Headaches with Fibromyalgia: How Common and What Causes Them?

Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! ~~ Mardy

PS -- in my years of experience getting various types of treatments for symptoms of fibromyaliga, as well as working to uncover the underlying causes I have it, and remediating what I can of the causes in my particular case (known as functional medicine), I had great relief from taking a muscle relaxant at night, tizanadine.  It affects/lowers the substance P in the cerebrospinal fluid and for that reason was a preferred medication and was clearly getting at the underlying causes -- in this case the substance P, as well as the short-term muscle tightness.

But I realized about a year ago, when only taking that medication some nights and not others, that I was half waking up with my neck extending backwards, and in the morning waking up with a VERY sore neck: Jim Kennedy, DDS (of the holistic dentist variety) was on my schedule shortly after that and I discussed it with him. "That's sleep apnea, it sounds to me."  After having a CT scan of my head and neck, it was found there is some sort of narrowing of the throat/neck which likely is contributing/causing, so muscle relaxants, sleep medications and things that affect the muscles would be making that worse!  Wow. New paradigm of thought about treatment! 

So I pursued doing a cursory, self-administered 'sleep study' using a wrist oxymeter which recorded the data over a couple of nights, and darn if I wasn't going down to 80% for up to two minutes at a time, and was not at or above 88% at all when asleep. (And that was without taking any medication besides my hormone supplementation, as soon as I realized things were not 'right' after nights I was taking it, I stopped taking it entirely, at night; I will use smaller doses in the daytime when I am able and if I need, which is typically not the case, but sometimes longer than expected or desired sitting or standing can cause my muscles to respond with tightness and pain.) 

I wanted to bring this up for all readers, since many who have fibromyalgia have sought medical advise using insurance and often have treatments that are exclusively allopathic and insurance-based. Naturally, there is lots of information out there about those strategies, and we include it at Lumigrate in an 'integrative fashion', as medications are part of the picture of treating fibromyaliga, but at Lumigrate we use the YOU Model and collaborative care, integrating different types of providers, and overall having a functional medicine "discover what this condition is caused by and remedy those things" approach.