What is the effect of fibromyalgia on the brain and emotions?

Fibromyalgia is a neurological disorder of hypersensitivity, which means that we react more strongly to any kind of stimulus - pain, temperature changes, aromas, drafts, sounds, lights, textures, tastes, everything. It can be easy to be overwhelmed because of that, so there can be cognitive effects based on the severity of the fibromyalgia.

Also, pain leads to fatigue, which causes cognitive problems.

It has been hard to reproduce the cognitive deficits (which are often called "fibro fog") in clinical situations until recently, because testers were often having patients do just one thing in a controlled environment. There were fewer stimuli, so the fibro fog didn't show up as much. Under more realistic testing situations, though, there are multiple things happening at once. For instance, someone who is at work being assaulted by fluorescent lighting, the smell of burnt popcorn coming from the break room and the chemicals the cleaning crew used last night getting to her, her phone constantly ringing and 14 different people dropping by her desk asking why their particular needs haven't been met yet (as well as those who are using chat clients or e-mail to reach her) isn't going to function quite the same as that same person did sitting in a vocational evaluator's quiet, calm office reading one card at a time while the psychologist's assistant sits quietly in the corner making notes.

More recent research has finally been done that requires subjects to multitask while having their cognitive skills tested. Under those conditions, people with fibromyalgia have in some cases performed worse than those with early stages of Alzheimer's.

Fibromyalgia is made much worse by any kind of stress - emotional, mental, or physical. The symptoms gets worse, the cognitive effects increase, the person's ability to do whatever she needs to do decreases, her frustration rises, causing more stress, which causes further deterioration - you can see the cycle.

It can be extremely depressing to face the reality of having a disease that is not curable, and that some people refuse to acknowledge as being very real. It is terribly frustrating to have a body and brain that can be unpredictable in their ability to perform. Most fibromites I've met (including myself) were high-performing people with perfectionist standards. "Good enough" isn't enough - we want to do things RIGHT, and RIGHT NOW!

Learning to pace ourselves and work with our bodies can make an incredible difference, and smooth out the emotional problems that can otherwise be so difficult. That can make a major positive difference in the cognitive impact of fibromyalgia.

I have a podcast about living well in spite of fibromyalgia and other chronic diseases - the site is linked below. I'll have a new episode out soon. Please feel free to ask me any questions you have. I hope that something I've said is helpful to you :-) Source(s): http://fibrantliving.com/

Having fibromyalgia myself, my emotions are really affected by severe depression. As far as what it does to ones brain, haven't a clue.