgia symptom checklist above can occur intermittently and in different combinations.

We need to focus on treating the cause of the symptoms and not the symptoms themselves. Symptoms are our body's way of telling us that something in our lifestyle needs to be changed. Suppressing symptoms may help initially but in the long run, they will be made manifest somehow in your body.