Fibromyalgia Pain Treatment – Drugs & Medications


Not only is pain the main symptom of fibromyalgia, but it is a symptom that can be treated in a variety of different ways with a variety of different types of medications.

Because people with fibromyalgia have different types of pain, your health-care professional might prescribe different kinds of medications for those different types of pain. Your pain may all seem similar but your physician will determine what type of pain you are experiencing and what treatment will he best suited to help alleviate it.

Drugs for Treating Fibromyalgia:

Pain has different causes, such as inflammation, tissue or bone injury, neurological abnormalities, and so on, so the treatment will be different depending on its cause.

Vocabulary Lesson

Inflammation occurs in autoimmune illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases, lupus, and scle-roderma. is the first response of the immune system to infection or irritation and is characterized by redness, heat, swelling, pain, and dysfunction of the organs involved. Although at one time fibromyalgia was thought to be inflammatory, we now know that it is not.

Fibromyalgia pain is neurological in nature, but people with fibromyalgia can suffer with other types of pain too.

Not only are their different medications for different kinds of pain but there are also different dosages that can be helpful when pain varies. At times you may have to vary your medications depending on the level of pain you are experiencing at that particular time.

For example the dosage of Ultram (tramadol) can vary greatly. Your health-care professional might suggest that you take 50 mg twice a day, but when your pain is more severe he or she could increase the dosage up to 50 mg four or six times a day.

Pain can also affect other symptoms. If you are experiencing high levels of pain you might also begin to suffer from anxiety or sleeplessness. Many of the medications that you will take will have an effect on more than one symptom.

Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs

Anti-inflammatory medicines include aspirin; non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen, Naprosyn, Lodine, and Daypro; the newer group of medications referred to as Cox-II inhibitor, such as Celebrex; and corticosteroids such as prednisone and dexamethasone.

These medications provide two benefits: ‘They act as anti-inflammatory agents and pain relievers. Some of these medicines, such as ibuprofen, are available both over the counter and by prescription.

Because fibromyalgia does not involve inflammation, these drugs may be less effective. If the NSAIDs are helpful for overall fibromyalgia pain, they can be continued on a regular basis as long as there are no major side effects, such as stom-ach irritation.

Unless the person with fibromyalgia also has an inflammatory illness (such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and so on), corticosteroids which treat inflammation usually prove to be counterproductive.

So why does an anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen help fibromyalgia, if fibromyalgia is not an inflammatory illness? Pain relievers such as ibuprofen work with your cells, your body’s nerve endings, and your brain to keep you from feeling the pain.

When you take a pain reliever such as ibuprofen, it keeps the cells from making and releasing prostaglandin. When the cells don’t release this chemical, it means that the brain won’t get the pain message as quickly or clearly.

Analgesics

Analgesics are medications that treat pain. They can be over-the-counter medicines such as aspirin and acetaminophen, or prescription-strength pain pills such as narcotics (opiates), codeine, Vicodin, Darvocet, OxyContin, and Percocet.

Ultram

Ultram (tramadol) and Ultracet (tramadol and acetaminophen) are non-narcotic pain relieving medications. These medications do not alter fibromyalgia, but they can help take the edge off pain.

A. study conducted in 2003 by Robert M. Bennett, M.D., a pain specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University and published in the American Journal of Medicine compared Ultracet (37.5 mg tramadol hydrochloride/325 mg acetaminophen tablets) to a placebo in 315 fibromyalgia patients. Patients who used Ultracet experienced significantly better pain relief than those who received the placebo.

Fast Fact

Kim Jones, Ph.D., Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), who hosts a web-based chat on Web MD, recommends that if other pain medications have not been successful, you might consider taking short-acting narcotics such as Lortab or Vicodin.

Director of the Fibromyalgia Program at the Smith-Glynn-Callaway Medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, believes that if a long acting narcotic is used, it should be OxyContin, because she feels there is less chance for patient addiction. However, she points out that the use of opioids for people with fibromyalgia should be a last resort.

Narcotics

Narcotic analgesics act on the central nervous system to relieve pain. The use of these medications, especially for fibromyalgia, continues to be debated throughout the medical and patient communities. Dr. Robert Bennett believes that narcotics should not be the first line of defense against pain and that “opioids should be used sparingly”; however, he feels that they should not be withheld if other analgesics have failed.

His experience has been that his fibromyalgia patients want to try opiates but then give them up because of their side effects (nausea, dizziness, constipation, and tiredness). He also points out that addiction to opioids is not typical among persons with fibromyalgia.

Some health-care professionals recommend using opiates on a very limited basis to help relieve more intense pain that occurs during a flare-up of symptoms; yet others believe that the use of narcotics in the treatment of fibromyalgia is dangerous and never warranted. In the medical literature on the subject, the consensus seems to be that only about 5 to 10 percent of people with fibromyalgia are taking narcotics to treat their pain.

OxyContin, MSContin, and methadone are longer-acting narcotics.


Fibromyalgia Pain Treatment – Drugs & Medications