How long will I be in pain?

Hi Wendy, everyone is different and we all have varying symptoms and degrees of fibro. Some do recover and others have periods of remission; then some of us have it for years. Your GP is confusing you as he is trying to be positive for you. Research has shown that those with fibro who remain positive, have less severe symptoms- but that's research for you. I think we all try to be positive. It's also doctor speak. Another expression used is "I know you will do very well on this". Ibuprofen has been shown to have little or no effect as fibromyalgia is not an inflammatory condition. It may help with the pain when combined with paracetamol but often we need something a lot stronger like pregabalin, duloxetine and amitryptilline.

Caroline

Hi. Loxie had highlighted other good ways to help with fibromyalgia. It is really a question of trying different avenues to see what works best for you. Is it the pain which is keeping you awake more or are you generally awake because of insomnia?

Caroline

thats a stupid comment iv had it over ten yrs and some have had 20yrs plus ,

his just parinising you by the sound of it . 

you will have  peaks and troughs your getter better times and proberly worse times sorry dont me to be negative just truthful unlike your gp , if you want more better times than stress and worry are your enemy by getting to grip with this could improve your lot by at least 50% .

the only people iv heard of as recovered are people who have done the amygdala retraining programme .or have been able to remove all stress both are tough to do .. by the way just a thought if you are drinking or eating any products with Aspartame in bin them it makes symptoms worse as does to much sugar . .

Have you tried any antihistamines? I don't know anything of fibromyalgia but about I found out by chance that for me the best pain killer is antihistamine. I had a sinusitis problem while recovering from a surgery and was prescribed a drug that had pseudoefedrine. Some antihistamine you get without a prespriction. I think there are 1-/45 or so different classes of antihistamine and normally only 3-5 (or 4-5) have pain killing effect but for me the "milder" antihistamines work.

There is some discssion it the web about this related to arthiritc pain so it is not only me who has it discovered.

I wish you best of luck. I hope you keep positive because that way you are more likely to keep on pushing to finding the things that will help you.

As a very weird tip for pain management is to sleep with someone tightly back to back. Someone who sleeps well. My back pain and knee pains went away couple of times sleeping like this. Don't ask me why. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Also when I had the flu, I found out it was easier to breathe in the cold air outside (few minus degrees) so what I did was to dress up real warm from head to toe and sleep with the window open. I slept really well. Like babies do outside.

I think that might have something to do with the body's temperature dropping naturally when after you have fallen asleep. It helps the brain somehow to shut down the connection from the body. Or the body shuts down a little bit and the brain gets not so many impulses and can go better in sleep when it is not "disturbed". Also then maybe the muscles can relax better during sleep because the brain does not signal back to them so much. So when your are breathing in the cold air, it cools you down nicely but you still keep warm because of the clothes.

Another tip, that helps me sometimes, is to sleep shorter sleeps. I feel better in muscles and in the back sometimes after sleeping only four to six hours compared to the weekend sleep ins.

I don't know if any of these would help you to at least sleep better. But worth a try. Good sleep is what helps the body the best. Bad quality sleep as such can make you aching. At least it that goes for me. So trying things related to "sleep hygieny" are perhaps worth trying. They won't take the problem away but maybe help little bit.

I hope you get it better, and sooner than later at that too. : )

Lets just say I've got a strong personality but Fibromyalgia & ME/CFS have been my condition for 23 yrs. If only it would take strong personality to make it go away x