Sleep Awareness Week
Who Would Have Thought?
The National Fibromyalgia Association has been named an organizational sleep awareness partner for National Sleep Awareness Week® (NSAW), a public education and awareness campaign presented by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Held March 3-9, the campaign coincides with the return of Daylight Saving Time, the annual “springing forward” of clocks that can cause Americans to lose an hour of sleep.
“We are excited to partner with the National Sleep Foundation to bring additional resources to patients,” says Lynne Matallana, president and founder of the National Fibromyalgia Association. “Insomnia and restless, sporadic sleep are common symptoms reported by people with fibromyalgia.”
It is estimated that 90-95 percent of people with fibromyalgia experience disordered sleep. In addition, non-restorative sleep was cited as one of the most severe symptoms experienced by FM patients, following pain, in a recent online epidemiological survey by the National Fibromyalgia Association.
“Many healthcare professionals believe that if you improve your quantity and quality of sleep, you will reduce other symptoms,” says Matallana. “For this reason, it is important to learn about proper sleep hygiene and be sure that your sleep disturbances are not being caused by other medical conditions, such as restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea, acid reflux or narcolepsy.”
National Sleep Awareness Week, an award-winning comprehensive, national public education campaign, is designed to improve Americans’ understanding about sleep and sleep disorders. The theme for the 2008 weeklong health promotion event is Sleep: As Important as Diet and Exercise (Only Easier!) Among the campaign’s many components are quizzes, sleep tips and the results of the annual Sleep in America poll. New this year is a two-week NSF Sleep Diary. (Click here to download.) For more information about sleep and National Sleep Awareness Week, visit http:www.sleepfoundation.org
Novel Way to Aid Sleep, Relieve Anxiety in Fibromyalgia
From: Fibromyalgia Network
http://www.fmnetnews.com
Posted: February 26, 2008
Kim Jones, Ph.D., F.N.P., and the team at Oregon Health & Sciences University in Portland, have shown that growth hormone secretion from the brain’s hypothalamus-pituitary system is substantially low in one-third of fibromyalgia patients. Growth hormone is needed in the body for repairing muscle tissues, and inadequate amounts of this hormone could lead to tiny tears in the muscles that eventually generate pain. In fact, a trial to use growth hormone to treat fibromyalgia showed benefit, but this injectable medicine is rarely prescribed because it is costly and not covered by insurance.
The Oregon team tried two relatively inexpensive methods to boost growth hormone production in 165 patients with fibromyalgia during a six-month period.* One method was for patients to take pyridostigmine (PYD), a drug that is used to increase acetylcholine but it also enhances growth hormone secretion. The patients in the PYD group took 60 mg of this medication three times a day (after a dosing up period). The other method was for patients to join a group-exercise program designed for fibromyalgia, because in healthy people exercise is touted as beneficially increasing growth hormone secretion. People in the exercise group met for one hour three times a week.
As it turned out, neither PYD or exercise increased growth hormone secretion in the fibromyalgia patients during the six-month trial. However, PYD was found to significantly improve the patient’s rating of sleep and anxiety.
The authors said they were intrigued by the improvements in sleep and speculate that the PYD may be working to improve the activity in the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. The parasympathetic branch is the body’s “rest and digest” control system. It transmits signals mostly through the use of acetylcholine, which is increased by PYD. Many studies have linked reduced parasympathetic activity to sleep disturbances, so taking PYD could be a novel way to improve your sleep.
Only two of the 106 patients assigned to take PYD dropped out of the study because of drug side effects, so in general, PYD is fairly well tolerated. The side effects of PYD include abdominal pain, diarrhea (helpful if you are constipated), and muscle cramping or twitching. PYD is a prescription medication that has been around a long time, is inexpensive, and available as a generic
Chronic Pain Harms The Brain
ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — People with unrelenting pain don’t only suffer from the non-stop sensation of throbbing pain. They also have trouble sleeping, are often depressed, anxious and even have difficulty making simple decisions.
In a new study, investigators at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have identified a clue that may explain how suffering long-term pain could trigger these other pain-related symptoms.
Researchers found that in a healthy brain all the regions exist in a state of equilibrium. When one region is active, the others quiet down. But in people with chronic pain, a front region of the cortex mostly associated with emotion “never shuts up,” said Dante Chialvo, lead author and associate research professor of physiology at the Feinberg School. “The areas that are affected fail to deactivate when they should.”
They are stuck on full throttle, wearing out neurons and altering their connections to each other. This is the first demonstration of brain disturbances in chronic pain patients not directly related to the sensation of pain.
Chialvo and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people with chronic low back pain and a group of pain-free volunteers while both groups were tracking a moving bar on a computer screen. The study showed the pain sufferers performed the task well but “at the expense of using their brain differently than the pain-free group,” Chialvo said.
When certain parts of the cortex were activated in the pain-free group, some others were deactivated, maintaining a cooperative equilibrium between the regions. This equilibrium also is known as the resting state network of the brain. In the chronic pain group, however, one of the nodes of this network did not quiet down as it did in the pain-free subjects.
This constant firing of neurons in these regions of the brain could cause permanent damage, Chialvo said. “We know when neurons fire too much they may change their connections with other neurons and or even die because they can’t sustain high activity for so long,” he explained.
‘If you are a chronic pain patient, you have pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every minute of your life,” Chialvo said. “That permanent perception of pain in your brain makes these areas in your brain continuously active. This continuous dysfunction in the equilibrium of the brain can change the wiring forever and could hurt the brain.”
Chialvo hypothesized the subsequent changes in wiring “may make it harder for you to make a decision or be in a good mood to get up in the morning. It could be that pain produces depression and the other reported abnormalities because it disturbs the balance of the brain as a whole.”
He said his findings show it is essential to study new approaches to treat patients not just to control their pain but also to evaluate and prevent the dysfunction that may be generated in the brain by the chronic pain.
The study will be published Feb. 6 in The Journal of Neuroscience. Chialvo’s collaborators in this project are Marwan Baliki, a graduate student; Paul Geha, a post-doctoral fellow, and Vania Apkarian, professor of physiology and of anesthesiology, all at the Feinberg School.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205171755.htm
Educational DVD on Fibromyalgia
New Educational DVD on Fibromyalgia - Watch It Online, Pass the Word
by Marly Silverman
ImmuneSupport.com
02-04-2008The Following Announcement was Issued February 2 to “Friends and Family” by Marly Silverman, founder of Patient Alliance for Neuroendocrineimmune Disorders Organization for Research and Advocacy (P.A.N.D.O.R.A.) The Information Network Television (INT), a state of the art educational film production company with offices in Boca Raton, Florida, has released their Healthy Body, Healthy Mind video segment on Fibromyalgia (FM).n The video depicts the personal stories of several FM patients throughout the country, including P.A.N.D.O.R.A.’s founder Marly Silverman and South Florida rheumatologist Dr. Steven Croft.n Also interviewed were Dr. Don Goldenberg and Dr. Daniel Claw, and patients Andy Wold, Judy Stern, Lynne Matallana (President of the National Fibromyalgia Association) and Judith Becerra.
The educational segment was produced by Phyllis Kramer, and she captured quite well the challenges that individuals with Fibromyalgia experience daily. The video is of excellent quality and it uses special graphics and colors to explain how Fibromyalgia affects the body.
We congratulate its producer Phyllis Kramer and her crew as well as INT’s Healthy Body, Healthy Mind producers for the quality invested in the series. The descriptions of the patients’ lives are quite empowering and uplifting while providing a very serious and compelling description of what is to suffer with Fibromyalgia.
We also take this opportunity to thank the major sponsors of the video: Pfizer and King Pharmaceuticals, with additional funding by Abbott, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, and Genzyme.
P.A.N.D.O.R.A. recommends the purchase of this video by any FM patient who would like to share it with family members, friends and family and your family physicians.
Cut and paste these address into browser. Be sure to use the complete 2-lined address:
http://www.itvisus.com/programs/hbhm/
episode_903_UnderstandingFibromyalgia.asp
For the list of public television stations that will broadcast the “Understanding Fibromyalgia” segment in your state or geographical area, use this link [then click on TV Schedule and individual show listings]:
http://www.itvisus.com/programs/hbhm/schedule_
show.asp?e=Understanding+Fibromyalgia
I also encourage you to provide a viewer’s response and or write to them thanking them for this educational film. Please go to: