Thriving with Fibromyalgia

Don't try this at home!

A study was done in Canada to see if brain dopamine is a factor in fibromyalgia.  Dopamine is one of many neurotransmitters, molecules that transmit messages from your central nervous system.  They injected a saline solution deep into the muscle to produce pain in fibromyalgia patients and healthy control subjects who were matched by age and other factors.  Then they looked at the brain using positron emission tomography to see if dopamine was being released in response to the pain.  The healthy people did release dopamine, but the fibromyalgia patients did not.  In healthy people, the amount of dopamine related to the amount of pain, but there was no relationship for the fibromyalgia patients.  It must've been a hard study to get people to sign up for, but it does provide evidence that fibromyalgia patients have an abnormal dopamine response to pain.  www.fibroinfoservice.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17610577?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Fibromyalgia - all in your head?

Next time someone tells you your fibromyalgia is "all in your head," you have a good answer for them!  Imaging studies of the brain can now see the pain areas of the brain "light up" in fibromyalgia patients.  Other studies show that fibromyalgia patients have abnormalities in several neurotransmitters, the molecules that send messages to your brain.   Finally, studies of brain anatomy show structural difference between the brains of fibromyalgia patients and healthy people.  All these differences in the brain help explain the widespread pain, sleep problems, and other related issues fibromyalgia patients feel.   www.fibroinfoservice.com

Schweinhardt P Sauro KM Bushnell MC, Fibromyalgia:  A Disorder of the Brain? Neuroscientist, 2008 Feb 12.

Music therapy for relaxation

Music was tested on critically ill, intubated ICU patients to see if Mozart could alleviate stress.  After an hour of slow movements of Mozart's piano sonatas, they measured stress hormones, cytokines, heart rate and blood pressure.  They found out that playing Mozart meant the patients needed less sedative drugs, and had lower stress hormone levels.
Medscape J Med 2008;10(1):20.  Esoteric or Exoteric? Music in Medicine
www.fibroinfoservice.com

Estrogen receptors and pain

New research shows that there is more than one estrogen receptor.  We're familiar with the estrogen alpha receptor.  This is the one that can go bad and signal cells to multiply uncontrollably, resulting in breast or ovarian cancer.  Now scientists have discovered estrogen receptor beta, that seems to put the brakes on cell growth.  A team led by Heather Harris of Wyeth Research in Collegeville, PA, found that drugs that increase estrogen receptor beta decrease inflammation.  Jan Ake Gustafsson has also been working with estrogen receptor beta in Sweden.  Women taking aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer had a bad side effect - intense pain all over their bodies. That is because the aromatase inhibitors were stopping estrogen receptor beta along with alpha.

See www.sceincenews.org, Jan. 5, 2008 vol. 173, " A Different Side of Estrogen."

www.fibroinfoservice.com