Fibromyalgia: What Causes This Central Nervous System Disorder?

Fibromyalgia is an ailment affecting the central nervous system, and it happens quite a lot of people. A lot of work has been carried out, with the objective of identifying the causes of this painful condition. For the most part, that work has been fruitful, and as of today, the medical community has a reasonably good understanding of the disease's causes. But there are underlying causes of this condition, and there are triggers as well, and both have to be identified. Management of this condition is definitely facilitated if we understood more about it and what causes it. There are a lot of causes of this disease, but we will only be tackling the three major ones right now. We refer to these as the diseases 'three major causes' because, going by the available data, these seem to be behind most incidences of the condition.

First, there is stress. Surprisingly, it could bring about fibromyalgia. Many instances of fibromyalgia episodes are spurred on and stirred by stress. It has also been postulated that childhood stress may be an underlying cause for (at least) some of the disease's cases. Depression and stress are sure-fire ways to bring people towards that stage when they would also discover they are suffering from fibromyalgia. Children who suffered through depression and even abuse gravitate more towards the 'dark' are more prone to have fibromyalgia problems.

Hormonal imbalance and changes in the brain's biochemistry also cause fibromyalgia. If there is an imbalance in the person's growth hormones, that's when the condition takes place. There is, however, some disagreement in the medical community: with some experts postulating that the deficiency in growth hormone production may be as a result of, rather than the cause of, this particular disease. Now if we turn to the brain's biochemistry as the culprit, the ones most focused on are serotonin and dopamine. Fibromyalgia takes place if too little serotonin is found in the brain. We are also looking at a situation where too little dopamine (otherwise known as hypodopaminergia) can cause this disease. Of course, these neurotransmitter abnormalities can be as a result of the stress we looked at earlier. But these abnormalities in the neurotransmitters would beg the question: do they cause the stress, or do they result in stress? What is known for sure is the fact that patients with the disease we are focusing on here do tend to have these neurotransmitter abnormalities. What is also known is the fact that these patients do often (but not always) benefit from the use of medications that rectify the said neurotransmitter abnormalities.

Fibromyalgia is also known to be caused by the lack of sleep. Studies have shown that sleep problems can indeed lead to the disease. We have discussed earlier about how stress and neurotransmitter abnormalities cause fibromyalgia. In a way, the principle is the same with poor sleep. But we can also have a situation where sleep problems independently cause the disease.

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