Today I thought we would look briefly at the very difficult to treat condition of Fibromyalgia and a relatively recent systematic review highlighting how exercise can help. Fibromyalgia is a chronic (i.e. long lasting condition) of widespread pain and fatigue. Patients with fibromyalgia are extremely sensitive to touch – they will often experience extreme tenderness and pain from light touch and are in general very fatigued. The causes are currently unclear and a topic of ongoing research but it is clear that women are much more likely to be affected than men. As physiotherapists we often see patients who are suffering from fibromyalgia and it is often very difficult to help them which is why a recent review showing that aerobic exercise can help reduce symptoms was of particular interest to me.

The recent systematic review (which can be found here https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012700/full ) looked at 13 clinical trials for fibromyalgia (totalling nearly 840 people) which examined the effects of exercise in comparison with drugs or no treatment. Most of the trials involved supervised exercise sessions twice a week for between 6 to 24 weeks. Pooled together the results of these studies seemed to suggest that aerobic exercise reduced the feeling of pain, stiffness and fatigue in patients with fibromyalgia. The authors of the review also suggested that it was likely that many of the patients with fibromyalgia were very deconditioned due to their fatigue and pain and it was likely that this was one of the reasons that aerobic exercise might help. From my perspective as a physiotherapist seeing patients with fibromyalgia, this tends very much to be the case. They have often experienced a long period of inactivity (due to their fatigue and pain) and have become very deconditioned and certainly increasing their exercise levels slowly tends to help, which is backed up by the results of the review.

Just a short blog today but I hope that you have found it useful. If you or anyone you know has fibromyalgia and would like help from physiotherapy then please get in touch.

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