{"id":10882,"date":"2026-09-09T18:01:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/?p=10882"},"modified":"2026-09-09T18:29:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:29:48","slug":"fibromyalgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/fibromyalgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Fibromyalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Picture from https:\/\/familyhealthadvocacy.com\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fibromyalgia is one of those poorly understood and treated conditions that deserves some words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My inspiration to write this post was after listening to the ABC Radio National podcast, The Health Report presented Dr Norman Swan and Dr Preeya Alexander. This particular episode was titled “Validation for people living with chronic pain”<\/a> and aired on 05 SEP 2026. For anyone living with fibromyalgia, this would be very worth your listen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fibromyalgia is a condition that is not a well understood and managed condition where patients will experience widespread pain. However, their inflammatory markers are normal which indicates there is no active joint inflammation. There are several diagnostic criteria that have been developed and they are all based on the presence of multi-site pain along with presence of functional disorders like difficulty with sleep, chronic fatigue or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means often specialists have to rule out other causes of joint or muscles pains. You can have fibromyalgia on top of another rheumatological diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Often it is associated with mood disorders like depression \/ anxiety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TLDR of the podcast is that fibromyalgia is a spectrum rather than one discrete disorder. Other diagnoses within these spectrum are Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic encephalomyelitis) and Long Covid. All these symptoms share very similar core symptoms and perhaps the only reason why one gets a particular diagnosis is which type medical specialist you see. Neurologists often will diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome whereas Rheumatologists often will diagnose it as fibromyalgia. The podcast shares a genome wide association study<\/a> in 2.5 million individuals which show that fibromyalgia is associated with 26 genes. The interesting thing about these genes are that they are expressed particularly in the Central Nervous System (CNS). The study therefore presents robust genetic evidence that fibromyalgia is a primarily central nervous system disorder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found that study very interesting because I have always thought of and treated fibromyalgia as a CNS disorder. Currently we do not have an established pathophysiology for fibromyalgia but the above study points us on which direction to further explore. My own hypothesis is that Fibromyalgia is a neuro-sensitisation disorder. Neurosensitisation is a process of the ‘sensitisation’ of the nervous system so that it becomes hyper-activated and hyper-sensitive. A sensitised proprioceptor (pain fibre) will fire off pain signals when there isn’t any thing to cause pain, or will produce overly strong pain signals for a pain that would not normally be that bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that regard, acupuncture is a very effective modality for down-regulating or de-sensitising a overly sensitised CNS. From my own experience, I only need a very small dose of laser acupuncture in one treatment. This small dose is enough for many of my patients to have a ‘flare up’ (aggravation of symptoms) so I always advise them to expect this. After the ‘flare up’ which can last up to 2 weeks for some, I expect the overall fibromyalgia pains to improve or be less sensitive. I tend to give it four 4 weeks between treatments as you never want to over-treat a sensitised nervous system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus far, we do not know of any cures for fibromyalgia and acupuncture certainly is not a cure. The usual treatment of fibromyalgia is multi-disciplinary (psychologist, exercise physiologist, etc) and pharmacological. I find acupuncture effective for de-sensitising the CNS thereby controlling the pain symptoms. However, there seems to be something that keep re-sensitising the nervous system and more often then not, psychological stressors seems to be that perpetuating factor. I believe addressing the psychological domain has an important role for long term management of this condition. With acupuncture, I have improved my fibromyalgia patients’ quality of life and symptom burden and I would encourage anyone with fibromyalgia to consider finding a medical acupuncturist with experience in treating this condition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*This article was not written with any help from AI <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fibromyalgia is one of those poorly understood and treated conditions that deserves some words. My inspiration to write this post was after listening to the ABC Radio National podcast, The Health Report presented Dr Norman Swan and Dr Preeya Alexander. This particular episode was titled “Validation for people living with chronic pain” and aired on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_style":"","_post_layout":"","_cover_image":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[108,113],"class_list":["post-10882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acupuncture","tag-nerves","tag-pain"],"featured_image_url":false,"post_content":"Picture from https:\/\/familyhealthadvocacy.com\/ Fibromyalgia is one of those poorly understood and treated conditions that deserves some words. My inspiration to write this post was after listening to the ABC Radio National podcast, The Health Report presented Dr Norman Swan and Dr Preeya Alexander. This particular episode was titled “Validation for people living with chronic pain” and aired on 05 SEP 2026. For anyone living with fibromyalgia, this would be very worth your listen. Fibromyalgia is a condition that is not a well understood and managed condition where patients will experience widespread pain. However, their inflammatory markers are normal which indicates there is no active joint inflammation. There are several diagnostic criteria that have been developed and they are all based on the presence of multi-site pain along with presence of functional disorders like difficulty with sleep, chronic fatigue or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means often specialists have to rule out other causes of joint or muscles pains. You can have fibromyalgia on top of another rheumatological diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Often it is associated with mood disorders like depression \/ anxiety. The TLDR of the podcast is that fibromyalgia is a spectrum rather than one discrete disorder. Other diagnoses within these spectrum are Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic encephalomyelitis) and Long Covid. All these symptoms share very similar core symptoms and perhaps the only reason why one gets a particular diagnosis is which type medical specialist you see. Neurologists often will diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome whereas Rheumatologists often will diagnose it as fibromyalgia. The podcast shares a genome wide association study in 2.5 million individuals which show that fibromyalgia is associated with 26 genes. The interesting thing about these genes are that they are expressed particularly in the Central Nervous System (CNS). The study therefore presents robust genetic evidence that fibromyalgia is a primarily central nervous system disorder. I found that study very interesting because I have always thought of and treated fibromyalgia as a CNS disorder. Currently we do not have an established pathophysiology for fibromyalgia but the above study points us on which direction to further explore. My own hypothesis is that Fibromyalgia is a neuro-sensitisation disorder. Neurosensitisation is a process of the ‘sensitisation’ of the nervous system so that it becomes hyper-activated and hyper-sensitive. A sensitised proprioceptor (pain fibre) will fire off pain signals when there isn’t any thing to cause pain, or will produce overly strong pain signals for a pain that would not normally be that bad. In that regard, acupuncture is a very effective modality for down-regulating or de-sensitising a overly sensitised CNS. From my own experience, I only need a very small dose of laser acupuncture in one treatment. This small dose is enough for many of my patients to have a ‘flare up’ (aggravation of symptoms) so I always advise them to expect this. After the ‘flare up’ which can last up to 2 weeks for some, I expect the overall fibromyalgia pains to improve or be less sensitive. I tend to give it four 4 weeks between treatments as you never want to over-treat a sensitised nervous system. Thus far, we do not know of any cures for fibromyalgia and acupuncture certainly is not a cure. The usual treatment of fibromyalgia is multi-disciplinary (psychologist, exercise physiologist, etc) and pharmacological. I find acupuncture effective for de-sensitising the CNS thereby controlling the pain symptoms. However, there seems to be something that keep re-sensitising the nervous system and more often then not, psychological stressors seems to be that perpetuating factor. I believe addressing the psychological domain has an important role for long term management of this condition. With acupuncture, I have improved my fibromyalgia patients’ quality of life and symptom burden and I would encourage anyone with fibromyalgia to consider finding a medical acupuncturist with experience in treating this condition. *This article was not written with any help from AI","category":"Acupuncture","category_link":["https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/category\/acupuncture\/"],"author_info":{"name":"Dr Bill Tran","url":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/author\/bilton\/","imageUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8e836cf01030795ad80742c3fd3e404580bca4d3e100bdb9d03d9f4722698d89?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"date_info":"September 9, 2026","time_ago_info":"5 hours ago","blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_urls":false,"post_excerpt_frontgb":"

\"\"
Picture from https:\/\/familyhealthadvocacy.com\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fibromyalgia is one of those poorly understood and treated conditions that deserves some words.<\/p>\n

My inspiration to write this post was after listening to the ABC Radio National podcast, The Health Report presented Dr Norman Swan and Dr Preeya Alexander. This particular episode was titled “Validation for people living with chronic pain”<\/a> and aired on 05 SEP 2026. For anyone living with fibromyalgia, this would be very worth your listen. <\/p>\n

Fibromyalgia is a condition that is not a well understood and managed condition where patients will experience widespread pain. However, their inflammatory markers are normal which indicates there is no active joint inflammation. There are several diagnostic criteria that have been developed and they are all based on the presence of multi-site pain along with presence of functional disorders like difficulty with sleep, chronic fatigue or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means often specialists have to rule out other causes of joint or muscles pains. You can have fibromyalgia on top of another rheumatological diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Often it is associated with mood disorders like depression \/ anxiety. <\/p>\n

The TLDR of the podcast is that fibromyalgia is a spectrum rather than one discrete disorder. Other diagnoses within these spectrum are Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic encephalomyelitis) and Long Covid. All these symptoms share very similar core symptoms and perhaps the only reason why one gets a particular diagnosis is which type medical specialist you see. Neurologists often will diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome whereas Rheumatologists often will diagnose it as fibromyalgia. The podcast shares a genome wide association study<\/a> in 2.5 million individuals which show that fibromyalgia is associated with 26 genes. The interesting thing about these genes are that they are expressed particularly in the Central Nervous System (CNS). The study therefore presents robust genetic evidence that fibromyalgia is a primarily central nervous system disorder. <\/p>\n

I found that study very interesting because I have always thought of and treated fibromyalgia as a CNS disorder. Currently we do not have an established pathophysiology for fibromyalgia but the above study points us on which direction to further explore. My own hypothesis is that Fibromyalgia is a neuro-sensitisation disorder. Neurosensitisation is a process of the ‘sensitisation’ of the nervous system so that it becomes hyper-activated and hyper-sensitive. A sensitised proprioceptor (pain fibre) will fire off pain signals when there isn’t any thing to cause pain, or will produce overly strong pain signals for a pain that would not normally be that bad. <\/p>\n

In that regard, acupuncture is a very effective modality for down-regulating or de-sensitising a overly sensitised CNS. From my own experience, I only need a very small dose of laser acupuncture in one treatment. This small dose is enough for many of my patients to have a ‘flare up’ (aggravation of symptoms) so I always advise them to expect this. After the ‘flare up’ which can last up to 2 weeks for some, I expect the overall fibromyalgia pains to improve or be less sensitive. I tend to give it four 4 weeks between treatments as you never want to over-treat a sensitised nervous system. <\/p>\n

Thus far, we do not know of any cures for fibromyalgia and acupuncture certainly is not a cure. The usual treatment of fibromyalgia is multi-disciplinary (psychologist, exercise physiologist, etc) and pharmacological. I find acupuncture effective for de-sensitising the CNS thereby controlling the pain symptoms. However, there seems to be something that keep re-sensitising the nervous system and more often then not, psychological stressors seems to be that perpetuating factor. I believe addressing the psychological domain has an important role for long term management of this condition. With acupuncture, I have improved my fibromyalgia patients’ quality of life and symptom burden and I would encourage anyone with fibromyalgia to consider finding a medical acupuncturist with experience in treating this condition. <\/p>\n

*This article was not written with any help from AI <\/p>\n","category_list":"Acupuncture<\/a>","comments_num":"0 comments","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10882"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10893,"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10882\/revisions\/10893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btlaseracupuncture.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}