Fibromyalgia Tender Points Test Yourself
They re located on both sides of the body both above and below the waist.
Fibromyalgia tender points test yourself. Apply pressure with the pad of your thumb to the 18 tender points associated with fibromyalgia. Tell her about your other symptoms of. This concise video clip demonstrates how to screen for and identify the 14 tender points that patients with fibromyalgia a chronic pain condition experience. Educational materials by dr.
Your doctor can test the painful tender points during a physical exam. Neck pain can also be caused by injuries rheumatoid arthritis or. But you also need to tell her about the exact pain you feel in those areas. A patient has to have 11 out of the 18 characteristic tender points and have suffered from the symptoms for more than 3 months to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Instead the diagnosis is made by a physical exam of pressure points that takes about five minutes. Hold the pressure for four seconds then rank the pain associated with the pressure on a scale from zero to 10 where zero represents no pain at all and 10 is the worst pain you ve ever experienced. In the past at least 11 of these 18 spots had to test positive for tenderness to diagnose fibromyalgia. See resources for a link to maps of these points.
If you have fibromyalgia you may have tender points at the back of the neck where the base of the skull and the neck meet. It tests the concentration of cytokines within your blood sample. There are no reliable diagnostic test for fibromyalgia just yet. Fibromyalgia tender points routine lab tests do not detect the widespread pain of fibromyalgia.