Poor Sleep in Women May Lead to Fibromyalgia

Women out there, are you sleeping enough? If not, then beware because a new study shows that sleep problems in middle-aged and older women are (–foul word(s) removed–)ociated with an increased risk of fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS), or formerly known as Fibrositis is a chronic musculoskeletal pain condition that causes pain, stiffness, and tenderness of the muscles, tendons, and joints which obviously affects more than 5 million adults in the United States, 90% of which are women; estimated to affect 2–4% of the population with a female to male incidence ratio of approximately 9:1.

Patients with FMS often have heightened sensitivity to pain and is also characterized by restless sleep, awakening feeling tired, chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression, and disturbances in bowel function.

Dr Paul Mork and Dr Tom Nilsen of Norwegian University of Science and Technology conducted the study enrolling 12,350 healthy women, 20 years and older, with no musculoskeletal pain or movement disorders and followed them for 10 years. At the end of that time, 327 (2.6 percent) of the women had developed fibromyalgia.

The study, which appears online on Monday in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism found a more than five-fold jump in the risk for fibromyalgia among women over 45 who often or always had sleep problems, and a nearly three-fold rise for women aged 20 to 44 with similar sleep woes.

Dr. Mork said that their “findings indicate a strong (–foul word(s) removed–)ociation between sleep disturbance and fibromyalgia risk in adult women and we found a dose-response relation, where women who often reported sleep problems had a greater risk of fibromyalgia than those who never experienced sleep problems.”

But still, further studies are needed to investigate whether early detection and treatment of sleep disturbance reduces the risk of fibromyalgia in women.

Unfortunately, there is no one definite solution for fibromyalgia for all people. However, there is acure for people suffering from it! It’s a combination of physical therapy, medication and meditation.

As what humanist’s Desiderius Erasmus says “Prevention is better than cure,” let’s avert Fibromyalgia by a good night rest. (: