BP, aches and pains. Related?

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-30-2004
BP, aches and pains. Related?
2
Sat, 03-18-2006 - 10:09pm

I was reading a post on the board where a few people mentioned being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I too have been diagnosed with FM as well as a form a rheumatoid athritus. I was wondering if BPD & body aches/pains seem to be related or perhaps the body aches/pains are amplified in intensity due to the BP.

My son who has BPD has a lot of aches and pains as does my DD who I believe will be diagnosed soon (She's seeing the tdoc now & the pdoc next month).

Any thoughts?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sun, 03-19-2006 - 2:33am

Hi...that is a good question...I've been wondering something similar myself! I don't think anyone knows exactly what's going on, but I do also know a lot of people who have both BP or major depression with fibromyalgia or muscle aches.

I wonder if it could be some particular sensitization to pain going on in the brains of people with BP...or if people with BP, who already have some dysregulation of the parts of their brains that control emotion, also end up with dysregulation of the parts that control pain. I have no idea...wish I did!

I know physical aches and pains can be a symptom of even milder depression, though, so maybe that's part of it...but at least for me recently, I was in a good mood for a while but still had the pain! So that's even more confusing.

Sorry if none of this post made any sense...it's kinda late here. But on my first glance through a med website, I did find an (older) little study that was done about how bipolar and fibromyalgia often run together...here's the summary...hope this helps:

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Am J Psychiatry. 1985 Apr;142(4):441-6. Related Articles, Links

Fibromyalgia and major affective disorder: a controlled phenomenology and family history study.

Hudson JI, Hudson MS, Pliner LF, Goldenberg DL, Pope HG Jr.

Fibromyalgia is a form of nonarticular rheumatism characterized by diffuse musculoskeletal pain. To investigate the relationship between fibromyalgia and major affective disorder, the authors evaluated 31 patients with fibromyalgia and 14 patients with rheumatoid arthritis for rates of current or past major affective disorder and family history of major affective disorder. Both the rate of major affective disorder and the familial prevalence of major affective disorder were significantly higher in the fibromyalgia patients than the rheumatoid arthritis patients. The results suggest that fibromyalgia may be related to major affective disorder.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-06-2005
Mon, 03-20-2006 - 8:52am

there are a couple people on the board that have both also.


I wanted to say tho that when I was on lamictal (I was up to 100mg 2x/day) that I was having a lot of trouble with muscle aches/pains.

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