All-over pain

The number-one symptom of fibromyalgia is persistent pain all over your body in your muscles and joints for an extended period of time. "[If a patient says,] 'I hurt all over,'" says rheumatologist Daniel Clauw, MD, director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, "that’s a big blinking neon light that it’s fibro." Rebecca, who has lived with fibromyalgia for more than three decades, says it feels like a bruise that covers your entire body.

Other conditions, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, can initially cause a feeling of widespread pain. “If it’s just in the joints, that person really should see a rheumatologist or someone who specializes in rheumatic or musculoskeletal disorders to make sure they don’t have arthritis,” says Dr. Clauw. Chronic pain that is exclusively in the muscles, on the other hand, can sometimes be polymyalgia rheumatica. But any pain that persists for years in both the muscles and the joints, Clauw explains, is most likely fibro.