I have recently been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and your symptoms sound like they might be caused by this, or other related things like chronic fatigue syndrome or chronic pain.
You didn’t specify the kind of sleep problems you have. Pointing towards fibromyalgia would be difficulty “turning off”, not being able to fall asleep due to tension/anxiety, and waking up unrefreshed even after getting several hours of sleep.
Do you feel unusually fatigued / sleep deprived? Frequent headaches? mental fog? worse at concentrating lately? short temper?
For background info, I’ve had this condition at a low level for all my life, but it only erupted into a major issue recently, due to taking a covid vaccine. It is known that both viral infections and vaccinations can trigger long-term issues like this.
Do you feel unusually fatigued / sleep deprived? Frequent headaches? mental fog? worse at concentrating lately? short temper?
I’ve had sleep issues since a traumatic event around 2012. Short temper, yes, but mostly because I’m worried about this and it’s kind of exhausting. Not many headaches to speak of. Concentrating has been an issue, but I think that’s because my body feels weird and it’s distracting.
It could be, though. I’ll discuss it with my PCP next time I see him. It’s mostly a diagnosis of exclusion, yeah?
Yes, it’s mostly a diagnosis of exclusion. But Bayesian evidence starts piling up much sooner than a doctor is willing to write down a diagnosis on an Official Piece of Paper. However, there are some tell-tale signs like the myofascial trigger points mentioned by others, heightened pain when touching specific bones (e.g. the vertebrae), and other specific patterns how the body reacts to stimulus. This is the domain of rheumatologists.
Are your sleep issues stress-related? Like jumpiness, unable to settle into the relaxation of falling asleep? What I’m getting at here is that there are two broad classes of sleep issues. In one, you have trouble falling asleep, in the other, your sleep is not restful because you’re too tense, in a way that persists through the process of falling asleep. The latter is really really bad, as it leads to chronic sleep deprivation because your body isn’t getting good rest, even though you “put in the hours”.
The thing with psychosomatic symptoms is also that there’s a feedback loop between the pain (or weird sensations), and your mental state. As you get habituated to focusing more and more on those sensations, your brain learns to bring them up to your conscious attention more eagerly. This results in pain sensitization. Even in a situation where let’s say the pain has a clear physical cause that has been corrected, the pain can persist. The original injury was just the trigger of the problem.
It might be that your collection of symptoms is actually pain that may be mild / weird enough that you don’t recognize it as such. An easy way to test this is to take a standard dose of an over-the-counter painkiller and checking if you feel any different an hour later.
PS: feel free to send me a message anytime if you want to talk in more depth.
I have recently been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and your symptoms sound like they might be caused by this, or other related things like chronic fatigue syndrome or chronic pain.
You didn’t specify the kind of sleep problems you have. Pointing towards fibromyalgia would be difficulty “turning off”, not being able to fall asleep due to tension/anxiety, and waking up unrefreshed even after getting several hours of sleep.
Do you feel unusually fatigued / sleep deprived? Frequent headaches? mental fog? worse at concentrating lately? short temper?
For background info, I’ve had this condition at a low level for all my life, but it only erupted into a major issue recently, due to taking a covid vaccine. It is known that both viral infections and vaccinations can trigger long-term issues like this.
I’ve had sleep issues since a traumatic event around 2012. Short temper, yes, but mostly because I’m worried about this and it’s kind of exhausting. Not many headaches to speak of. Concentrating has been an issue, but I think that’s because my body feels weird and it’s distracting.
It could be, though. I’ll discuss it with my PCP next time I see him. It’s mostly a diagnosis of exclusion, yeah?
Yes, it’s mostly a diagnosis of exclusion. But Bayesian evidence starts piling up much sooner than a doctor is willing to write down a diagnosis on an Official Piece of Paper. However, there are some tell-tale signs like the myofascial trigger points mentioned by others, heightened pain when touching specific bones (e.g. the vertebrae), and other specific patterns how the body reacts to stimulus. This is the domain of rheumatologists.
Are your sleep issues stress-related? Like jumpiness, unable to settle into the relaxation of falling asleep? What I’m getting at here is that there are two broad classes of sleep issues. In one, you have trouble falling asleep, in the other, your sleep is not restful because you’re too tense, in a way that persists through the process of falling asleep. The latter is really really bad, as it leads to chronic sleep deprivation because your body isn’t getting good rest, even though you “put in the hours”.
The thing with psychosomatic symptoms is also that there’s a feedback loop between the pain (or weird sensations), and your mental state. As you get habituated to focusing more and more on those sensations, your brain learns to bring them up to your conscious attention more eagerly. This results in pain sensitization. Even in a situation where let’s say the pain has a clear physical cause that has been corrected, the pain can persist. The original injury was just the trigger of the problem.
It might be that your collection of symptoms is actually pain that may be mild / weird enough that you don’t recognize it as such. An easy way to test this is to take a standard dose of an over-the-counter painkiller and checking if you feel any different an hour later.
PS: feel free to send me a message anytime if you want to talk in more depth.