What Causes Fibromyalgia?

First – why should we spend time looking for the cause of fibromyalgia? It seems impossible to find. Can’t we just treat the symptoms?

No, we can’t (effectively) treat the symptoms.

Even if we had a good treatment for each symptom (we don’t) – there’s just too many of them. So there won’t be a good treatment, let alone a cure, without our first having determined the cause of fibromyalgia.

OK, then how should we go about looking?

Look at Fibromyalgia Symptoms

Fibromyalgia is a syndrome – meaning it’s basically a collection of symptoms. So to find the cause of fibromyalgia we need to look for one thing that reasonably explains all the symptoms. That one thing – if we could find it – would likely be the cause of fibromyalgia.

Look at Fibromyalgia Associations

We know more about fibromyalgia than just its symptoms. We have information about its onset and progression, its frequent association with other (‘overlapping’) conditions, and its response (or not) to various medications, treatments and lifestyle changes.

If we could find one thing that adequately explains not only the symptoms, but everything else we observe in fibromyalgia, that one thing would almost certainly be the cause of fibromyalgia.

Look at Fibromyalgia Pathophysiology

Finally, we know fibromyalgia is associated with numerous physiologic abnormalities, including central sensitization, neurotransmitter imbalances and autonomic dysfunction. If the same ‘one thing’ can reasonably explain these as well as all the rest of the above, it would seem we had all but proven that ‘one thing’ as the cause of fibromyalgia.

The Cause of Fibromyalgia

There is in fact one thing – and only one thing – that reasonably explains all of the above: inflammatory cytokine excess.

What follows is a point by point explanation of how we can understand and explain nearly all of the diverse observations relevant to fibromyalgia by means of inflammatory cytokine excess.

The only reasonable conclusion is that fibromyalgia is caused by – and results from – excess production of inflammatory cytokines.

Knowing that, it’s possible to devise an effective treatment. But for now let’s stick to the cause.

Showing cytokine excess as the cause of fibromyalgia (a work in progress.)

As suggested above, if cytokine excess really is the cause of fibromyalgia, it must explain:

The onset of fibromyalgia:

That the initial onset of fibromyalgia often occurs in connection with psychological stress or injury.

That fibromyalgia-like symptoms can be induced in otherwise healthy subjects by means of sleep deprivation (Moldovsky experiments.)

The major symptoms of fibromyalgia:

Pain

Fatigue

Impaired sleep

Other common symptoms of fibromyalgia:

Stiffness

Depression/Anxiety

Impaired cognition (thinking and memory) – fibro fog
- Fibro fog: What causes fibro fog in fibromyalgia?

The frequent ‘overlap’ of other conditions with fibromyalgia:

Irritable bowel syndrome

Migraine

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Lupus

Sjögren’s syndrome

The pathophysiology of fibromyalgia:

Central sensitization

Neurotransmitter changes

Growth hormone deficiency – HPA axis alterations

Autonomic dysfunction

The frequent observation of Chiari or positional cervical cord compression (PC3) in fibromyalgia

Each of the above challenges will be answered in time.

Look for a series of hyper-linked articles to appear above. Check back, or follow along by subscribing to “Fibromyalgia Notes” on the main fibromyalgia page.

In the meanwhile, the first article below presents a brief overview of the arguments in favor of inflammatory cytokine excess as the cause of fibromyalgia.

The second article focuses on cytokine excess as the cause of diffuse pain. It also suggests one possible explanation for the frequent ‘overlap’ of fibromyalgia with other seemingly dissimilar conditions, and briefly describes an effective therapy for fibromyalgia – one aimed at the putative cause.

A novel theory of fibromyalgia

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