How common colds, cold weather affect my MS/Fibromyalgia

Hello,

It has been a long 3 months, battling the flu and cold weather, which in turn caused me to flare up. Now is this MS fatigue or a Fibromyalgia fatigue or both. 

Trying to do things even the smallest seems to drain me of all energy, this can be really hard for your friends and family to understand.  I have cancelled massages, plans and doing any form of housework, in turn this can make me feel guilty and depressed.  

One thing I did do is go to one of my massage appointments.  I had myofacial cupping done which is said to help enhance circulation, help relieve pain, and pull toxins from your body’s tissue.  It often gets good results for patients who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, flu, colds, back pain, coughs, allergies, muscle pain, fevers, bronchial congestion, arthritis and anxiety.   I always feel a lot better after getting a deep tissue massage combined with the cupping. 

Luckily I had another massage appointment a few days later where along with the deep tissue I get Cranial Sacral treatment.

With respect to having the flu or common cold (not sure which I am suffering from) I need to resign myself to more days sleeping, laying on the couch and being unproductive much to my dismay. This is because my body is not able to respond to the illness in an efficient, focused manner. This tends to result in being sicker than normal for a longer than normal period of time. 

Aside from an impaired ability to fight the illness, already existing deficits caused by MS – such as fatigue, muscle aches, numbness and heat/cold intolerance may become more pronounced.

On top of being sick, you throw colder weather into the mix and I also feel tired, headache, numb cold feet, pain all over and lastly fatigued from the weather changes. So this begs the question is fatigue and pain worse in the winter or in provinces that are extremely cold?

I searched blogs, websites and asked friends with Fibromyalgia for answers and this is what I found:

People that go south to say Arizona or another warm place, seem to have less symptoms.  It just seems like the cold gets into our bones and makes everything tighten up and ache.  The cold can make our skin hurt, itch (myself and another friend with FMS have been dealing with this) and when we get chilled it can be extremely hard to warm back up. So what do you do if you also have MS as many of us are heat sensitive, and some are sensitive to both heat and cold.  I fall into the last category, but I do find heat easier to endure than cold.

Photo courtesty of Fibro Colors Awareness on Facebook.

I tend to have more pain, more fatigue and less energy in the winter than in the spring, summer, and fall but spring seems to be the best season. (not that we get much of a spring in Calgary)

On About Health they posted the following:

We can pretty definitively say that cold and heat impact us more than they do other people -- it's even used in research because it reliably causes pain in us more readily than in healthy folks. To see the rest of their post please click the above link.

Here in Calgary we also deal will weather changes continuously and this seems to be the major contributor of pain, fatigue and migraines in myself and others I know.

I am fortunate to have many friends I talk to in several Facebook groups that deal with the same issues and we have become a great support system for each other.  

Do you get colds often?  Do you notice they affect your multiple sclerosis or Fibromyalgia? 

Hugs,