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Fibromyalgia and Exercise

© Tamara Peters

Living with fibromyalgia can be compared to riding a rollercoaster with its many ups and downs. As the symptoms wax and wane you may feel in total control one day only to spiral out of control the next. Having a plan for those times when your symptoms explode into a flare-up is essential.

To exercise, or not to exercise, that is the question. For the majority of the population the answer to this question would appear simple. In order to stay healthy and be physically fit you must be physically active. But, for those of us living with the chronic pain of fibromyalgia this poses a whole new question. How are we supposed to exercise when most days it seems to take super-human strength just to make it through the day? It is important to remember that we are not the majority of the population. There are valid reasons why we must be careful with the type and duration of exercises we choose.

FMers are known to have an exercise intolerance (hypersensitivity) and often feel worse after exercising. Compared to non-FMers we experience post-exertional (delayed) pain of increased intensity and duration. The resulting decrease in endurance leads to deconditioning and loss of function. It's another one of those vicious cycles where the less we exercise, the more deconditioned we become, and the less we are able to exercise. I suspect that lack of exercise, deconditioning, and loss of function, is one of the reasons many of us tend to disagree with the fact that fibromyalgia is not progressive. It is not the fibromyalgia that is progressing, but rather our own physical health that is declining. The Alpha-Delta wave anomaly is a sleep disorder associated with fibromyalgia. This occurs when alpha-waves (waking brain waves) intrude upon delta-waves (sleeping brain waves) interrupting stage-4 sleep. Since this is the period of time when muscle tissue is repaired we must take care not to cause excess wear and tear to our muscles.

So what does this mean? While exercise might be difficult to begin with it is essential that we incorporate some kind of physical activity into our daily routines in order to prevent muscle atrophy and continuing decline. Initially, increased pain levels may cause you to become discouraged, and prone to give up, but with a little patience and persistence benefits can be realized.

In Steve's article Pain Management - A Different Approach he shared the benefits gained through exercise as prescribed by a pain management program. My intention is to expand and explore some of the options to those more fixed modes of exercise.

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