Due to the high number of patients diagnosed with mental disorders and fibromyalgia, The National Institute of Psychiatry “Ramon de la Fuente Muñiz”, offers a highly specialized program for comprehensive care, including nutrition education and stress management, among others.

The coordinator of the psycho-educational sessions at the Institute, Doctor María Isabel Barrera Villalpando, reported that 20 to 80 percent of people with depression have fibromyalgia. Meanwhile, in cases of anxiety and fibromyalgia, the percentage ranges between 20 and 50 percent.

In an interview, she said that over the past 15 years, they have treated more than 800 patients with this painful disorder, and their ages range between 40 and 60 years on average.

He explained that fibromyalgia is a disease very difficult to diagnose because there are no laboratory tests that warn about their presence, so unfortunately people with this neurological condition reach the health services up to seven years after the symptoms started.

Patients with this condition have pain a minimum of six months, which is caused by the malfunction of a nerve fiber. This causes a neuropathic pain that causes widespread pain and tenderness (sensitivity to touch). The pain and tenderness tend to come and go, and move about the body. Most often, people with this chronic (long-term) illness are fatigued (very tired) and have sleep and cognitive problems. Your pain is similar to that of a person with a diabetic foot or herpes.

"Clothes are not tolerated, nor any kind of stimulus. The sensation is an ardent pain, or as if electric shocks were received ", she exemplified.

For this type of symptoms, sessions patients are offered recommendations that promote a healthy lifestyle as the consumption of foods rich in antioxidants, to prevent muscle weakness and pain, and drink up to eight glasses of water to prevent demineralization of the body, exercise often (a very important part of fibromyalgia treatment), among others.

The specialist said that not all people diagnosed with depression or anxiety can have this painful disorder. The disease develops when several elements, such as genetic predisposition, with a history of some type of physical or emotional violence, chronic abuse and stress during childhood and adolescence, and experience of any circumstances that cause a strong emotional impact are combined, as an accident or a divorce.

The coordinator of the program pointed out that it is very important that have a clinical assessment, to define if the anxiety disorder, for example, is attributable to a medical condition, such as a thyroid problem or mental health problem.

Fibromyalgia is a rheumatological condition that has no cure, but can be controlled. The chronic pain affects directly the quality of life of the people in a very important way.

"It generates a great physical disability, by making movement, fatigue, pain difficult. Imagine being constantly in such pain, with fatigue, with problems of concentration. "

Among its symptoms is widespread pain in 18 focal points of the body, chronic fatigue, headache, irritable bowel syndrome, allergies and morning stiffness in some parts of the body, among others.

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