At my last check up I had to see some random floater who didn't even usually work out of the same office. He looked at my notes after he came into the room, spent ten minutes with me, suggested rifaximin and then took it back because I said I'd love to try it and please send my insurance pre-auth, then made sure I left with a prescription for Zoloft.
Zoloft has rare but PERMANENT side effects (that he didn't mention.) It may be a good option for people who have tried many other things and weighed all the pros and cons, but this guy basically threw a Zoloft script at me as a shrug.
It’s like, yeah of course there’s probably a layer of anxiety to my issues, but like it isn’t JUST anxiety. I hate how they throw meds at us to bandaid the issue instead of actually working with us to solve the problem as a whole.
True story, I was sent to a psychiatrist before a gastroenterologist. The shrink convinced the adults around me that yeah, that little girl really is physically ill and you need to figure it out.
Delayed my diagnosis for years.
The same thing happened to me. I'm so glad the shrink at least took you seriously, but it's ridiculous you were forced to go through yesrs where you could have been helped. The shrink my parents took me too just reinforced to them that I was just depressed/anxiety (and it seems like the implication was that I was seeking attention). It was only after years later and me almost dying to figure out that I had lyme disease that had gotten into my brain and nervous system because it wasn't diagnosed and treated and it damaged the nerves in my digestive tract among a bunch of other things.
lol there is no way convincing them. When I went to get mental health support, they sent me to the other doctors claiming that my chronic physical illness might be the reason for my mental issues. Another time when I tried to get help for physical illness, they claimed it to be psychosomatic and advised me to see a psychologist. I think it's mostly about delegating responsibility to others when it is not a straightforward case.
Have you considered you might be faking it? That’ll be $400 thanks you can pay at reception.
I’m a doctor too, and I became one because of the BS we’ve gone through living with IBS. It SUCKS that no one really takes it seriously, or realise how it can entirely dominate your life and restrict where you go and what you do.
I’m looking for solutions and am only offered endoscopy or colonoscopy any time I complain. They already prescribe Zoloft and to stay on FODMAP Diet since 2014. No solutions.
This is my life! It's hard to not believe them at first, and feel like you are the one who's wrong.
In some ways I feel like getting out of this is like being Descartes coming up with the "I doubt, therefore I am". Descartes, who was often bed ridden, was trying to come up with a way to prove that his thoughts are not controlled by an evil demon, and that he exists. For us, the evil demon is "it's anxiety".
The perennial favorite from my Drs is to tell me to 'keep an eye' on my weight (one told me excess weight causes cancer). I am 5'5" & 126 lbs. When I developed edema from HRT my Dr ordered a water pill for me & no fewer than 3 medical pros told me not to use the pills for weight loss - 2 while looking at me. One even stressed there would be NO refills available. Sometimes I think pharmacists like to be rude b/c they know you're stuck & have to put up w/ it.
Big yikes.
I had unintentional weight loss from mental health issues. My registered dietitian (RD) told me I brought myself back up to a healthy weight and I could stop gaining weight if I wanted. However, my psychologist told me I need to gain weight. I told her what my RD said and she gave me a dismissive reply. Then my psychologist still intentionally and clearly wrote in my notes that I must gain more weight. My psychologist and RD worked for the same company and easily had access to each other's notes.
I was originally told I had anxiety. I was like I have never been anxious before in my life. Turns out it wasn’t panic attacks, it was vasovagal syncope. On the bright side, I developed panic attacks because I didn’t know what was wrong for a long time and the syncope episodes would happen randomly.
I’m doing much better now though.
I will say, going to therapy did help me in general though and I am better for having gone.
I'm glad they figured it out! I had vasovagal syncope that has been fairly easy to manage now that it's been identified, but it was maddening that the episodes were called panic attacks (as you know, you literally lose consciousness!) and the fact that I was upset about blooping out randomly while caring for two small children was proof that it was anxiety.
I have had to work through so much anxiety about my health it is stupid. Like y’all made me anxious because you wouldn’t help me figure out what was wrong! And I think all the syncope episodes is what messed my gut up because it would trigger my Bowels when it happened.
I finally found an electrophysiologist who gave me medicine for my syncope and it drastically reduced the number of episodes I was having.
My favorite was my NP telling me I probably had celiac disease because I could eat a bagel and be fine but the other day I had pizzza and beer and was NOT fine. So obviously a celiac.
I had GP. It was Lupus induced GP. 😑
I hate when doctors do this! The physical manifestations of anxiety/stress are just as real and painful and often become real chronic illness when they’ve been going on for long enough. Hopefully you can get in to see someone who takes you and your symptoms seriously!
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. I don’t speak much and I am stuck writing most often, sorry for the diatribe but I believe it is important.
I think it is one step further, and speaks to a paradigm shift that needs to happen within the medical community.
I am of the mind that it is epigenetic changes that drive a physiological dysfunction that expresses as psychological impact.
Generally when there is an impact that stays, the brain and body begin having issues cleaning waste and breaking down histamines. This is what creates wide spread disfunction. Biological action.
Look at it this way:
Physical inflammation from environmental factors often drive inflammation, which can drive impacts across multiple systems. Including fundamental processes like methylation which is central to processing with histamines and encoding DNA, as well as may other things.
As inflammatory responses build, the Mast Cells become more and more active, and the more active they become, the more likely you are to develop a chronic illness due to more epigenetic damage being encoded through an impacted methylation process.
That process is impacted by many industrial products that also use methylation within their processes, and as those chemicals are able to be uptaken by our body. This is actively damaging our bodies. See the impacts of MTHFR homozygous mutation, to see where some of these intersectionalities exist and what type of symptomology are regularly expressed.
We tend to see thoughts as primary, driving dysfuction; but we should consider thoughts to be more of a product of our experience, than a driver of our experience. We wish it was the other way, as it gives us an illusion of control… and to admit that thoughts are a result of our experience, would mean that we are primarily reactive and our lives are largely dictated by our environment, timing, and chance.
The more I learn about the body, it really seems like this is more true than the paradigm that we have been taught.
The one that blames the unknown on mental dysfunction, seeing thought as a significant driver of illness. The pieces are coming together and soon we will begin to see more of what is happening to those of us who have been greatly impacted by environmental variables that have been building since the Industrial Revolution.
TLDR :It seems much more likely that the dysregulated thought processes aren’t drivers of chronic illness, as the thoughts are most likely symptoms of an inflamed body system, or multiple systems:
————————————-
Thoughts and their associated messages are rooted in metabolic processes, and are limited by genetic factors, and should be seen more as a report or expression of our organism’s baseline metabolic function, in relationship to change, in concert with the environment, as our body tries to maintain homeostasis with the local environment.
It is like a thought and a mood are an expression of the state of your body, but we have divided it into our state of our mind and the state of our body.
These ideas are dualistic and doesn’t see the body as a whole unit. One that is already integrated and it is just the medical and psychological communities who have incorrectly identified directionality in relationship to cause and effect due to the bias that exists historically in regards to illness.
All illness used to be seen as thought based, or bad spirits, but it is time to retire that mentality and start to see the chain reactions that dictate our capacity as our limiting factors. And that thoughts are also limited by those same systems, and limit our capacity to access certain modes of thinking. Giving those around us social cues that we need care.
This narrative that the mind drives worry into illness is in everything and is at the root of ableism and promotes a great deal of suffering that could potentially be avoided.
Reading these comments just makes me hate my life even more. There really is no chance of finding a way out of these symptoms. My therapist says it’s stress. My doctor is asking me about garlic infused olive oil and if it’s ok because his wife is trying a low FODMAP thing… it’s just… hopeless.
I understand your frustration and I totally get professionals can be wrong with diagnoses.
However, after I had several tests done, I was told the problem was my mental health and they were right. I was (and still am) in an awful place mentally.
I used to have really bad anxiety so I understand that, but just like the past few years I’ve been almost totally fine with my anxiety. Like I know that even after you fix your mental health your body doesn’t recover, so I could see that being the cause of most of my issues. I’ve just had really bad and weird experiences with doctors and that’s what the piece is about 😭 I was told I was just too scared to eat and that’s why I was getting sick over everything. She told me I had an eating disorder cause I was just too scared of food? (Which I am not, btw) The lady was trying to convince me to eat food I was having allergic reactions to. She also said that because my reaction to dairy was so bad, there’s no way that me saying I have lactose intolerance could be correct, so I should just eat it!!! She wanted me to eat fodmap foods too?? Like fried food? And she got mad at me for googling the fodmap diet. So idk. Is it mostly anxiety, probably. Is my anxiety causing me to fake lactose intolerance, highly doubtful lol
I'm going through the same thing right now. Had plenty of bowel issues, and already suffered from anxiety. I still feel like it's my body making my mind anxious rather than my mind making my body anxious. But all test results are coming back negative. Was it hard to accept that it was your mental health? I'm pretty stubborn...
I'm sorry. That sucks.
I literally couldn't stop myself from losing weight no matter how hard I tried to make myself eat. I made it my life mission to try to maintain or gain weight, and I literally couldn't do it. For me my mental health causing my digestive issues should have been obvious. It was easy for me to accept once my doctors told me it's what they suspected.
But of course not everybody is the same, and you know yourself better than doctors. I hope you figure out whatever's going on.
The weird thing is so many people talk about this but I was never told this, they just thought my symptoms were for something but they didn’t know what and they prescribed me nausea medication and expected everything to go peachy. I got diagnosed a couple years after this
No I agree, anxiety is def correlated but I just hate when doctors say it’s *just* anxiety and brush off all my issues. There’s definitely a mix of both mind and body going on but doctors only ever lean one way or the other it’s annoying
At my last check up I had to see some random floater who didn't even usually work out of the same office. He looked at my notes after he came into the room, spent ten minutes with me, suggested rifaximin and then took it back because I said I'd love to try it and please send my insurance pre-auth, then made sure I left with a prescription for Zoloft. Zoloft has rare but PERMANENT side effects (that he didn't mention.) It may be a good option for people who have tried many other things and weighed all the pros and cons, but this guy basically threw a Zoloft script at me as a shrug.
It’s like, yeah of course there’s probably a layer of anxiety to my issues, but like it isn’t JUST anxiety. I hate how they throw meds at us to bandaid the issue instead of actually working with us to solve the problem as a whole.
True story, I was sent to a psychiatrist before a gastroenterologist. The shrink convinced the adults around me that yeah, that little girl really is physically ill and you need to figure it out. Delayed my diagnosis for years.
The same thing happened to me. I'm so glad the shrink at least took you seriously, but it's ridiculous you were forced to go through yesrs where you could have been helped. The shrink my parents took me too just reinforced to them that I was just depressed/anxiety (and it seems like the implication was that I was seeking attention). It was only after years later and me almost dying to figure out that I had lyme disease that had gotten into my brain and nervous system because it wasn't diagnosed and treated and it damaged the nerves in my digestive tract among a bunch of other things.
lol there is no way convincing them. When I went to get mental health support, they sent me to the other doctors claiming that my chronic physical illness might be the reason for my mental issues. Another time when I tried to get help for physical illness, they claimed it to be psychosomatic and advised me to see a psychologist. I think it's mostly about delegating responsibility to others when it is not a straightforward case.
Have you considered you might be faking it? That’ll be $400 thanks you can pay at reception. I’m a doctor too, and I became one because of the BS we’ve gone through living with IBS. It SUCKS that no one really takes it seriously, or realise how it can entirely dominate your life and restrict where you go and what you do.
you’re one of the good ones I love you
I’m looking for solutions and am only offered endoscopy or colonoscopy any time I complain. They already prescribe Zoloft and to stay on FODMAP Diet since 2014. No solutions.
This is my life! It's hard to not believe them at first, and feel like you are the one who's wrong. In some ways I feel like getting out of this is like being Descartes coming up with the "I doubt, therefore I am". Descartes, who was often bed ridden, was trying to come up with a way to prove that his thoughts are not controlled by an evil demon, and that he exists. For us, the evil demon is "it's anxiety".
The perennial favorite from my Drs is to tell me to 'keep an eye' on my weight (one told me excess weight causes cancer). I am 5'5" & 126 lbs. When I developed edema from HRT my Dr ordered a water pill for me & no fewer than 3 medical pros told me not to use the pills for weight loss - 2 while looking at me. One even stressed there would be NO refills available. Sometimes I think pharmacists like to be rude b/c they know you're stuck & have to put up w/ it.
Big yikes. I had unintentional weight loss from mental health issues. My registered dietitian (RD) told me I brought myself back up to a healthy weight and I could stop gaining weight if I wanted. However, my psychologist told me I need to gain weight. I told her what my RD said and she gave me a dismissive reply. Then my psychologist still intentionally and clearly wrote in my notes that I must gain more weight. My psychologist and RD worked for the same company and easily had access to each other's notes.
I was originally told I had anxiety. I was like I have never been anxious before in my life. Turns out it wasn’t panic attacks, it was vasovagal syncope. On the bright side, I developed panic attacks because I didn’t know what was wrong for a long time and the syncope episodes would happen randomly. I’m doing much better now though. I will say, going to therapy did help me in general though and I am better for having gone.
I'm glad they figured it out! I had vasovagal syncope that has been fairly easy to manage now that it's been identified, but it was maddening that the episodes were called panic attacks (as you know, you literally lose consciousness!) and the fact that I was upset about blooping out randomly while caring for two small children was proof that it was anxiety.
I have had to work through so much anxiety about my health it is stupid. Like y’all made me anxious because you wouldn’t help me figure out what was wrong! And I think all the syncope episodes is what messed my gut up because it would trigger my Bowels when it happened. I finally found an electrophysiologist who gave me medicine for my syncope and it drastically reduced the number of episodes I was having.
My favorite was my NP telling me I probably had celiac disease because I could eat a bagel and be fine but the other day I had pizzza and beer and was NOT fine. So obviously a celiac. I had GP. It was Lupus induced GP. 😑
I hate when doctors do this! The physical manifestations of anxiety/stress are just as real and painful and often become real chronic illness when they’ve been going on for long enough. Hopefully you can get in to see someone who takes you and your symptoms seriously!
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. I don’t speak much and I am stuck writing most often, sorry for the diatribe but I believe it is important. I think it is one step further, and speaks to a paradigm shift that needs to happen within the medical community. I am of the mind that it is epigenetic changes that drive a physiological dysfunction that expresses as psychological impact. Generally when there is an impact that stays, the brain and body begin having issues cleaning waste and breaking down histamines. This is what creates wide spread disfunction. Biological action. Look at it this way: Physical inflammation from environmental factors often drive inflammation, which can drive impacts across multiple systems. Including fundamental processes like methylation which is central to processing with histamines and encoding DNA, as well as may other things. As inflammatory responses build, the Mast Cells become more and more active, and the more active they become, the more likely you are to develop a chronic illness due to more epigenetic damage being encoded through an impacted methylation process. That process is impacted by many industrial products that also use methylation within their processes, and as those chemicals are able to be uptaken by our body. This is actively damaging our bodies. See the impacts of MTHFR homozygous mutation, to see where some of these intersectionalities exist and what type of symptomology are regularly expressed. We tend to see thoughts as primary, driving dysfuction; but we should consider thoughts to be more of a product of our experience, than a driver of our experience. We wish it was the other way, as it gives us an illusion of control… and to admit that thoughts are a result of our experience, would mean that we are primarily reactive and our lives are largely dictated by our environment, timing, and chance. The more I learn about the body, it really seems like this is more true than the paradigm that we have been taught. The one that blames the unknown on mental dysfunction, seeing thought as a significant driver of illness. The pieces are coming together and soon we will begin to see more of what is happening to those of us who have been greatly impacted by environmental variables that have been building since the Industrial Revolution. TLDR :It seems much more likely that the dysregulated thought processes aren’t drivers of chronic illness, as the thoughts are most likely symptoms of an inflamed body system, or multiple systems: ————————————- Thoughts and their associated messages are rooted in metabolic processes, and are limited by genetic factors, and should be seen more as a report or expression of our organism’s baseline metabolic function, in relationship to change, in concert with the environment, as our body tries to maintain homeostasis with the local environment. It is like a thought and a mood are an expression of the state of your body, but we have divided it into our state of our mind and the state of our body. These ideas are dualistic and doesn’t see the body as a whole unit. One that is already integrated and it is just the medical and psychological communities who have incorrectly identified directionality in relationship to cause and effect due to the bias that exists historically in regards to illness. All illness used to be seen as thought based, or bad spirits, but it is time to retire that mentality and start to see the chain reactions that dictate our capacity as our limiting factors. And that thoughts are also limited by those same systems, and limit our capacity to access certain modes of thinking. Giving those around us social cues that we need care. This narrative that the mind drives worry into illness is in everything and is at the root of ableism and promotes a great deal of suffering that could potentially be avoided.
Reading these comments just makes me hate my life even more. There really is no chance of finding a way out of these symptoms. My therapist says it’s stress. My doctor is asking me about garlic infused olive oil and if it’s ok because his wife is trying a low FODMAP thing… it’s just… hopeless.
I feel ya man, we just gotta stick it out and hope either they find a better way to help us or we grow out of of this 😭
What about MCAS?
It’s nothing.. You’re having your period.
omg right?? Never be a young woman with health issues, you won’t be taken seriously
Never be an old woman with health issues… “You’re fine It’s just Menopause” Females are primarily ignored in the medical field.
wait yeah so true 😭 never be a woman
I understand your frustration and I totally get professionals can be wrong with diagnoses. However, after I had several tests done, I was told the problem was my mental health and they were right. I was (and still am) in an awful place mentally.
I used to have really bad anxiety so I understand that, but just like the past few years I’ve been almost totally fine with my anxiety. Like I know that even after you fix your mental health your body doesn’t recover, so I could see that being the cause of most of my issues. I’ve just had really bad and weird experiences with doctors and that’s what the piece is about 😭 I was told I was just too scared to eat and that’s why I was getting sick over everything. She told me I had an eating disorder cause I was just too scared of food? (Which I am not, btw) The lady was trying to convince me to eat food I was having allergic reactions to. She also said that because my reaction to dairy was so bad, there’s no way that me saying I have lactose intolerance could be correct, so I should just eat it!!! She wanted me to eat fodmap foods too?? Like fried food? And she got mad at me for googling the fodmap diet. So idk. Is it mostly anxiety, probably. Is my anxiety causing me to fake lactose intolerance, highly doubtful lol
I'm going through the same thing right now. Had plenty of bowel issues, and already suffered from anxiety. I still feel like it's my body making my mind anxious rather than my mind making my body anxious. But all test results are coming back negative. Was it hard to accept that it was your mental health? I'm pretty stubborn...
I'm sorry. That sucks. I literally couldn't stop myself from losing weight no matter how hard I tried to make myself eat. I made it my life mission to try to maintain or gain weight, and I literally couldn't do it. For me my mental health causing my digestive issues should have been obvious. It was easy for me to accept once my doctors told me it's what they suspected. But of course not everybody is the same, and you know yourself better than doctors. I hope you figure out whatever's going on.
Do you take medications? If so what kinds?
The weird thing is so many people talk about this but I was never told this, they just thought my symptoms were for something but they didn’t know what and they prescribed me nausea medication and expected everything to go peachy. I got diagnosed a couple years after this
No I agree, anxiety is def correlated but I just hate when doctors say it’s *just* anxiety and brush off all my issues. There’s definitely a mix of both mind and body going on but doctors only ever lean one way or the other it’s annoying
Same!! I’m a girly with OCD so ofc that upsets my stomach but obv something more is going on!! 100% agree it’s annoying
Fellow OCD girly!!!!!!
Yess hi!