Many people have questions as to whether internal tremors are a sign of Fibromyalgia or Fibromyalgia is a sign of internal tremors.
Some people also wonder whether fibromyalgia causes tremors. To answer these questions, we need to understand the relations between the two based on the definitions, causes, symptoms, and risk factors.
What is Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a disorder in which the victim experiences extreme musculoskeletal pain usually accompanied by severe fatigue, memory issues, sleeplessness, and mood swings.
Most studies indicate that it magnifies the way someone feels by amplifying sensations. It affects how the spinal cord and the brain process pain and other pain-related signals.
When the signals from pain are low, it will make the victim feel more pain by amplifying the sensations generated by the pain.
The symptoms occur when certain parts of the brain and spinal cords responsible for pain regulation get affected or subjected to certain trauma.
This may occur when one gets injured in an accident, an infection, physical trauma, or significant psychological stress that affects brain parts.
The symptoms can begin immediately or increase over time, depending on the level of damage.
It can also be caused by genetics; when the disorder runs through the family, other members are likely to get it through hereditary genes.
Research also shows that women are likely to get fibromyalgia than men. Gender puts them at more risk of the disorder.
This is due to some women having low dopamine levels than men. This leads to various conditions, such as shaking while moving since the part of the brain controlling motion is affected.
What is a Tremor
Tremors refer to rhythmic and uncontrollable movements of body parts; it can be the hand or the legs shaking uncontrollably.
It can occur at any part of the body, resulting from a part of the brain responsible for controlling movements failing to perform its role efficiently.
Tremors can be treated over time; however, certain advanced stages cannot be treated.
Most people do confuse tremors with muscle twitches and muscle spasms. A muscle spasm occurs when muscles contract involuntarily.
Muscle twitches occur when a section of the muscle moves uncontrollably; it is sometimes visible.
The difference between these two and tremors is that tremors involve the movement of a large body part such as a limb.
Types of Tremors
There are two main tremors: resting and action tremors. Resting tremors occurs when one is sitting or resting in a particular position; once you begin moving, it goes away.
Action tremors occur when one is moving or involved in activities such as standing, lifting, or pointing.
Types of action tremors
Action tremors can be divided further into:
- Intention tremor occurs during targeted movements, such as pointing or touching an object.
- Postural tremor occurs when a person holds a position against gravity, such as lifting your arm, legs, or stretching.
- Task-specific tremors occur when one is doing a particular activity, such as lifting or resting. These activities may trigger the tremor; otherwise, you feel just okay when you are not doing them.
- Kinetic tremors occur when you are moving the limbs
- Isometric tremors occur when the muscles involuntarily contract or move.
Categories of tremors
Tremors can be categorized based on their appearance and causes, as discussed below:
Essential tremors can be caused by degeneration in the cerebellum, and the effects begin slowly and spread outwards to other parts of the body. Movement disorders can also cause them. They are mild and can slowly spread to other sections of the body, though they rarely spread.
Parkinson’s tremor is related to Parkinson’s disorder and is caused by a damage on the part of the brain that regulates movement. It is usually common in old ages such as the 60S.
Dystonic tremor: it occurs irregularly and is common in people with dystonia. Dystonia disorder causes muscle spasms and twitches hence the reason why most people relate tremors with muscle contractions.
Cerebellar tremors are usually caused by damage to the cerebellum, which occurs when one experiences a stroke, tumor, or condition such as sclerosis. It can also occur due to alcoholism.
Psychogenic tremor; It is common in patients with conversion disorder.
Orthostatic tremor occurs on the legs, and the victims commonly experience muscle contraction and rhythmic movements, affecting their ability to stand or support themselves.
Physiologic tremor: the tremor occurs due to a reaction to a certain drug, effects of alcoholism, and drugs such as withdrawal.
How do Fibromyalgia and tremors relate?
Fibromyalgia amplifies the pain sensation from different body parts that may experience pains. For example, it makes you feel sicker, even though that is not the case.
It occurs due to effects on parts of the spine and the brain that regulate pain and sensation. It acts on the nerves and magnifies whatever you are already feeling.
Fibromyalgia also causes tiredness and fatigue, hence lowering your immunity; this makes the effects of the disease magnify, affecting your reactions to it.
By magnifying the pain and sensation, also causes a lack of sleep, depriving your immunity of the ability to fight a certain condition.
When you have fibromyalgia, you are likely to experience more pain or actions from various diseases.
Therefore, fibromyalgia magnifies various conditions such as twitches and spasms, which may make you feel like you are having tremors.
If you already have tremors, it will magnify the condition, making you feel it more due to general body weakness and increased nerve activities.
Can Fibromyalgia cause internal tremors?
Internal tremors are caused by various conditions, as discussed above. Therefore, the correlation between fibromyalgia and internal tremors does not indicate that fibromyalgia cause tremors. Based on the diagnosis, symptoms of fibromyalgia can make you feel as if you are having tremors.
If you had tremors that you were not aware existed, fibromyalgia could make you feel the tremors by magnifying the sensation.
Therefore, treating fibromyalgia can help cure internal tremors since there will be no more conditions to magnify the effects.
It does not cause tremors, but most fibromyalgia victims are likely internal tremors; this makes people conclude it as a cause for tremors.
Tremors can cause discomfort to the body; they can make you restless and sleepless. For some people, attending internal tremor treatments can reveal the existence of fibromyalgia.
When doctors treat the tremor, and it does not go away, they can order further diagnoses that can reveal fibromyalgia. That is why most studies reveal that treating the latter can help in managing the former.
There are various ways to treat tremors, both medical and non-medical. Once you treat fibromyalgia, you can use any method to treat the tremor that exists, but, on most occasions, tremors such as mild ones that were previously amplified by fibromyalgia tend to disappear on their own.
Therefore, it is safe to conclude that fibromyalgia does not cause tremors but treating it can treat tremors. However, there’re ways to treat tremors.
Treating fibromyalgia
There are two main ways of treating these conditions: medical interventions and therapies. Medical interventions involve the use of drugs such as pain relievers, antidepressants, and anti-seizure drugs.
These drugs will reduce its effects and eliminate the symptoms that make it severe. Therapies include physical, occupational, and counseling.
Therapies mainly improve the physical and mental stability to handle the conditions.
