What Types of Exercises Work Best for Fibromyalgia Symptoms? Some new findings suggest that exercises such as walking, strength training, and stretching activities are effective at improving physical, emotional, and social function.
Relaxation. If you have fibromyalgia, it's important to regularly take time to relax or practise relaxation techniques. Stress can make your symptoms worse or cause them to flare up more often. It could also increase your chances of developing depression.
The symptoms of fibromyalgia are associated with physical inactivity such as excessive sitting. Physical inactivity itself produces increased oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, factors present in fibromyalgia. Therefore, increasing physical activity should benefit patients with fibromyalgia.
Regular, low-intensity exercise, such as walking or warm-water exercise, is one of the best treatments for fibromyalgia. It helps decrease pain and stiffness, reduce stress, and may increase your sense of control over fibromyalgia. You may also sleep better.
Getting started. It's natural to worry that any exercise will make your pain worse and leave you wiped out. But know that adding more physical activity into your day may actually decrease your pain, improve your sleep, and give you more energy.
Aerobic exercise, such as running or walking, can help with many symptoms of fibromyalgia. A 2017 review analyzed previous studies of aerobic exercise to treat fibromyalgia. The authors concluded that aerobic exercise could improve health-related quality of life and physical function while reducing stiffness and pain.
Poor sleep quality
Fibromyalgia can affect your sleep. You may often wake up tired, even when you have had plenty of sleep. This is because the condition can sometimes prevent you sleeping deeply enough to refresh you properly. You may hear this described as non-restorative sleep.
Physical and emotional stress are the most common triggers of fibromyalgia flares. Other triggers include lack of sleep, weather changes, and hormone imbalances.
Walking can help control pain and fatigue. Start by walking as little as five minutes a day and add 30 seconds or a minute each day if you can. Work up to 30 minutes to an hour of walking, three to four times a week.
A major risk of leaving fibromyalgia untreated is that symptoms such as chronic pain, fatigue, headaches, and depression can become excruciatingly worse over time. Fibromyalgia also has a huge impact on mental health and anxiety and mood disorders can also worsen if you don't treat fibromyalgia.
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 is a condition that causes pain in muscles and soft tissues all over the body. It is an ongoing (chronic) condition. It can affect your neck, shoulders, back, chest, hips, buttocks, arms, and legs. The pain may be worse in the morning and evening.
Biofeedback, deep breathing, meditation, self-hypnosis, or even just distracting yourself with a good book or some soothing music can help take your mind off the pain and make coping with a flare more manageable, say experts at the National Fibromyalgia Association.
The most helpful treatment approach for fibromyalgia is a combination of self-care, physical activity and cognitive-behavioral therapy. But medication may also be needed. Many drugs prescribed for fibromyalgia work to turn down “pain volume” in the central nervous system (CNS).
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.
The FDA approved a laser therapy device called FibroLux to treat fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is characterized by joint and muscle pain. FibroLux can reduce pain by delivering light to cells, increasing energy production, and healing cells.
Heat, especially moist heat, may relieve soreness and stiffness from fibromyalgia by boosting blood flow to the places where you hurt. Apply a warm, moist washcloth to the painful area or try taking a shower or soaking in a bath. You also can reduce the deep muscle pain of fibromyalgia with a cold pack.
In some cases, the doctor may recommend a multivitamin that includes antioxidant vitamins A, C, D, E, and the B vitamins, as well as calcium, magnesium, selenium, and zinc to ease symptoms. Coenzyme Q10. This antioxidant, used to convert food into energy, has shown some promise in treating fibromyalgia symptoms.
This routine includes exercising three times a week doing aerobic exercise and weight training, taking a weekly tai chi class, walking three to four times a week, and resting once a day for at least one hour.
In a study, researchers found that people with fibromyalgia were more likely than those without the chronic pain condition to have poor balance, tingling and weakness in the arms and legs, and other “neurologic” signs and symptoms.
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).