Saturday, August 8, 2015

More wonderful medical news

Of course, I get all the fun stuff. I have both rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. It never ceases to amaze me that some people do not know what either are. Yes, Virginia there are disgustingly healthy people out there who do not know about yucky unhealthy stuff.

So it overjoys me to read new research about my ailments. Especially when I find research that says the really lucky people who have both RA and fibro, have many more problems with RA than people without fibro.

One article is titled: Fibromyalgia Symptoms May Mimic High Disease Activity in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis. That title sort of says it all doesn't it? So even if I don't really have high disease activity, I will just feel like I do.

This article is from Egypt and is titled: The Impact of fibromyalgia on disease assessment in rheumatoid arthritis. I has some lovely charts and tables that compile the list of issues.
Table 2. Somatic manifestations of studied rheumatoid arthritis patients.
Somatic manifestations percentage (%)Patients

P value

RAF (25)RA (25)
Widespread pain10028less than 0.001
Sleep disturbance68320.011
Fatigue92520.002
Morning stiffness56360.156
Headache56240.021
Depression8840less than 0.001
Anxiety7240less than 0.001
Parasthesia76320.002
Cognitive symptoms56160.003
Dysmenorrhea20201
Irritable bowel syndrome1640.157
RAF: rheumatoid arthritis with concomitant fibromyalgia, RA: rheumatoid arthritis.

When I was diagnosed with both RA and fibro, my doctor told me I probably would not be able to tell which ailment caused which pain. Sometimes I can but sometimes I can't. And sometimes I just don't care.

But now that I know fibro makes my RA feel worse, I'm not going to suck it up. I think I should switch to chronic whininess. I think chronic whininess outweighs chronic pain. Some research news inspires whininess.

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