hi there....i just found this site during my research this morning on rib pain....although i have never had a real diagnosis, i am convinced that i have been suffering from fibromyalgia for several years, due to trauma after a car accident and piles of severe stress. there are mornings when i wake up in so much pain in my ribcage and sternum i can barely breathe or move. i can't sleep through it and the longer i stay in bed the worse it gets. as the day goes on, the severity wears off until it's a dull ache. my sternum is almost always achey. i have found that this is a common symptom of fibromyalgia. there seem to be a lot of suggestions for alternative medications that i intend to check out, i am in the health food retail business so i have easy access to alternative meds. but i am doing something that seems to relieve the pain and prevent it from returning for a couple days. "yamuna body rolling" is a therapeutic exercise method using small balls to roll out individual muscles on both sides of the body to encourage balance, strength, flexibility, and healing. when i use this method on my ribs, although painful while i work it out, afterwards i breathe easier and am pain free for a while. i never know when the pain will return or how long it will last...i have yet to beat it. but this one method at least offers some immediate relief. yamuna has a website....www.yamunabodyrolling.com where you can go for more info and find a practitioner in your area....

Molly, thanks for this question, I've been searching for months now to understand what I have wrong with me, and have decided it must be costo. At first it didn't seem so, as my pain is not in the sternal area and never mimicked a heart attack. My pain is at the bottom of my right rib cage, and extends to my back at night while lying flat on my back. In the morning my back muscles are so tense and I have a shooting pain from the front of my ribs. It also seems like my last floating rib "moves". At the end of a long day, my muscles below my ribs hurt like I ran a marathon, and there's always a throbbing dull ache in the external rib area. Does any of this sound familiar out there? After reading these, I really don't want it to be costo, sounds like a terrible thing! Also, what's the relation to stress, I'm definitely better when on vacation! Thanks, magari

I've been having exactly the same rib pain. It started out on my right side just beneath the right rib. It was only on the right side for about 1 1/2 years. Then it spread to my left rib and lower back. I had an abdominal CT scan and Xray of lower back and they were both normal. Blood tests were normal. I've had this pain for about 2 years now. It seems to be consistent except it got worse when I was on Antibiotics in June for 30 days. It also got worse when I did an herbal cleanse (but only made it through 5 days of the cleanse before I discovered I had intestinal worms)... this was in January.
I did one month of physical therapy for the rib pain and I would say it made the rib pain slightly worse. My doctor wanted to send me for a nerve block and I said no to that. Right now I've started the olive leaf extract and garlic. I'm also having problems with recurring folliculitis that the doctor thinks is yeast and the antifungal shampoo seems to help that. I'm wondering if the entire problem with rib pain/back pain is actually fungal infection.

I too have had this type of pain. Doctors only told me to take Aleve twice a day. I'm not one to take much of the over the counter drugs nor the prescription drugs. But this pain has been increasing in intensity and duration. It started out only in the morning with it tapering off by midday. Last night was the worst so far. I was unable to sleep due to the pain and it has remained rather painful all day. I started experiencing this about a year ago and it is on my right side, with the pain starting at my sternum and radiating to my arm, underarm and around to my back. If you have any suggestions, they would be most appreciated.

Hi there
I have has costo for several yrs I don't like to take pills so I try not up but when it hurts real bad I take Advil
I am now going on vacation and fear a flare up when there and then I will panic any suggestions
It took a while for dr to diagnose this I tried physio I didn't feel it helped I am do to start messages again and I do want to try natural way
I used to be very active but have recently been diagnosed with fybro and high inflammation which makes sense bc if the costo I now only work out by walking and light stretches 3x a week I will be increasing that to 5 slowly I am depressed and tired of this

I was suffering with the same problem for a couple of months and a couple of days ago I went for a deep tissue massage. There was some extensively knotted muscle in between my shoulder blades and the masseur worked on this area (which hurt like hell!) But it has completely resolved the pain in my ribs. I hope that helps. :-)

Hi there
Well I am confused I have gad this costo apparently for years but lately it is on the right side upper and middle chest and sometimes sturnum
Last year I had complete cardio work up done and all came back normal but now this pain is frustrating I am going back to work and cannot take time off
My gp even did a chest X-ray all came back normal but to ease my mind she is redoing echo and loop test but is pretty confident that it is costo
This week I also tried osteopathy and I felt great for afew days then it came back
My concern is that they r missing something although I don't feel it is cardiac related it is frustrating bc I have it all the time now it feels like an ache but at time sore or sharp or even tender to the touch at certain areas .

I currently use Advil when I really can't take it otherwise I do the hot water bottle or hot baths rest but I am tired of not getting in a workout I have been reduced to 3x a week low impact cardio and 10 min tai chi ...
I will take to wait for the echo and loop test results so the next 3weeks will be tough but as long as all comes back normal I will be glad
Any suggestions and does anyone else feel this type of pain

Suffer from the following :
Costo
Fybro
Anxiety
Thyroid ism
Hypochondriac

Hello. I just came upon your post as I was Googling "pain over the ribcage." I have Lyme Disease (have had it for 14+years) and after times of severe or long-term stress I typically have a flare up of symptoms. I recently began another course of Antibiotic therapy for my most recent flare up and I have started having pains in my chest/stomach area that I don't recall every having with the Lyme Disease, however, I do recall having something similar as a child. The pain I am having is definitely exterior (not internal like as with an organ problem) - over the ribcage - and it is sort of like "fingers" of pain reaching across my chest and upper abdomen. It has not been constant, but it comes on out of nowhere and lasts for maybe a few hours and then goes away. Is this similar to the pain that you have? I have not noticed any swelling or redness or anything other than the pains. I am thinking that it is a die-off of Lyme bacteria only in an area that I have never experienced it before. I have a wide range of pains all over my body when I am having a Herxheimer reaction (as Antibiotics kill off the Lyme bacteria, the bacteria spews its toxins into my system causing my symptoms to get worse before they get better) to the Antibiotics , so although it is pretty uncomfortable, I was not too worried about it. My husband, however, was concerned - hence my Googling on the topic. I had never heard of this Costochondritis before...I have just looked it up and I see that it is another one of those things that "they" can't quite explain the cause of... I just wanted to thank you for your post(s) on this thread because I am now confident that the pains I am having are nothing to be worried about at this point. The Herxheimer reactions usually only last several days to a couple of weeks for me when I start up a course of Antibiotics , so I don't think this pain I am experiencing will necessitate a special visit to the doctor unless it continues even after my other symptoms have abated. As for your pains, because they have been around the gallbladder area, I'm just wondering if you've ever tried taking digestive enzymes or Tourine? I have had a couple of different gallbladder attacks in the past (from feelings of fullness like a balloon inflated in my stomach to extreme nausea to sharp pain under right ribcage, through to the back, and even up into the right shoulder - totally different from the pain I am having now) and I also was told my gallbladder was fine - however, Lyme my doctor told me that sometimes the gallbladder will get clogged up or whatever with "sludge" and doesn't function as well as it could. Taking the digestive enzymes and the Tourine (as well as avoiding tomatoes for some reason) really helped to stop the problems I was having with my gallbladder. For what it's worth, I hope someone finds that helpful. Thanks again for your post.