She believes the lower testosterone levels found in FM (and other pain disorders) prevent this inhibitory pain network from functioning properly.

Pain levels in the body are reduced during stressful situations when a neuropeptide called substance P converts testosterone to estradiol.Д®stradiol then upregulates the production of the endogenous (self-produced) opioids which cause pain relief. Hillary White, PhD notes that stressful situations usually reduceВ pain levels but that the opposite tends to occur in FM. Progesterone could be tamping down inflammation or modulating nervous system activity. What exactly is going on is still a mystery, but some hypotheses exist. Younger noted that this was the first time pain levels and sex hormone levels had ever been tracked on a day-to-day basis in humans, but a very large person study) also found that lowered sex hormone levels (estrogen, testosterone, androstenedione, and 17-hydroxyprogesterone) were associated with an increased prevalence of chronic muscoskeletal pain. Women will probably not be surprised to hear that pain levels were highest during the menstrual period when sex hormone levels were at their lowest. Low progesterone in combination with high cortisol produced the highest pain levels. By themselves, neither estradiol or cortisol levels had any effect on pain except when progesterone levels were low. Progesterone level fluctuations by themselves altered pain levels by about 25%. Note how they diverge in these fibromyalgia patients. The green line is progesterone (highest in the luteal phase) the red line is pain. He found that both progesterone and testosterone were inversely correlated with pain levels that is, the higher the FM patientsвЂ™ progesterone and testosterone levels were the lower their pain was.

In this study Younger measured testosterone, progesterone and estradiol levels as well as cortisol in 8 women with FM for 25 days straight while having them record their pain levels. Immune factors, for instance, have popped out which nobody expected to pop out. The daily blood draw studies clearly take a lot from both the participants and the staff (no weekends off) but the results have been fascinating. Then heвЂ™s correlated their biological data with their symptom data in order to try to understand whatвЂ™s going right when theyвЂ™re feeling better, and whatвЂ™s going wrong when theyвЂ™re feeling worse. Instead of taking one measurement and hoping it reflects whatвЂ™s going on in the body over time, Younger has taken people with ME/CFS or FM and tested them every day for almost a month. Younger belongs to a newer generation of researchers and heвЂ™s doing different kinds of studies. The point was to generate enough exciting data to get the next, bigger study funded, and in that Younger surely succeeded. The fact that only eight FM patients participated in the study means we canвЂ™t know if their results apply to the FM population as a whole, but that wasnвЂ™t the point of the study. His recently published study was small but intense. Given the abundant evidence indicating that sex hormones can indeed affect pain, it was no surprise to see Jarred Younger at the University of Alabama at Birmingham publishВ on this subject. Two sex hormones in particular вЂ“ testosterone and progesterone вЂ“ appear to have pain diminishing properties, and progesterone has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects as well. Studies indicate that sex hormones affect the activity of pain receptors, the central pain-processing pathway in the brain, inflammation in the spinal cord, the microglia in the brain and opioid pain processing. High Rates of Gynecological Disorders Implicated in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Cfs sex