In article <[email hidden]>,
Mxsmanic said:REP said:Is it possible thatsome women are being told thy have
fibromyalgia when indeed they have a real ailment?
Sure. The symptoms of fibromyalgia are so vague that they
could be anything, when the symptoms are real at all.
But all of the symptoms of fibromyalgia are easy to imagine
and are congruent with normal aches and pains experienced
by many people.
Even when they become so severe that the patient can no
longer hold a job or carry on the normal activities of
daily life?
Quoted message said:Since time immemorial, some people, particularly middle-
aged housewives, have been visiting doctors with long
lists of vague and unverifiable complaints, all of them
dependent on subjective perception, none of them supported
by objectively demonstrable pathology. Over the ages, many
different names have been attributed to this non-disease,
and one of the latest names is fibromyalgia. It's as
simple as that.
Except for the ones that are now diagnosed with lupus,
multiple sclerosis, sleep apnea, and a number of other
"new" diseases. Sure, some of these women are "neurotic"
or "somatizing" or "hysterical". Some are no doubt
clinically depressed. Some may be experiencing the
prodromal malaise and fatigue of some serious medical
condition. A competent physician won't diagnose them with
fibromyalgia any more, now that there are specific
diagnostic criteria for that syndrome.
I'd also hope that a primary physician who can't find the
cause of a patient's symptoms will refer to a specialist.
That specialist may be a psychologist or psychiatrist. As
Emma has pointed out, MS is often diagnosed when a patient
is referred for a "somatizing disorder". If the patient's
problems are psychological, she still deserves diagnosis and
treatment, not [censored], condescension and valium.
Quoted message said:It's odd that one of the medication types recommended for
treatment of FM is _antidepressants_--not exactly what
you'd expect for a real-world disease, but perfectly in
keeping with an imaginary one. Other popular meds include
anything that is psychoactive, especially narcotics or
anxiolytics.
Antidepressants are prescribed for a "real world disease",
clinical depression. But perhaps you believe that's an
imaginary one, too.
The antidepressants used in FM are the same ones used for
neuralgia and other chronic pain conditions and to normalize
sleep in some sleep disorders. The doses are much lower than
those used to treat clinical depression. Fibromyalgia
patients often have disordered sleep patterns, and the pain
and fatigue somewhat resemble those found in healthy people
who are experimentally deprived of deep sleep. Empirically,
these drugs may improve sleep and ameliorate symptoms in FM.
If you had some knowledge of pharmacology, you would know
that antidepressants aren't "happy pills". They don't cause
euphoria in people who aren't depressed, and while they may
elevate mood in the depressed, they don't cause euphoria
there, either, unless they trigger a manic episode in a
person with bipolar disorder. But you don't seem to believe
that clinical depression is a "real disease" either, but
rather some kind of character defect that isn't deserving of
treatment or respect.
You'd also know that what constitutes a "main effect" and
"side effect" in a drug is a matter of viewpoint, and some
drugs are prescribed for what would be regarded as side
effects in their usual application. An obvious example are
the class of drugs used both as anti-histamines and OTC
soporifics. Opiates are analgesics, but used to be in most
OTC remedies for diarrhea, and are still used as cough
suppressants. The thorazine class of antipsychotics was
originally developed for its antihistamine effects, and was
only discovered to be a valuable treatment for schizophrenia
when people with both problems were treated with it. IIRC,
Antabuse is a sulfathiazine antibacterial, a class of drugs
originally developed as textile dyes.
So just because some drugs usually prescribed as
antidepressants are useful in other conditions than
depression, such as neuralgia and FM, doesn't mean that you
can dismiss those conditions as imaginary.
Btw, fibromyalgia also occurs in young women, in middle-aged
women with professional careers, in men, and in the elderly,
although like lupus, it mainly occurs in women of
childbearing age. Do you think it's a different disease when
it affects people other than "middle-aged housewives"?
