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What Causes Fibromyalgia?
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While the exact causes of fibromyalgia are not yet known, what is known about the body's physical response to stress provides information that may help us better understand fibromyalgia.
Most fibromyalgia researchers believe that the primary trigger for symptoms of fibromyalgia and related conditions is dysfunction within the central nervous system, which includes the brain, certain nerves, and the spinal cord.
Also, there is a general belief that the "stress response" plays a major role in causing fibromyalgia symptoms. The stress response, sometimes also referred to as the "fight or flight response," is the body's primitive, instinctive response to perceived danger or imminent attack. Although the stress response served as a key to survival to help protect humans from predators, in today's society the system is more likely to be activated by common events, such as sitting in traffic, than actual dangers to physical survival. Different types of stress lead to different responses in the body. Many researchers believe that the worst stress the body can experience is related to feeling the "victim" of an unpredictable or unavoidable situation from which one believes he or she cannot escape.
Finally, there are genetic differences in the body's response to stress, as well as in systems that process sensory information such as pain. Studies suggest that individuals may be born with a certain "set point" for these systems, and that the set point may change over the course of a lifetime in response to events and conditions. For example, studies give clear evidence that if animals are "stressed" early in life, their stress response is changed forever. In humans, this effect of early stressors may be reflected in the fact that individuals who develop fibromyalgia and other disorders in this spectrum are more likely than those who do not suffer from FMS to report physical and sexual abuse experienced as a child. |
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