Conditions that mimic Fibromyalgia and Vitamin B12 Insufficiency

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Prolonged pain symptoms may point out fibromyalgia, or one of many other ailments like pernicious anemia from vitamin B12 absence.  If you frequently feel tired, overstuffed, nauseous, itchy, and wracked with devastating pain, you might be suffering from long-term fatigue, fibromyalgia, B12 deficit, or all of the above.

Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia, or fibro-myositis, is a disorder that causes the victim intense pain and tiredness for no obvious reason. Doctors are uncertain as to the precise reason of fibromyalgia, which is categorized as an autoimmune syndrome involving the brain’s overreaction to pain provocations.

Symptoms of fibromyalgia include:

  • Tireless muscular pain in 11 of 18 specific “pain points” on the body, containing the neck and shoulders
  • Pain defined as stiffness, burning, sore
  • Pain extents from one tender spot to another
  • Sleep difficulties produced by pain and restive legs syndrome
  • Depression
  • Gastrointestinal distresses, like stomach pain, nausea, flatulence, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), diarrhea, and constipation
  • Bladder incontinence
  • Dizziness
  • Cognitive troubles, brain fog, trouble focusing
  • Headaches
  • Painful itchy feelings (pins and needles) and lack of feeling in hands, feet, and ankles

Pernicious anemia- Vitamin B12 deficit

Pernicious anemia is an autoimmune condition that inhibits your body from generating intrinsic factor, a protein the body needs for vitamin B12 concentration.  As an outcome, pernicious anemia patients regularly have seriously low levels of vitamin B12- a nutrient rich in creating red blood cells, guarding the nervous system, dropping homocysteine levels, keeping healthy cognitive skills, and launching DNA synthesis.  Vitamin B12 insufficiency often joins with fibromyalgia, as gastrointestinal problems often inhibit vitamin B12 concentration.

Warning sign of vitamin B12 absence include:

  • Enduring fatigue
  • Depression
  • Memory loss
  • Trouble focusing
  • Brain fog
  • Anxiety
  • Aggressiveness
  • Hallucinations
  • Sleep difficulties
  • Shortness of breath
  • Painful itchy and lack of feeling in hands, feet, and ankles
  • Sore tongue that is red and swollen
  • Burning sense in mouth and tongue
  • Altered sense of taste
  • Blurred visualization
  • Trouble walking without stumbling
  • Trouble balancing on one leg

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)

Chronic fatigue syndrome shares comorbidity with fibromyalgia. Like fibromyalgia, the source for CFS is still mysterious.  Patients complaining of chronic fatigue are diagnosed based on their symptoms.

Symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome include:

  • Persistent tiredness that is not caused by physical exertion, loss of sleep, or mental tiredness
  • Waking up fatigued, regardless of sleeping the whole night
  • Pain in tender spots similar to the pain zones suffered by fibromyalgia patients, only less severe

Myofascial pain syndrome

Myofascial pain is identical to fibromyalgia.  While fibromyalgia patients experience soreness in pain points, victims of myofascial pain syndrome experience pain in trigger points.  Also unlike fibromyalgia signs, myofascial pain does not extent from one point to another.

Signs of myofascial pain syndrome include:

  • Slight aching points that occur in tense muscles
  • Trigger points that produce a muscular twitch when moved
  • Pain points are tiny lumps about the size of your pinky’s fingernail.

Chronic headaches

Fibromyalgia victims regularly experience chronic headaches such as migraines, tension headaches, day-to-day untiring headaches, or hemicranias continua.  Scientists wonder that migraines occur in the same portion of the brain as fibromyalgia starts. Read More( link between fibro and headaches)

Indications of migraine headaches include:

  • Agonizing head pain, normally on one side of the head
  • Eye pain
  • Migraine aura- visual disorders, vertigo, hallucinations, speech slurring, loss of awareness, or short-term paralysis
  • Increased sensitivity to lights, noises, and odors
  • Nausea
  • Continuous vomiting
  • Stomach spasms
  • Diarrhea
  • Dizziness

Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS)

Contact to chemicals may trigger signs that mimic fibromyalgia, although scientists are unclear if MCS is a physical reply or a psychological response.

Symptoms of multiple chemical sensitivity include:

  • Considerably lower threshold for chemical tolerance than normal
  • Pain reaction constant with various dissimilar chemicals
  • Sensitivity happens in more than one organ of the body
  • Chronic pain reaction that arises repeatedly from experience to certain chemicals
  • Eliminating the chemical trigger ends pain symptoms

Depression

Maximum fibromyalgia patients have experienced medical depression in the past, and a considerable (but lower) percentage feel pain from continuing depression. Depression is also a mutual symptom of vitamin B12 deficit.  If depression shoots from fibromyalgia pain, then it does not categorize as main depression, but rather a secondary condition of fibromyalgia lasting pain syndrome.

Symptoms of major depression include:

  • Incantations of unhappiness that remains for months
  • Every day depression
  • Trouble concentrating
  • Trouble making decisions
  • Nervousness
  • Anxiety
  • Sleep problems like sleep too long or not sleeping enough
  • Fatigue
  • Feelings of low value or guilt
  • Weight problems, either excessive weight gain or weight loss
  • Thoughts of suicide

Hypothyroidism

Hypothyroidism (Hashimoto’s disease) is occasionally mixed up with fatigue related with fibromyalgia or vitamin B12 insufficiency anemia.  As opposite to hyperthyroid syndrome, where the thyroid gland produces numerous hormones, hypothyroid illness involves underproduction of hormones in the thyroid gland.

Indications of hypothyroidism include:

  • Joint or muscle pain that hurts all over
  • Cold hypersensitivity
  • Depression
  • Fatigue
  • Constipation
  • Weight gain
  • Different sense of taste
  • Dry thick skin spots

Lupus

Autoimmune disease symptoms like lupus may occur at the same time as fibromyalgia or B12 insufficiency, making it tougher to diagnose. Conversely, patients with lupus often don’t realize that their vitamin B12 levels have fallen to a dangerous low until they start to agonize severe nerve damage.

Warning sign of lupus include:

  • Fatigue
  • Fever
  • Skin lesions
  • Joint pain
  • Shortness of breath
  • Headaches
  • Memory loss
  • brain fog
  • Confusion
  • Dry eyes

Lyme disease

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection spread by ticks.  Because of late symptoms mimicking fibromyalgia, about 15-50% of fibromyalgia patients gets a misdiagnosis of Lyme disease, and is instructed to take strong antibiotics. A blood test sometimes excludes Lyme disease, but not always.

Symptoms of Lyme disease include:

  • Itching all over the body
  • Chills and fever
  • Headaches
  • Dizziness
  • Muscular pain
  • Stiff neck
  • Numbness and tingling
  • Partial paralysis
  • Speech problems

Restless Legs Syndrome

A major amount of fibromyalgia patients and pernicious anemia patients also practice restless legs syndrome at night. However, other causes of restless legs syndrome are kidney disorder, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, or drugs.

Symptoms of restless legs syndrome include:

  • Uneasy feeling in lower leg
  • Creeping, crawling sensations
  • Intense need to shake leg in order to ease symptoms
  • Achiness that disappears with exercise

Reference: b12patch.com/blog/9-conditions-that-mimic-fibromyalgia-and-vitamin-b12-deficiency/

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