07/23/2025
PMR
Stands for polymyalgia rheumatica .
I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately and I can’t say why. But I think it’s worth talking about. This diagnosis tends to be most common in men and women between the ages of late 50s to late 70s.  in most cases it starts quite insidiously and confuseing with pain in the shoulders and hips/pelvis sometimes shoulders first sometimes hips first …in the early morning and improving during the day.
It keeps getting worse with time  and can become quite miserable. 
The bad news is many primary care physicians don’t see this very often and can take quite a bit of time to make the diagnosis. The good news is rheumatologist see this every day, and the treatment is effective and swift.  Left untreatment the condition can progress and become serious. 
 Short piece of advice: if you are in your late 50s into your 80s and something is just not right and you’re not feeling well and you have pain particularly in the areas I just described ask your doctor to check for inflammation (ESR, CRP) and if out of range a referral to rheumatologist might be the best thing.
