After the fall on Dartmoor I do pretty well and don’t have a magor flare in my symptoms. It is the outdoor first aid course over the last weekend that knocked me for six. Spending all weekend having to learn to administer first aid and then having to sit scenario based assessments outside in the wind and rain with many sensory overloads really did increase my fatigue and fibro systems. I did qualify, which is really exciting , but I’m very glad to have got through my working week to be confronted with another weekend to be spent investing in my family and friends.
This last week reminded me of a walk we did about a year ago. A walk in the Brecon Beacons in which we walked the entire 12 miles in thick fog. It got me thinking about one of my most dehabilitating of all the fibromyalgia symptoms …..the fibro fog!
Over the last five years I have experienced many neurological symptoms. I have found these increasingly difficult to manage. When I first went to the doctors as part of my first set of tests was an MRI scan of my brain. This showed multiple leasions in my brain like ones found in the brain of a MS patient. My neurological symptoms are word finding difficulties, speech difficulties, problems with memories, sensory difficulties like sensitivity to light and sound and poor concentration. These neurological symptoms in fybromyalgia are referred to as ‘brain fog’ because it is like a fog has covered over all the brain processes making everything hard to access quickly or clearly.
I have done a small amount of research into reasons why as a fibromyalgia patient I experience ‘brain fog’. One study showed that fibromyalgia patients do not receive enough oxygen to different parts of the brain. It suggested that’s because our nervous systems are struggling causing changes to our brains blood vessels. Patrick Wood MD Research paper from 2007 showed that sufferers annually lose more than three times as much “gray matter” brain tissue than healthy, age-matched controls. Some of this loss is from the area of the brain that helps with concentration and memory. Another study looking into the mental processes of patients who experience chronic pain suggested that in a patient who experiences chronic pain the frontal regions of the brain associated with emotions are constantly active, failing to shut off when they should, consequently exhausting neurons in this region of the brain. This explains why brain fog intensifies when our senses are being worked harder for example when we are in a noisy environment or in a brightly lit room. Our minds get exhausted.
At the end of last year I had started on some medication. This medication enabled me to enter easily into a restorative sleep which very quickly helped reduce some of my neurological difficulties. This indicated to me how important sleep is to our brain functioning and the way we process everything.
Better sleep has many benefits, it extends the time you are in a deep restorative sleep giving time for our bodies to rejuvenate themselves, promoting muscle growth, tissue repair and protein synthesis. Sleep also helps our mental functions that involve learning and memory. The times that these rejuvenating processes take place is in deep sleep and REM. During deep sleep our blood pressure decreases along with our breathing rate. This stage is known to promote physical and emotional restoration. It is in this deep sleep that our bodies release growth hormones which promote new healthy cell growth and repair our body tissues and organs. This process itself strengthens and renews the immune system. During REM sleep the mind is active our breathing and heart rate are variable, but it is the time most of our muscles stop, heavily restricting our movement. REM sleep is essential for memory growth and storage.
My tablets enabling me to spend more time in the restorative sleep was a game changer. It gave me some breathing space to make changes needed to prevent fibro flares.
Before fibromyalgia, I was a relatively active hill walker, I was fiercely hard-working and I had a multitude of passions. As my symptoms robbed me one by one of these characteristics I have fought hard against it. I became angry. All the things I loved doing I tried hard to keep doing, having detrimental effects on my health, both physical and mental. With no known cure, I had to change my thinking processes. If I was to beat this illness I had to accept my limitations. I found that I couldn’t concentrate or access some of my memories or brain functions in a noisy environment, but I could in a quiet space. So my work environment had to be changed to accommodate this. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, I just needed to change the way I did it. Sometimes the only way was to rest, and rest I had to do or my flares would increase in magnitude. Over time I began to understand how important it is rest in this way and to be kind to myself through that process. As I slept deeper, started to understand my limitations whilst being kind to myself I have learnt to cope with fibromyalgia and the accompanying brain fog. It has taken a long time but I have grown to embrace my new reality and accept my off days and most of all remember to be kind to myself day after day. I still have ultra foggy days, where I talk gibberish, I find my flour in the fridge and milk in the saucepan drawer, but we have learnt to laugh about it, shrug it off and move on through the fog into brighter days.
Walking to health; the challenge 