A whopping 40 to 70 percent of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia also have symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome or IBS. They tend to encounter such conditions as diarrhea and constipation, bloating, gas, belly pain, and nausea. Both fibromyalgia and IBS have very common characteristics such as pain symptoms that can’t be explained by structural or biochemical abnormalities, disturbed sleep and fatigue, both are associated with stress, and both affect more women than men. How the two are related isn’t exactly completely understood but pain experts share that the connection is more of how each condition causes pain in different body areas over a patient’s lifetime.
