Miserable!

[Desha83]

Hi everyone! I just found this message board today and I feel like it’s exaxrly where I need to be. I am so confused about whether or not anxiety can actually cause your body to have symptoms. Over the past month I’ve had so much numbness and tingling, (legs, arms, jaws) and muscle pain and weakness. My legs are literally shaky after going up and down the stairs. Even the muscles in my pelvic area feel weak. I have quivering muscles when I lay down and then when I drift off to sleep my body jerks and sometimes I feel like I stop breathing. I had an mri and it was clear. Been to the neuro several times and to the ER four times. All this month. Everything comes back ok except for some vitamin deficiencies. Can my anxiety really manifest into such really symptoms??? I feel like the ER is never gonna take me seriously because they just keep documenting anxiety.

 

[karlae99]

Hello! Believe it or not health anxiety really can make you manifest very many symptoms and you will absolutely convince yourself that they are real. It’s good that you’ve gone to the doctor and everything was fine, I know it’s hard to trust that you’re okay even after being told so but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I know it can be hard to relax and get your mind off it, but that’s exactly what you need to do because odds are if you spend your time doing something other than worrying about these symptoms or seeing if they get worse you’ll realize that they’ve pretty much disappeared. And if not, then I would wait maybe two weeks or so before going to the doctor again to get checked out because that is normally what I do when I have a symptom

 

[Hurt&Hopeful]

Hi there - SO sorry you're so miserable. What you're describing sounds exactly like my symptoms. And yes, anxiety can cause them, but sometimes there is an underlying cause as well. I'm 39 yrs old, female, and I knew this year that something just wasn't right. I've dealt with anxiety my whole life, and it never caused the muscle weakness and fatigue like that (like you're describing). Not directly, anyways...

What it DOEA cause is high cortisol (stress hormone) levels in your blood. High cortisol can block other hormones, like progesterone. And low progesterone can cause muscle weakness. And more anxiety... It also affects your thyroid function.

It is very very hard sometimes to get doctors to really look for these things, especially if they have already slapped a 'mental illness' label on you. But if you don't normally suffer from health anxiety/hypochondria (I don't), keep looking until you find one that will. Ask them to do a complete hormone and thyroid panel. The blood tests they do in the emergency room will not include these. There might be something simple that can make you feel so much better - for me, it's been addressing low progesterone with a simple cream. For men, of course, it could be something totally different. But it's ok to want to check it out.

The jerking awake - I have done that for a long time. Have you considered sleep disorders! I was recently diagnosed with apnea...which can affect ALL of it.

Best of luck to you!

 

[triceps]

Hi everyone! I just found this message board today and I feel like it’s exaxrly where I need to be. I am so confused about whether or not anxiety can actually cause your body to have symptoms. Over the past month I’ve had so much numbness and tingling, (legs, arms, jaws) and muscle pain and weakness. My legs are literally shaky after going up and down the stairs. Even the muscles in my pelvic area feel weak. I have quivering muscles when I lay down and then when I drift off to sleep my body jerks and sometimes I feel like I stop breathing. I had an mri and it was clear. Been to the neuro several times and to the ER four times. All this month. Everything comes back ok except for some vitamin deficiencies. Can my anxiety really manifest into such really symptoms??? I feel like the ER is never gonna take me seriously because they just keep documenting anxiety.

Hi. I too do not have health anxiety and I agree with much of what Hurt&Hopeful posted above. One morning I work up with so much muscle weakness I could barely walk, was assisted by my wife to get to the doctor where the did a barrage of testing. It came down to just a powerful anxiety reaction. My psychiatrist, after my describing what I went through, said that he had an anxiety patient who was unable to get out of bed for 4 days due to a high anxiety episode. My point is that anxiety can cause a very wide range of significant physical symptoms. Hope you can feel better.