Have You Been Misdiagnosed? A Clear Look at Fibromyalgia and The Many More Severe Conditions It Often Gets Mistaken for!

Ever felt a piercing pain pinch at your body? Felt so fatigued that you couldn’t get out of bed? Experienced a hyper-awareness of your body’s pain regions? Well, you could have fibromyalgia!

…or do you?

It seems to be a very common occurrence for the community of people diagnosed with fibromyalgia to be at first misdiagnosed.

Often they are charged as harboring a much more severe disease or disorder; but after months to years of not showing many signs which indicate the misdiagnosed disease, the doctors are left stumped.

Fibromyalgia as some very broad and commonly experienced symptoms which connect to various other medical issues, which causes problems in the first place.

Because the scope of fibromyalgia is so broad and vast, it can be hard to pinpoint that it is, in fact, fibromyalgia.

But consequently, the misdiagnosis of patients living with fibromyalgia can end up severely damaging.

As prescriptions for drugs to help the wrong problems can cause issue in the body, or other treatment methods affect the patient negatively.

To better clarify your own state, here are 5 of the most common diseases that regular suffragettes of fibromyalgia are constantly misdiagnosed with.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a definite relative to fibromyalgia, but definitely not a close one. This disease confounded by intense bouts of extreme exhaustion only has one thing in common with the pain sensations of fibromyalgia: the induced fatigue. However, the large difference between this disease and that of fibromyalgia is rather distinct.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is the constant and incurable state of profound fatigue and extreme exhaustion, whereas, fibromyalgia has a side effect of chronic pain in your muscles.

Polymyalgia Rheumatica

Polymyalgia Rheumatica is a specified type of arthritis where that causes muscle pain in the areas of your shoulders and hips.

It is just as common fibromyalgia, but has worse side effects. Your hips and shoulders become invisibly inflamed, as it feels that pins are poking at the tendons.

This differs from fibromyalgia which just encompasses chronic pain in a person’s specific pain receptive areas, relative to that person and their subjective pain.

Thus, the stiffness caused in polymyalgia rheumatica is not seen in fibromyalgia patients because they only experience chronic pain without stiff moments of tension.

The pain sensed in a secluded area instead burns and spreads, while polymyalgia rheumatica stays to itself and tenses up in that area of your body.

Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is a life altering disease that has many horrible side effects that branch way beyond those found in fibromyalgia.

Multiple Sclerosis, also known as MS, is a disease that not only rots at the body through pain, but also numbs the mind. And rather as fibromyalgia can be commonly seen among one’s peers, MS is a serious and rare disease.

Diagnosis in this area would most likely have to deal with many medications that negatively affect their health and their current position with fibromyalgia.

The key difference between the two is the testability between the two. Because MS effects the nerve cells in the body, you can pinpoint whether or not it is effecting the body. The chronic pain felt in fibromyalgia is rather subjective and must be diagnosed by the patient and the doctor.

Arthritis

Pain arthritis is the inflammation of joints and closed off areas in the body from too much friction over time. This can seem rather similar to fibromyalgia, as it is specialized pain in a specified area of the body.

However, one can distinguish the two from one another simply with the fact that fibromyalgia may affect any part of the body; however, arthritis only located itself specifically in jointed areas.

Therefore, a doctor should be able to easily differ the two from each other by the overwhelming location of complained pain regions by the patient.

Make sure to keep track of them as well yourself, so you can compare and contrast the symptoms you have to the diagnosis you are given. That way, you can test to see if they properly match.

Lupus

Lupus is a common but devastating disease that has swept the nation in the past few decades. Baiting amongst middle aged and elderly women mostly, it holds the same target audience as fibromyalgia.

The two also share a common side effect of improper walking patterns. However, while fibromyalgia can cause severe pain which causes the inability to walk for a prolonged period of time; lupus can cause the leg limbs to stop function at all together in an instant.

However, the main difference between the two is their areas they target inside the body. Lupus is an autoimmune disease; thus, it targets the immune system firstly and the rest of the body follows soon after. It responds to foreign substances which the body encounters, wholly.

The chronic pain in fibromyalgia is given the target of pain sensors, so the immune system never comes into any sort of play during this diagnostic.

Instead, it is a sensory disorder which is only felt through the constant over-compensation of unnecessary neurotransmitters that flow freely through the body.

Concluding Thoughts

Now, with a clearer view on what each of these more severe diseases encompass it should be easier to distinguish each one from the other; and most importantly, you can distinctly see if you have any of these conditions or do you just have fibromyalgia.

Either way, we hope that you now have a richer and purer understanding on your own condition in comparison to other and can further your medical health by knowing your body and what it needs.