Situations that do not create pain in others create pain for me. People with fibromyalgia are not actually more sensitive to stimulus than others. Research shows that fibromyalgia subjects cannot detect electrical, pressure or thermal stimuli at a lower level than normal subjects. What is unique for fibromyalgia sufferers is that they experience pain at much lower levels of stimulation than most people do.
Modern medicine explains heightened pain sensitivity through several interesting theories.
They are all based on the fact that in order to experience pain it must first be generated in the periphery of the body, travel through the spinal column and activate the brain. Fibromyalgia patients have evidence of neurochemical imbalance in the last two areas of this process, the spinal column and the brain. In the spinal column two biochemicals, substance P and nerve growth factor, are four times higher in people with symptoms of fibromyalgia. These chemicals heighten the transmission of stimuli to the brain. Evidence also suggests that the normal inhibitory signals from the brain down the spinal cord are diminished in fibromyalgia allowing stronger stimulation to flow up the spinal cord to the brain There is also an abnormal activation of the areas in the brain associated with pain.