Variable Heart Rate With Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia is a health condition that affects up to 6 percent of the population, as of 2008. Its symptoms are a disparate range of chronic aches and tenderness in the joints and bones, as well as fatigue, trouble sleeping and a general malaise.

History

• Fibromyalgia has previously been referred to as "muscular rheumatism" and "fibrositis." Although it has been the subject of study since the 19th century, it wasn't classified as a genuine debilitating illness until 1987.

Variable Heart Rate

• Fibromyalgia has long been believed to have an impact on sufferers' cardiovascular systems. Professor of Rheumatology Dr. Manuel Martinez-Lavin, a specialist in the "cardiovascular involvement of rheumatic diseases and viceversa," has researched and published texts on the subject that demonstrate a relationship between fibromyalgia and abnormally low variability in the heart rate. He cites an underlying cardiovascular condition as a potential cause of fibromyalgia, focusing on the "disregulation of the autonomic (sympathetic) nervous system as the cause of FM," and concluding that "in FM, there is a deranged sympathetic response to orthostatic stress."

Sympathetic Hyperactivity

• The decreased variability of heart rate among fibromyalgia patients has been linked to sympathetic hyperactivity--an over-activity in the part of the autonomic nervous system that relates to blood flow, heart rate and blood pressure.