Many patients experience unexplained hives. Numbness and pain along with the hives is a combination commonly seen in a condition known as fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is often diagnosed by excluding other conditions but look at some of the other symptoms of fibromyalgia and if you experience a few more along with hives, numbness and pain, you may ask to be treated for “fibro” to see if the symptoms subside.
Besides Hives, Numbness And Pain, What Are Other Symptoms?
Pain is the most common symptom experienced by fibromyalgia sufferers. Many of the other symptoms just come and go often enough that the person never has a day where they feel good.
The pain is musculoskeletal pain and is often accompanied by fatigue. It can come and go, or be migratory as can the hives. Numbness or tingling sensations come and go in different areas as well as opposed to always being in the same place when caused by a pinched nerve or spinal condition.
Other symptoms may be grinding the teeth at night, tight or clenching jaw, headaches, sore throat that comes and goes, heart murmur, digestive problems, heartburn, reflux, and others. Not everyone experiences all of these nor do any of them mean fibromyalgia is the cause. But the one constant is the pain. It is not unusual to have recurrent hives, numbness, and tingling. But always the pain in one or many manifestations.
Why Is Pain Such a Constant with Fibromyalgia?
One popular theory is something referred to as Substance P. People with fibromyalgia have triple the amount of Substance P as normal people. This substance carries the pain stimuli to the brain. The brain can interpret pain incorrectly and therefore it responds incorrectly. What one person feels as an itch or tickle, the fibro patient will feel as pain. And to make matter worse, fibromyalgics often have more pain receptors in the brain which only magnifies this pain.
Due to a lack of stage 4 sleep, sometimes fibro patients don’t get enough natural muscle repairs that occur during this sleep stage. So the little muscle traumas that we all experienced are not repaired during sleep. This adds up over time and causes stiffness and pain. Obviously, exercise will usually aggravate pain in these patients so the normal advice of getting more exercise will not help much.
Why the Hives, Numbness Combination
Often an allergic reaction to a pain medication like codeine will cause hives, numbness being unrelated. There are many medicines that cause hives.
But it is not uncommon for fibromyalgia patients to get hives. Numbness, On the other hand is a very common symptom, second only to pain. So be sure to mention it to your doctor so he or she can factor it in to your diagnosis.
