Last night I was feeling under the weather and just lousy. I felt like I was coming down with a "normal people sickness"! Now, those of us with fibromyalgia know exactly what that means. Throw in an illness like the common cold on top of our everyday sickness and we just feel like the world as we know it is ending. Though, strange as it is, my fibromyalgia sometimes gets better when I get "normal people sick". Don't judge, but I sometimes wish to get a cold just for an escape from the fibro for awhile. Other times, I'm not so lucky. Anyways, I was feverishly burning up, and felt like I was going to pass out because I was so damn hot. So, I went and grabbed my temporal thermometer, and took my temperature. 95.0 degrees Fahrenheit!!! WTF? That is hypothermic temperature. This cannot be right I told myself, so I compared it to my sons temperature. His was a healthy 98.4. So, I tested mine again. 95.2. And over, and over again I took my temperature. They all came out about the same and my son's always came out normal.
After a little bit of research on human body temperature I learned that in temperatures such as this classify as hypothermia. Typical symptoms of hypothermia are intense shivering, bluing or greying of the skin, mental changes, and a few others. I didn't have any of these, except for the mental confusion and being really unfocused. No shivering, no discoloration of the skin. I did not even feel cold. In fact, I felt very warm. So, what was going on? This is not the first time I have noticed that when it felt like I should be running a fever, my temperature was abnormally low. It went up by a couple degrees but peaked at 97.2. This morning, I took my basal body temperature (the first temperature in the morning before any activity). It was at a steady 96.8 for most of the morning, and rose to 97.6 in the afternoon. Still below or just finally reaching the normal range,.
Now, any physician or anybody with any sort of medical background knows that a person's body temperature is one of the most important indicators of health. A low body temperature can lead to all sorts of significant symptoms, most of which are the same symptoms that are associated with fibromyalgia. Headaches, aches and pains, slow metabolism, weight gain, mental fogging, sleep disturbances, and many, many others. So, what is the connection?
Current studies point to a central nervous system component of fibromyalgia, particularly the autonomic nervous system. This controls everything we are unconscious of; heart rate, breathing, and body temperature among other things. Ah, body temperature. Our hypothalamus is supposed to be helping to regulate our body temperatures, which is yet another organelle that has been proven to be affected in fibromyalgia. So is our unbalanced nervous system causing problems for our hypothalamus, or is our hypothalamus making adverse changes in our nervous systems? I have not run across anything that gives me the answer to this yet.
Either way, having a low body temperature can wreak havoc in your body. Imagine really thick viscous blood that flows more like molasses. Imagine every cell in your body trying to perform it's duties in an environment that is not meant to support cell life. Imagine molecules slowing down and not being able to perform their duties at all. Imagine a pH change significant enough to start causing cells to commit apoptosis, or cell suicide, programmed death. Slowly, these cells die off and the regeneration of cells is much slower than in a normal temperature body. Eventually, sickness ensues and wins out. If your body stays in a state as this for long enough it can become Wilson's Temperature Syndrome, which is associated with poor thyroid functioning. You can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%27s_temperature_syndrome
The question now is how do you increase your body temperature? Exercise is the most obvious answer, but typically the temperature returns to below normal soon after exercise is complete. Maybe natural supplements? Chili peppers? Hot baths? More and more exercise? I really am not sure.
Has anybody else noticed a connection between their body temperature and symptoms of fibromyalgia, and if so, how did you regulate your body temperature? Did you share your temperature changes with your doctor, and if so, what advise did they give you? Any comments you leave are sure to help not only me, but many others who are also have these same questions.
Thank you for reading.
-Aimee
