Today is fibromyalgia awareness day! Fibromyalgia is a Central Sensitization Syndrome, which means the central nervous system is affected. The response to every stimuli is pain. The brain fires pain signals at the slightest disturbance leading to widespread chronic pain.
There's hyperalgesia which means abnormally increased pain as a response to things that should only give mild discomfort
There's allodynia which means pain as a response to touch, or things that shouldn't normally cause pain. Like brushing your arm against something, touch, massaging, etc.
The body's threshold for stimulus is also reduced, since the nervous system is really sensitive. This leads to people getting overestimulated really quickly because we can handle very less stimuli compared to the average person. Which also leads to sensitivity with loud noises, textures, scents, and other sensory issues. Everything counts as a stimuli, and everything drains us. Pain costs energy.
Fibromyalgia is an invisible disability, but it is still a disability. And i just hope that educating people about it would help in increasing accomodations and understanding about this disorder and the people suffering from it.
Spread awareness today, and reach out to your friends and family if they suffer from chronic pain/fibromyalgia and take care of them <3