What if we are looking in the wrong place here?
Fibromyalgia is usually regarded as a chronic pain syndrome with an unclear cause. It is described as involving widespread muscle and soft tissue pain, exhaustion, sleep disorders, sensitivity to stimuli, and cognitive complaints often experienced as “fibro fog.” Disturbances in pain processing, stress, traumatic experiences, and other burdening factors are discussed. But what if environmental factors also play a larger role than previously assumed? What if the air in indoor spaces affects pain, exhaustion, and sensory overload more strongly than we realize?
In Dicke Luft, we do not just tell of diagnoses and symptoms, but of a disturbing question: could indoor air be an underestimated trigger or amplifying factor in fibromyalgia-like complaints?
When the Pain Suddenly Has a Name
When Monika engaged with the book Fibromyalgie by Dr. med. R. Paul St. Amand, she recognized numerous overlaps with her own life. For her, it felt similar to my earlier ADHD diagnosis: as if someone were finally describing symptoms and patterns of behavior that matched one’s own story so closely that there was hardly any room left for doubt.
And indeed, much of it fit. Over the years, pain, exhaustion, sleep problems, concentration disorders, and other complaints had built up. There were also more and more examinations, striking but inconclusive findings, and a growing number of possible diagnoses, including soft tissue rheumatism and fibromyalgia. Everything formed a picture. Just not clarity and, above all, no solution.
An Illness That Explains Much, but Not Everything
Fibromyalgia is often described as an illness in which harmless stimuli are perceived in exaggerated ways as pain, pressure, or burning. Additional symptoms often include exhaustion, sleep disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine, depression, and mental exhaustion. For many affected people, the illness is burdensome not only because of the pain, but also because of its invisibility and the fact that it often cannot be clearly demonstrated medically.
That was exactly what made our own search so difficult. Much of it fit. But at the same time, it remained unclear why symptoms could change so strongly depending on place, room, and life situation.
What if it is Not Only About Pain Processing?
In the book, we describe how, over time, another thought pushed its way forward. Until then, we had mostly tried to relieve symptoms by adding more things: medication, dietary supplements, special diets, aromatherapy, or other approaches. The fibromyalgia approach centered on guaifenesin and salicylates opened our eyes for the first time to another direction: perhaps it was not only a deficiency that mattered, but also possibly an excess of substances that we were unknowingly absorbing and could not break down sufficiently.
At first, we thought mainly of food or personal care products. But from there, it was only one more step to another question: through what other pathways are we taking in substances every day without noticing?
Pain, Exhaustion, Fibro Fog
What makes fibromyalgia so hard to grasp is the mix of symptoms. In the book, fibromyalgia does not appear as a clearly delineated single problem, but as part of a whole field of symptoms: pain, insomnia, brain fog, sensitivity to stimuli, circulatory problems, fatigue, loss of concentration, and exercise intolerance. Again and again, the impression arose that different diagnoses often provide rather different names for similar underlying states.
That is exactly why the question of whether the environment itself could be part of the problem became increasingly pressing for us.
Because if exhaustion, concentration problems, sensory overload, and autonomic dysregulation can at the same time fit fibromyalgia, ADHD, Long COVID, anxiety disorders, or burnout, then the question of possible shared influence factors inevitably arises.
Indoor Air as a Possible Amplifying Factor
We are not claiming that fibromyalgia is generally caused by poor indoor air. It is not that simple. Nor does our book offer an easy answer. But we consider it plausible that polluted indoor spaces could be a relevant amplifying factor for some people.
The book explicitly describes that, alongside stress and trauma, environmental and burden-related factors are also discussed in fibromyalgia. At the same time, other passages show how air pollutants could trigger oxidative stress and affect systems that are also discussed in the literature in connection with fibromyalgia and stress-associated regulatory disorders.
That is not proof. But it is a thought we can no longer ignore after our experiences.
Why This Topic Will Not Let Go Of Us
What particularly shook us about fibromyalgia was not just the pain itself. It was the helplessness. The many specialties, the many examinations, the many names for conditions that in the end kept feeling similar. And the experience that when you have real symptoms, you often end up being categorized as psychosomatic, functional, or not clearly classifiable.
That is exactly why air eventually no longer seemed to us like a side issue, but like something that finally has to be taken into account.
Why We Are Writing About This
Dicke Luft is not an attempt to simply reinterpret fibromyalgia. It is a personal search for clues. A story about pain, exhaustion, chains of diagnoses, and the gradual realization that perhaps we must not search only in the body, only in the psyche, and only in biography, but also in the room where a person lives, sleeps, and breathes.
The book connects personal experience with scientific indications of the health relevance of indoor air. It raises questions that are too rarely asked in everyday medical practice. And it invites readers to view fibromyalgia not only as a fixed fate, but also as a reason to take environmental factors more seriously.
Perhaps Part of the Answer Is in the Air
Perhaps in many cases fibromyalgia is exactly what medicine currently understands it to be: a chronic pain syndrome with a complex pattern of symptoms whose causes are regarded as multifactorial and not conclusively clarified. But perhaps there are also cases in which indoor air, air pollutants, or certain exposures play a larger part than previously assumed. Perhaps air is not the whole explanation. But perhaps it is a missing piece of the puzzle.
And perhaps the crucial question begins not only in the nervous system, but also in the room where that nervous system breathes day after day.
