How Effective Are the Treatment Options for Fibromyalgia?

There are great treatment options for fibromyalgia, especially if there is a comprehensive plan for using different treatments at the same time. In this video, family medicine specialist Jennifer Caudle, DO, discusses some options that can help.

Transcript

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You know, I think that there are some great treatment

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options for fibromyalgia. You know, what I would say off the bat is one of the overarching themes as physicians we think about when treating fibromyalgia really

00:14

is to think of a comprehensive plan, meaning patients with fibro tend to do better when we use multiple treatments, different types

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of treatments, at the same time. So first of all, there are FDA approved medications to treat fibromyalgia. These can be very, very helpful and something

00:30

that you want your doctor to talk about with you. But in addition, we often recommend lifestyle changes. So stress management is very important.

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Making sure that you're getting plenty of sleep-- also making sure that you're doing exercise and activity,

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which is something-- I think that a lot of patients with fibro say it doesn't make sense. I have got pain. Why would I want to exercise? But actually, we know that gentle exercise can be very,

00:53

very helpful for fibromyalgia. So when you think about all these sort of different modalities, that's really our best approach,

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which is sort of a wide-reaching approach from medications to lifestyle changes, managing stress, exercise.