Juvenile fibromyalgia isn’t a term you come across regularly. That’s because fibromyalgia in teens and young kids isn’t commonly talked about. However, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that it’s a serious concern. In fact, it is among the reasons for visits to healthcare professionals like physicians, neurologists, and upper cervical chiropractic doctors.
Many young patients and their loved ones struggle to grasp how the condition impacts them. Others aren’t sure if their condition will disappear over the years or if it will carry on until they reach adulthood. If you have a loved one affected by juvenile fibromyalgia, our quick guide below might come in handy for you.
Understanding Fibromyalgia in Teens and Kids
It’s easy to confuse fibromyalgia for other health problems, primarily because it causes common symptoms like pain, sleep deprivation, fatigue, anxiety, and depression. In adults, sometimes fibromyalgia gets mistaken for Lyme’s disease, lupus, and arthritis.
Meanwhile, in kids and teenagers, this complex condition often gets undiagnosed or even undetected until the symptoms begin to affect school attendance or extracurriculars.
Juvenile fibromyalgia typically causes kids to experience the following:
- Feeling sore in various parts of the body
- Headaches that frequently occur
- Restless sleep that causes lingering fatigue
- Abdominal cramps that sometimes lead to diarrhea
- Trouble thinking, understanding, or remembering things
Why Does Juvenile Fibromyalgia Hurt?
As much as you want to ease the pain or wish for it to go away, sometimes it lingers and causes a child or teenager to feel distressed. What’s worse is that the pain can trigger anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns as the patient notices patterns or experiences difficulty in coping during each episode or flare-up.
But why does it hurt anyway? Why can’t pain relievers or medications relieve the discomfort caused by juvenile fibromyalgia? The answer to that lies in the neurological nature of the condition.
Simply put, the discomfort that your child experiences doesn’t come from mere muscle pain or strain. Instead, fibromyalgia in teens and young children comes from a malfunction in the nervous system.
Because the brain and the nerves don’t work as they should, they overreact to pressure or pain stimuli. That’s why when kids with fibromyalgia get hit by a ball during a football match or bump an elbow on the corner of a table, they might experience extreme pain.
Until the primary source of your central nervous problem gets addressed, the debilitating symptoms will continue to haunt your kid.
Can Juvenile Fibromyalgia Progress as a Child Grows Older?
It’s hard enough to see a young loved one experience pain and suffering because of a condition like fibromyalgia. So, it’s perfectly understandable if you have concerns on whether your kid can overcome the disorder or experience the same set of symptoms (or even worse ones) when they enter adulthood.
Unfortunately, studies show that juvenile-onset fibromyalgia (JFM) can potentially carry on as your loved one gets older. Sometimes, patients with JFM experience worse symptoms than those who developed their condition later in life.
As a result, parents or guardians of patients that have fibromyalgia often resort to addressing the different symptoms like fatigue and muscular pain through remedies such as:
- Switching to a healthier and more wellness-centric lifestyle
- Improving sleep patterns or sleep hygiene
- Finding stress-relieving techniques to calm the nerves
- Engaging in mild physical activities to help the body cope with the pain
If you know cases of fibromyalgia in teens, you can certainly use the tips above to manage flareups and prevent the onset of worse and more frustrating symptoms. Essentially, those techniques we shared above help relax the nerve, care for a child’s ailing body, and reduce the disorder’s impact.
The Role of Upper Cervical Chiropractic in Helping Suffering Kids
Besides those tactics, you can also seek upper cervical care – a unique, innovative, and holistic approach to healing various diseases and conditions, including fibromyalgia. The process aims to correct any abnormalities in the neck’s natural curvature, which typically impacts the brainstem and the rest of your nervous system.
As we have emphasized above, fibromyalgia is beyond simple muscle pain. Instead, it involves the nerves in the body or those tiny wiring networks that send and receives brain signals. Upper cervical care presents a potential solution to your nerve and brainstem malfunction by removing the pressure that comes from the misaligned C1 and C2 bones of your upper neck region.
Sometimes, subluxation or bone shifting along the neck occurs after a physical trauma like getting hit in the head or neck, trauma to the neck during birth, and head injury during a car accident.
Slow and precise cervical bone adjustments help restore the balance in the spine, allowing the brain to perceive pain and pressure normally again. It’s a gradual and natural process that has shown immense potential over the years.
You can find hundreds of cases studies done on upper cervical care patients that attest to the procedure’s uses and applications. If you observe the tell-tale signs of fibromyalgia in your child or if you already have a diagnosis, you should start seeking relief options like upper cervical care as soon as possible. The sooner you address the root cause, the better your child’s chances of improving his overall health and condition.
Help your teenager or young child experience fibromyalgia relief with the help of upper cervical chiropractic. Find a nearby upper cervical care clinic near you and schedule your kid’s first consultation today!
to schedule a consultation today.