Recently I've been becoming more and more anxious about my health, for no well-grounded reasons. I had suffered from depression for two years, and was subjected to near constant stress in the past, and I happened to stumble on an article which described how depression affects brain on a physical level, that is, shrinking the hippocampus and maybe even decreasing the volume of the frontal lobes.
Another thing, also brain related, are my concern about whether or not I get enough bloodflow to my head. Once again (medical sites are my scourge) I read about how poor posture and practically any head tilt ever causes compression of the blood vessels vital to proper blood circulation.
Another thing that's been on my mind is breathing. I think that I might not be breathing properly. The interval between the inhales for me is on average around 3 seconds, and I have to do deep breaths ever so often.
Then there's a weird sensation of a lump in my trachea which goes away and appears arbitrarily.
I also find it weird that a lot of veins on my arms feels like tendons, as in, they're rather tight.
Most of the stuff I've described just sounds unreasonable, and is mostly related to the fact that I honestly feel like I've gotten dumber, and is just being an attempt of mine to somehow justify all of this by assigning a self-diagnosis, but by God, this is all so tiresome and seems to continously feed my anxiety, only making it all worse.
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grargh
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I feel like I'm reading something from my own mind less than a month ago. Seriously, it's so exactly how I've felt that it's eerie. I extensively researched "not enough blood flow to brain symptoms" on Google and never really got pointed to anything helpful, but that's exactly how I'd describe it. I felt dim-witted almost hungover. Out of breath at the top of the stairs. Too tired to go upstairs to pee (also AFRAID to go up the stairs to pee, because I thought I'd get winded). I also had a fear that I was breathing wrong and thus starving my brain of oxygen and/or blood flow.
Went to doc, prescribed 5mg Citalopram (to become 10mg later).
Was scared to take it, didn't start for 2 months.
Started taking it, felt less nervous, eventually wasn't strong enough so bumped to 10mg.
After a couple of weeks, was needing a 3-4 hours nap daily. Felt lightheaded all the time. Still felt the no blood to my brain feeling quite often.
Eventually forgot to take my pill one day and felt great next day, so skipped next 4 pills. Still felt great. Took 10mg 1x, felt shit. Stopped taking them altogether, which I feared due to the supposed hellish withdrawal. Almost a week now and still feel good.
Your posture thing intrigued me because I have a computer job and bad posture at my desk. After a longish work day I often get the brain-oxygen lacking feeling the following day.
I drink daily (2-3 drinks) and smoke a half pack a day. I also have some GERD, probably a lot of which is caused by the aforementioned habits. Only mentioning this in case you drink and/or smoke. I find that the bloating/acid etc. makes my breathing and lightheadedness stuff 100x worse. Lungs being partially blocked from expanding due to chest cavity pressure from gut.
Quite an interesting doctor experience. Not sure if I actually want to go and see one myself now, but it's not the first time, gotta fight the fear of doctors.
As for the posture thing, quite easy to Google, plenty of articles, yet none of them actually provide information on what vessels exactly are being compressed, whether or not the constriction bears consequences as sensible as immediately feeling like there's not enough blood, having a bit of a brain fog, difficulty concentrating and all that jazz.
I think the problem in my case is that the doctor is a GP. He saw there was nothing medically wrong with me (at least from standard tests) so he chalked everything up to anxiety, and, as doctors do, saw the only remedy: drugs. That annoyed me, to be honest, but in my fragile and desperate state I was hoping against hope. What I'd recommend is to use doctors for their intended purpose and see GPs for initial help, specialists if required (I convinced mine to refer a cardiologist due to my heart-health fears) and brain doctors for brain stuff. I believe CBT would have benefited me far more than Citalopram and, if you were to analyze my thought pattern change while all of this was going on, you'd probably conclude that I administered my own CBT...which did work.
Do you think you're afraid of doctors because they could deliver bad news (that was the source of my own fear of doctors) or that their (perceived/potential) incompetence could make things worse?
I'm afraid of doctors for the both reasons you've listed. Brain is (supposed to be) one delicate thing, and if I were to hear the doctor say something like: "You've done irreversible damage to your brain, should've exercised more and not overthink things", I simply wouldn't be able to forgive myself, as I'd be the only one to blame, really. But then steps in the human factor, the second reason you mentioned: what if they're incompetent? What if there is no brain damage? What if I'm fine and it's just auto-suggestion? What if I'm going to be prescribed meds that would make matters worse? Who knows.
It's just a lot of things that may or may not be, thinking about them makes me unnerved already, and if I forget about those, I'm left with my self-ascribed medical problems, so one type of anxiety substitutes another.
For me grargh, it was all about my fibromyalgia causing trigger points in my neck, shoulders and base of skull. Those spasms needed to be worked out because they
didn't allow the lymphatic fluid to flow easily causing lightheadedness and foggy brain feeling. After several treatments with a physical therapist, I began to see the difference. Just another experience of what it was like for me. xx
As you say in the last line of your post, grargh, continuously feeding your anxiety only makes it worse.
May I therefore suggest you stop feeding your anxiety.
You don't have to worry about your breathing: this is governed by your involuntary nervous system. In other words your body controls it automatically. No need for you to do anything or feed your anxiety with fearful thoughts.
You don't have to worry about about the lump in the throat. It's called globus hystericus and 2 to 3 people a week report having it on this forum. It's a very, very common symptom of health anxiety and it's just a feeling, nothing wrong with your throat. So no need to feed your anxiety with fear on that score either.
You don't have to worry about your posture affecting the blood flow to your head. If it was you would keep passing out. But you haven't been passing out have you, grargh? So no need to feed your anxiety with fear about your posture.
Your depression is caused by the depletion of nervous energy caused by stress. It is also only natural to get depressed about our anxiety. When you have recovered your depression will pass. So I suggest you forget about your hippocampus and frontal loads, whatever they are, it only produces more fear to feed your anxiety.
I think you explain everything when you say that you've suffered from near constant stress. After enduring this for a long time your nervous system rebels and your nerves become over sensitised. In this state, they exaggerate every minor concern into a life-threatening problem. We feel under lethal attack by hippocampuses and we see life-threatening frontal lobes at every turn.
An over-sensitised nervous system mimics genuine physical illness so well it deserves an Oscar. It also sends strange thoughts our way. The worry this causes you makes you pump out more and more fear hormones which maintains your nerves in a highly sensitised state.
I suggest you are suffering from 'health anxiety' not real physical illness but do go see your doctor for reassurance that it's 'all nerves'. It's unlikely that you'll wake up one morning and find it's gone. You have to do that yourself.
First, neutralise whatever it was causing you constant stress. Be ruthless if necessary, it's your mental wellbeing thats at state.
Next, you need to stop fighting your anxiety: fighting only causes more stress and strain, you need less not more of that to recover.
Instead, ACCEPT all the symptoms of your anxiety disorder for the time being. Surrender to them calmly, agree to co-exist with them for the moment: stop letting them worry you to death. As I've explained, they are not symptoms of real illness but mind games your tired nervous system are playing on you.
In this way you stem the flow of fear hormones and your nervous system loses its sensitivity. And in due course by practicing ACCEPTANCE rather than fighting you recover and the symptoms of anxiety and accompanying depression become a thing of the past.
But do check with your doctor that this is health anxiety/anxiety disorder for your own reassurance.
Hi, I feel exactly the same as you. I’m so worried about my health it’s that bad that I need
To wash my hands before I eat anything so that Ik I won’t catch anything. I worry about any symptom I get such as a headache and things and think I have some life threatening illness.
I get so upset about it cause I feel like it’s ruining my life as I can’t function daily without thinking something is wrong with me. I always search up online aswell about symptoms and different illnesses to try and compare. I was just wondering if you were the same
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