Difficulties in Sleeping with Fibromyalgia

It’s almost a given that if you have fibromyalgia, you’re also going to be plagued with sleep problems. There’s no escaping the fact that fibromyalgia and sleep disturbances go hand-in-hand. “Alpha-EEG anomaly” is a common type of sleep ailment experienced by fibromyalgia patients. With this condition, the person sleeps all night but wakes up feeling like he’s barely rested. This happens because the person’s brain activity is similar to that of a person who isn’t sleeping. This is only one of the sleep difficulties associated with fibromyalgia. Others will be outlined in the remainder of this article.

Patients with fibromyalgia may also suffer from the problems of Restless Leg Syndrome which is caused by something going wrong in the part of the nervous system that controls leg movement. Due to this condition, the patient may feel an irrepressible desire to move his legs or experience itchiness, a crawling sensation, or the feeling of “pins and needles” in his legs. These unusual feelings create problems in being able to sleep soundly and don’t allow the person to relax as he needs to do. Sleep problems, in turn, can result in even more severe fibromyalgia symptoms.

The condition known as sleep apnea can also disrupt the sleep of the fibromyalgia patient causing what is known as fibromyalgia fatigue. Sleep apnea disrupts the person’s breathing hundreds of times during the night, and he is then unable to get the good night’s sleep he needs so badly. Sleep apnea and the lack of sleep it results in can cause the patient to suffer from more severe fibromyalgia symptoms as well as to feel overwhelmingly tired. After all, when a person doesn’t sleep, his body has no opportunity to make the needed repairs that are normally taken care of during normal sleep.

The general consensus amongst medical professionals is that this lack of sleep incurred by most fibromyalgia patients is one of the main causes of the discomfort the patient suffers. When a person’s body isn’t able to relax and repair itself, more unfavorable symptoms will occur. These unfavorable symptoms manifest themselves as pain and exhaustion, two things which a fibromyalgia patient definitely doesn’t need more of.