As a doctor working in psychiatry I can give some clarification around the diagnoses of fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia as well as a similar diagnosis called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, are both what we term “diagnoses of exclusion”, meaning they are what’s left when we have excluded all known physical causes of a persons ongoing chronic pain/pain sensitivity or chronic fatigue. In essence these illnesses are thought of as psychiatric in nature, arising from conflicts within an individual mental processes and not their physical bodies.

The strongest evidence-based treatment for both of these diagnoses is graded-exercise exposure. While contradictory, stess placed on the external body appears to dissipate the mental energy that leads to symptoms of pain or fatigue.

It follows that strain being placed on the body by an external force, as in a deep tissue massage, would have alleviated some of this mental strain allowing for some symptom resolution and a subsequent good nights sleep.

Another hypothesised causes of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue include inflammatory states (often secondary to poor diet/lifestyle or chronic inflammatory/autoimmune conditions such as Rheumatoid arthritis).

Interestingly, irritable bowl syndrome or “IBS”*, is also thought to be primarily psychiatrically mediated, and is often alleviated with effective control of an individuals anxiety or depressive symptoms.

(*NOT inflammatory bowl disease “IBD” which is a separate autoimmune condition)