The Clinical Picture from the Chinese Medicine (TCM) Point of View

Fibromyalgia

Clinical Picture

The Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) is a modern illness with increasing spreading. The orthodox medicine has trouble to explain its causality and the chain of causation leading to FMS. Furthermore, it has problems when using data based diagnostic methods and also with its treatment. Commonly, it inclines to classify the illness as "psychosomatic" and passes the patient on to the psychiatrist. The Chinese Medicine does not exclude psychological disease factors for the emergence of FMS but takes the feeling of the patient seriously. It regards the illness primarily as a somatic disturbance and offers an explanation for its emergence. According to the Chinese medicine, FMS is based on erroneous trends of the immune control and usually begins with not "successfully" passed but aborted infects.

The most important symptoms which are typically attributed to FMS:

(1) vague pain of muscles, chords, soft tissue, and occasionally including the joints; stiffness and the feeling of swollen extremities; general hypersensitivity on pain

(2) permanent lassitude; quick exhaustion after physical strain

(3) a constant feeling of cold or of heat; chronic irritations of the mucous membrane including usually only meager mucous production; nasal catarrh; allergies

(4) a general instability, menstrual cycle problems, excitability, sleep disturbance, depressions, metereosensitivity, gastrointestinal disturbances etc.

Additionally, we find with FMS patients:

(5) an infect history during childhood and puberty characterized by frequent infects of the respiratory system where the patients were not able to get rid of the mucous in an effective manner

Based on this symptomatology the Chinese medicine wins its understanding of the illness. FMS is a typical example for diseases which are based on former and aborted infects with the typical and again and again flickering cold feeling. More clearer than at other kind of rheumatic diseases this cold feeling reveals the origin of FMS.

Childrens' diseases, infects of the respiratory system including cough, nasal catarrh and croakiness is something which the human organism needs regularly as kind of training of the immune system and as a cleaning of the mucous membranes and body tissues. Luckily, they process after a certain consequence of phases and leave a feeling of refreshment and regeneration.

Compared to this common steps of successful passing such kind of diseases, the FMS patient stops in a very early phase. It happens that the cold feeling comes up, however, the cold itself remains in this early stage and does not continue to the subsequent and necessary phases including fever, mucous excretion and finally regeneration. As a consequence, the organism enters a state of continuous immune reaction. It is forced to be exhausted again and again during this unsuccessful defense activities. All this costs strength and lead to a dangerous habituation of the organism to this halfhearted and thus ineffective immune response. Since it comes to no excretion of the inflammatory substances they accumulate at or around the body tissues leading to tiredness, pain and the above mentioned symptoms.