Hi, I saw the mention of MCAS. I have very severe MCS (housebound) and MCAS as well (MCS is worse than mcas, but we know many of us suffer from both). Is fibro one of those conditions (that you know of) that seems to also affect canaries?
Hehe, Hi sdpetit and welcome!
And what a lovely question!
Not sure if I might be the only one who understands your punning allusion to people with MCS and MCAS feeling like "canaries in a coal mine", because they react to the slightest environmental triggers way before most people do.... (That is if I
have understood you!)
So I s'pose me feeling the need to provide the context already is a kind of answer, ....:
As yet, maybe fibro would only seem to be counted as
a bit of a "canary" condition in as far as
some of our flares are triggered by certain chemicals (like in MCS or the carbon monoxide for canaries vs. miners) or the immune system and its mast cells (like in MCAS).
Here it's less about causes or starting points of the conditions rather than about direct triggers of a flare. From my lists/notes (feel free to add anything I've missed...):
Long term flares (weeks or months) are mostly triggered by
D.1. Illness, common cold…
D.2. injury,
D.3. long-term stress (often hard to identify)
D.4. allergies, incl. seasonal,
D.5. sleep problems
D.6. vicious circles of sleep, stomach/gut problems, etc.
D.7. hormonal changes (menstrual cycles, menopause, etc.)
D.8. treatment changes
D.9. meds/supps/herbs, even without changing them.
D.10. travelling.
Short term flares (hours or days) are mostly triggered by
E.1. Physically overdoing it/overexertion...
E.2. Mental Stress
E.3. Weather, esp. temperature, esp. changes
E.4. sensitivities: light, noise, smells
E.5. changes in sleep routine....
There does seem to be quite a bit of overlap with MCS (e.g. D.9 and E.4) or with MCAS (D.4, D.6 and D.9, including foods of course), but praps with quite a different emphasis(?)
Of course symptoms are quite a bit different, but the question is regarding triggers, not symptoms. Same as to the causation mechanisms, which aren't at all clear anywhere, but researchers are following very different hypotheses in these 3 areas. The symptoms can only point to which condition it might be.
Maybe the lowest common denominator after all
is oversensitivity? -
Like a canary...
On the personal level: MCAS has greatly increased my fatigue which also makes physical activity hard for me. And altogether I know my 100s of triggers very well, some of which I relate more to my fibro, some more to my MCAS, some like many of my IBS symptoms are hard to distinguish if they don't directly result in pain (fibro) or in histamine-y symptoms (MCAS). And the overlap between these two becomes more vague when some MCAS-experts see fibro as a possible part or aspect of MCAS (and I had many oversensitivities first).
