Why is itching so common with fibromyalgia?
What can we do to relieve this difficult symptom?
Transcript:
hi I'm here with dr. Andrew miles the
author of the fibro Bible and we've got
another viewer question
why do I get so itchy when I have
fibromyalgia
why what's with the itching it's
something that we see on the support
groups a lot a lot of the patients talk
about it seems to be a very common thing
and a lot of conventional medicine
doesn't really have a good explanation
for this so we'd love to hear your
thoughts one of the early treatises on
Chinese medicine from about 2,000 years
ago describes itching and pain coming
from the same source and this is
interesting and what this means is that
when you have itching this is the
warning sign that if you don't take care
of it pain will come later
so itching is a really nice early
warning sign now itching also can happen
as the body is healing as there's this
kind of macrophage activity as the
body's rebuilding but itching itself
hello yeah it seemed sorry some things
are you hearing it yeah I can area okay
eating is mainly caused by an immune
reaction as the body's immune factors
are responding it's responding in a more
generalized way you'll tend to get an
itching response and many people will
have multiple chemical sensitivities or
simply the wind will blow and their body
will break out in hives and they'll be
itching this is because the body's
immune system is already under attack
and it's senses that there's an incoming
threat so it ramps up the inflammation
this inflammation causes itching in the
early stages and the later stages that
turns into pain another area that causes
itching is when blood isn't moving
enough and as blood starts to move we
find that there's dead tissue hidden in
those little backwaters of the veins and
venules and as this comes out and this
happens quite a bit as people do foot
soap
their blood circulation improves
macrophages get to work eating up the
dead debris just like pac-man and when
there are when there's an overproduction
and these macrophages it causes a
sensation that the body needs to be
itching so these are the two main causes
one is that there's the body feels that
there's an extra Lin fection
and the second is that the body is doing
cleanup and rebuilding and there's just
too many builders there these
macrophages which will both eat away
dead tissue and help to rebuild tissue
and when you have a sensation that there
are a lot of these macrophages kicking
around then it causes the itching so the
way that we work with this is in the
early stages we'll work by balancing and
regulating those immune factors and then
in the later stages we just make sure
that we're approaching increasing
microcirculation slowly so that there's
not too much debris as to signal a major
immune response and we can get just that
sweet spot for macrophages the cleanup
crew to come through and clean away all
of that dead tissue and begin rebuilding
fresh tissue within your body so that's
where ditching is really from and what
it's signaling and what it's teaching us
about our internal condition excellent
thank you so much thank you
