Fibromyalgia and Sleep

Stiffness and pain in your joints and muscles can be more than simple aches and pains from age, a workout, or overuse. Sometimes it can be fibromyalgia, which is a medical condition that causes more than just pain and stiffness. It is also responsible for problems sleeping, and as a result it is often the reason a patient will have a chronic fatigue condition. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health report more than eighty percent of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia are women of middle age.

In previous medical practice, fibromyalgia was often dismissed as anything to be concerned over. Many patients were instructed to ignore the problem when the doctors could not find any cause for their symptoms. But fibromyalgia is better understood now, and there are some strides being made toward both diagnosing and treating the medical syndrome.

Many fibromyalgia patients will exhibit lower rapid eye movement during that stage of sleep, which has the effect of altering their pattern of sleep and interfering with the effectiveness of what sleep they do get. Related medical research has shown that people who are fatigued from lack of sleep often report a lower tolerance for pain, which complicates even benign muscle or joint aches.

Key Points:

  • 1Pain of any kind, including joint and muscle aches, can interfere with restful sleep and leave you fatigued all day.
  • 2Research has shown that when fatigued, people feel pain more severely than when properly rested.
  • 3The disruption of pain upon sleep is thought to play a role in how patients experience fibromyalgia symptoms.


sleep aids are widely and increasingly used by people with fibromyalgia, although their long-term effectiveness for alleviation of pain is doubtful
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Written by HealthStatus
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our health risk assessment, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years.

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