psychosomatic is the root of all?

[ahmo]

@kisekishiawase I had a problem w/ ober-reactivity much of my adult life. I tried countless types of therapy, and wanted to believe I was overcoming it. But I only achieved a significant shift once I'd eliminated gluten, detoxxed metals, and 'repaired' my methylation system. Not all in my head, at all. Good luck w/ getting to the bottom of you issues.

 

[JES]

The whole psychosomatic disease argument seems to me boil down to the commonly heard sentence "well, we can't find anything physically wrong with you, so it must be in your head". Which is a false logical conclusion drawn from the premise, since absence of evidence for one thing does not and cannot serve as evidence for another. There is not even a need to refute something that has no evidence to begin with, especially now when the term evidence-based medicine is so often touted.

Psychosomatic disease is just a wastebasket diagnosis similar to or actually even worse than "medically unexplained symptoms/diseases", something the medical system has created to somehow deal with us, but for which there is no scientific basis.

 

[kisekishiawase]

Thanks everyone for the response

@Shoshana now i do remember why cancer has a bad stigma. Also digestive and heart issue. Being connected to mind. But its true that stress can caused trouble with bodg. But its different than the "all in head not real" theory.
I remember autism also still labelled as psychological issues. :/

@xcell nice one about the ulcer im still collecting the list....

@Wolfcub i read about endometriosis and its weird caused on top still reaeearch and study ahows about psychological and "womens problem" although i read a news saying that in laparoscopy it shows that the bowel stuck to stomach and liver to something else :/

@alex3619

There are many lists, here and elsewhere, of diseases that were claimed to be psychosomatic and then shown to be entirely somatic (of the body).

Do you know where can i find it? I try googling but dont know the keyword. I try "wrong psychosomatic disease history" but tons news, article came up on top about doctors saying blindness, paralysis, etc caused by hypochondriac.

Stop doctor shopping. “Find one doctor you really trust, and admit to him or her that you have health anxiety. Work together with that doctor,” says Jill Stoddard, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Stress and Anxiety Management in Mission Valley.

Stop trying to diagnose yourself on the Internet. It will only fuel anxiety.

Even the healthiest people experience annoying little aches and pains occasionally. Most of us tend to ignore them or just learn to live with them. However, for 5 percent to 10 percent of the population who suffer from hypochondria, these minor maladies are exaggerated into major illnesses.

In their minds, a headache becomes a brain tumor. A cough must be lung cancer. A little indigestion means heart disease. Often dismissed as neurotic time-wasters, hypochondriacs’ constant fixation and anxiety about their health can be as disabling as a real physical illness.

The Internet is nirvana for a hypochondriac, with medical research, disease blogs and self-diagnosis only a few mouse clicks away. The phenomenon is so common it has a name: cyberchondria. Add to that the television commercials for pharmaceuticals that must now spell out every possible side effect, and hypochondriacs have hundreds of illnesses to obsess over.

“Some people search and scan for these for hours and hours. It can be overwhelming. It’s important to be aware (of health risks), but not preoccupied,” Pratt says.

“Hypochondriacs become their symptoms. They have such an inappropriate preoccupation with the smallest physical problem that it gets in the way of normal living, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says George Pratt, clinical psychologist and vice chairman of psychology at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla. “Many of the symptoms that hypochondriacs feel are often physical sensations caused by anxiety or depression that can go along with hypochondria. The constant worrying can release harmful stress hormones and do real physical damage.”

Please does someone have prove to break this dogma that this famous theory could be wrong??


Anyway i saw this and its funny

 

[tumbleweed]

Hasn't endometriosis at some stage been considered a "psychological" illness? I seem to vaguely remember something about that mentioned once but I am sorry I can't quote sources.

Endometriosis and mental health problems still get mixed up together in jaw-dropping ways. Read this article for a horrendous example :

https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/4...blems-because-endometriosis-resets-the-brain/

I very much doubt that endometriosis "resets the brain" whatever that stupid phrase means. I would say instead that being tortured for several days would depress anyone. And knowing that it will happen next month and the month after and the month after that for years to come would make anyone anxious.

And the other factor of course, is that the only sure-fire "cure" is supposed to be a hysterectomy. Now, if a man has his testicles removed because of cancer (for example) people are shocked and sympathetic. But when a woman has a hysterectomy including the removal of her ovaries people assume this is no big deal. <sarcasm on> She still has a hole between her legs so her partner can still have sex can't he? So what's the problem?<sarcasm off>

Edit : This article is worth reading too :

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...e-get-endometriosis-or-does-endo-make-you-mad

 

[IThinkImTurningJapanese]

Please does someone have prove to break this dogma that this famous theory could be wrong??

A good friend of mine once told me something that helped so much, "You need to accept it yourself".

Competing with someone's world view can be fruitless.

 

[alex3619]

Do you know where can i find it? I try googling but dont know the keyword. I try "wrong psychosomatic disease history" but tons news, article came up on top about doctors saying blindness, paralysis, etc caused by hypochondriac.

These lists are not easy to find, as you discovered. Several have been published or discussed right here on this forum, but years ago. I have no reference handy. These lists start with tuberculosis, type 1 &2 diabetes, breast cancer, all cancer, all heart disease (actually I am not sure this was not just atherosclerosis), Lupus, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, and gastric ulcers ... and those are just off the top of my head. Just about every rare or misunderstood disease has been labelled psychogenic.

 

[Wolfcub]

re: Heart Disease....I was reading last night how a great number of people (most of them women), who present with possible heart attack symptoms get sent home from emergency rooms with a diagnosis of "panic attack" or "anxiety".

Sometimes those doctors are very very wrong.

Apparently women can suffer different heart attack "types" than men.

But we are falling all too easily into a quick "anxiety" diagnosis nowadays, I feel. There is primary anxiety, and then there is secondary anxiety (which often happens when someone feels terribly unwell and scared.)

 

[Dichotohmy]

Functional, psychosomatic, or somatic symptom disorders are quite possibly real - despite the premise being neither provable or disprovable with current medical technology. With over 7 billion people on earth, there is likely a cohort of people out there for whom anxiety and/or psychological stress can produce or worsen somatic symptoms by some real mechanism such as hypercortisolemia or sleep deprivation. I wager that cohort is likely much smaller than the medical industry estimates, and thus believe that somatic symptom disorder definitely has an undue amount of attention and focus on it from the medical industry.

I presume most of this undue attention comes down to some simple explanations. Somatic symptom disorders are usually complex and so, with managed or government-funded health care always seeking to boost profits and cut costs, there is a temptation for doctors to save time and money and apply the SSD label to difficult patients. More insidiously, there is a strong mystique about the "powers of the mind" and "unconscious mind" that many lay-people and medical professionals alike are fascinated by. Many people have trouble with the notion that good health could come down to simple luck, like avoiding inheriting vulnerable genes or steering clear of certain pathogens and other environmental factors. These people might feel guilty about being healthy while other are sick and look for a reason, and for whatever reason decide that the sick become that way due to a propensity towards stress and anxiety; thus the healthy person then rationalizes that his or her own health is due to good mental-health practices. When a doctor things that way, that doctor is going to be biased towards applying an SSD label.

The bottom line for us, the chronically ill, is that somatic symptom disorder is a deeply unsatisfying answer because we have already found treatments for SDS don't help us. How many of us have not already tried, again and again, reducing stress, banishing distressing thoughts, good lifestyle habits like eating a healthy diet and being active, or psychological/psychiatric treatment? Obviously those treatments aren't helpful enough, because we are still missing out on life. Thus, somatic symptom disorder is a deeply unhelpful premise unless perhaps you are completely lacking in common sense and have never considered those treatments I list. For those of us who have gotten such treatment advise from doctors, it is an insult to our intelligence and that is why so many in the CFS/SEID community are offended by a suggestion that SDS is to blame.

 

[me/cfs 27931]

@alex3619 Lecture on the health impacts of stress.

"With rich scientific content and plenty of humor, author and biologist Robert Sapolsky illuminated the causes and health impact of stress at the 2018 Saward Lecture."
https://research.kpchr.org/News/CHR...sky-Delivers-CHR-s-28th-Annual-Saward-Lecture

In the past, Sapolski has called IBS, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS and ulcers "functional disorders" with a psychosomatic component.

What bothers me is that Kaiser Permanente is giving a platform to this quack. This month.

For an overview of Sapolski's idea that a wide variety of conditions have a functional component, see https://jeffreybland.com/knowledgebase/july-2000-issue-dr-robert-sapolsky-phd/

 

[alex3619]

Lecture on the health impacts of stress

Dare I even watch this? The conflation of stress with stressors, and the lack of good biochemical evidence for vague stress, is a big problem. For example, drinking a glass of water is a stressor. It will not however cause psychological stress in almost everyone.

Stress in general use in disease is about specific stress hormones such as cortisol. When I last looked at this the symptoms they were claiming that were cortisol induced are not even found in hypercortisolemia.

 

[alex3619]

Psychogenic disorders remain a contentious area, with problems even defining reliably what a psychogenic disorder even is, but its still a potential hypothetical disease state. They have just never proven it. Despite this its accepted far too often. It should be considered unproven, and anyone wanting to claim them as psychogenic needs to provide the proof.

Even anxiety and depression are probably either primary brain disorders or secondary brain disorders and symptoms due to some other things, such as nutrient deficiencies or infectious diseases. There is a doctor in New York who cures many teens with depression using antivirals, for example. Neuropsych symptoms commonly arise from vitamin deficiencies. Many diseases cause brain disorders, even syphilis. We should not just presume they are mental disorders.

Nobody doubts that thoughts, emotions and experiences can change brain activity, but a disorder in the brain is still a disorder in the brain. Strategies for altering thinking and perception are management strategies in my view, not cures. That does not mean they cannot help patients cope however, but they are often oversold. I suspect that very bad experiences can induce brain disorders, including PTSD, and that thought management strategies might help, but cure will require an understanding of brain mechanisms.

Here is a thread on S4ME discussing diseases formerly labelled psychogenic -

https://www.s4me.info/threads/what-...he-past-but-were-later-proven-not-to-be.2129/

 

[Murph]

Here's an 1852 book saying that farting and cramp are psychosomatic, as well asthma and Sydenham's Chorea (St vitus dance):

And here is a 1947 article in Life magazine that claims "false pregnancy" is wholly or largely psychosomatic, along with asthma, hay fever and arthritis, diabetes, warts and allergies:

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=JVMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA51&dq="psychosomatic"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiuqfqIspveAhWKfCsKHRIgBT8Q6AEISTAH#v=onepage&q="psychosomatic"&f=false

It even says tuberculosis can be psychosomatic. If you don't recover properly, it's because that is "congenial" to you.

Obviously all of the above examples are bullshit, but let's not fall into the trap of extremism. The brain and body are connected. More than that, they are one thing. Mental states can cause physical symptoms, such as blushing, trembling. Anyone who has had a panic attack knows the feeling of constricted breathing that comes with it. etc. Anorexia exists.

The question is not whether symptoms with a mental origin are entirely nonsense but what is their extent (in my opinion, the extent is less than imagined by some psychiatrists and psychologists).

 

[kisekishiawase]

Why not blame on sin, devil, karma, hatred etc? Some people do say that. Its the same than blaming on mind.
Yesterday i went to a health practioner but only to get a letter recommendation. Shes still young maybe same as my age. I talk a little and she said im sick because i dont wanna believe in miracle, i can cure myself. Lol. Then whats her job or whats the doctor doing....

 

[kisekishiawase]

No one can give prove/strong argument that their theory have fault?

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-psychosomatic-research/
https://www.eapm.eu.com
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/somatic-symptom-disorder/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20377781

The novel sub-specialty can be acquired by all general practitioners and all medical specialists of all clinical fields. Thus, a structured integration of psychosomatic medicine in all medical fields is prepared and formally achieved.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association, emphasizes these points in the diagnosis of somatic symptom disorder:

• You have one or more somatic symptoms — for example, pain or fatigue — that are distressing or cause problems in your daily life
• You have excessive and persistent thoughts about the seriousness of your symptoms, you have a persistently high level of anxiety about your health or symptoms, or you devote too much time and energy to your symptoms or health concerns
• You continue to have symptoms that concern you, typically for more than six months, even though the symptoms may vary.

Doesnt everybody also devoted their time, energy too much and stress about their work, love life? But thats normal and why theyre healthy?

Isnt that what every sick person does? Isnt that normal response when you have debilitating issue in your life?
Theres no data, test, sample, number. Only subjective. whats the normal range value of stress? How much is 'excessive' and 'high level'? and boom diagnosis. Only based on feelings and words. How can you diagnose cancer based only on "that lump looks like cancer to me"

Its really a big pound full of gold for them to fish.
Just put all patient in it and just give benzos. No need to put effort for diagnosis, examanation, test, treatments, etc.

 

[alex3619]

The brain and body are connected.

Dualism.

More than that, they are one thing.

Monism.

These are two incompatible statements, and one of the places this argument falls down.

Mental states can cause physical symptoms, such as blushing, trembling.

Brain states can cause physical symptoms, but also the experiences and sensations we label as mental.

There is no need to invoke mind at all. Clearly I am a monist. Mind is just the label we put on what we perceive the brain to be doing. Using mind makes things far less concrete, and we can easily fall into the trap of believing unfounded vague claims. The brain is not magic, but somehow the mind is. Invocation of mind in disease explanation puts the whole thing in the realm of the magical, and allows people to indulge in poor reasoning. Hence the plethora of fallacies and clearly false statements that are made in the literature.

If you substitute, depending on context, either "brain" or "brain function" in place of "mind" or "mental" it is easier to spot the poor reasoning that psychogenic proponents supply.

The closest someone can come to arguing that something is psychogenic is probably grieving after experiencing close and personal tragedy. Grieving is a normal brain phenomenon though, and I would argue that excessively prolonged grieving could just be when something goes pathologically wrong in the grieving process, possibly due to other factors. Until the science is complete we are mostly guessing.

The next would be anorexia, which is dubious to me but I have not investigated it enough to make strong arguments. I would point out that some psychs recently diagnosed an adult man with ME as having anorexia, then sectioned him to force him to eat. (This was the UK.) This is how these labels can be abused. If we start thinking we understand what is going on then we are given false confidence in our reasoning.

I suspect all other cases are examples of things that are mislabelled, that is they are category mistakes. Especially depression. Using other psychiatric diagnoses to cite why a psychiatric diagnosis might be valid is using one potentially false label to justify another. They are all in doubt. Its not that something is not going on, or that its not serious, its that we do not understand it but have labelled it anyway. MUS, MUPS, functional mental disorders, etc., are just more of the same.

I still say that psychogenic disease is hypothetically possible, but there is nothing like proof of the existence of any psychogenic disease. Whereas we know that brain disease and injury can induce a great many symptoms we call psychiatric. The brain is still a great mystery to modern science, even worse than genetics which also remains an incomplete knowledge area.

 

[Murph]

@alex3619 do we risk substituting mind / brain dualism for mind/body dualism here!?!

Humans are far more neuroplastic than originally thought, and one of the main ways we make and remake connections in our brain is by thinking.

 

[alex3619]

@alex3619 do we risk substituting mind / brain dualism for mind/body dualism here!?!

I prefer to ditch mind entirely. Even thought is an aspect of brain. Every time we have advances in science that make more specific claims, especially if proven, then we should adopt the new terms until they are disproved, at least as tentative new terms. Vague and ill defined terms allow vague and irrational claims to be made more easily. Rational claims can be wrong, but at least they do not have the added risk of fallacies. Checking the facts and predictions of rational claims, when objective observations are considered, is part of the scientific enterprise.

Mind/brain dualism is common. I am an its-all-brain monist. If mind exists then one day it will be proven. If not then we will keep waiting for it to be proven till we give up on the idea ... which might be many centuries.

I do not claim we understand how the brain works. We are still early on that path. I am going with the simplest hypothesis, for which vast amounts of objective supporting data are available. I would love to see someone prove the existence of mind, it would lead to a big change in how we do things if we have an established understanding of mind. We just do not have this right now.

Humans are far more neuroplastic than originally thought, and one of the main ways we make and remake connections in our brain is by thinking.

This is both correct and vastly oversold. Do they often cite the vast regions of the brain that are hardwired or limited? There is no learning there. Learning occurred during brain development, then switched off. Aspects of visual detection occur here. There are hardwired corrective mechanisms, so the brain can be changed, but this is about changing the brain, not thoughts.

Changing thinking can lead to improved coping. I think there is adequate evidence for this. How we quantify that is very dubious though.

There are also risks. Take asthma and CBT. Studies were done showing big improvement, mostly by asking patients how they felt. Here is the problem ... this changes their question answering behaviour, a type of conditioning, but not the disease state, at least in asthma. When objective outcome measures were used there was no benefit. Its a similar story with schizophrenia. This area is plagued by bad research methodology.

You can create new behaviours with thinking and acting in new ways. This needs to be proven in the case of improving objective disease states, and is a big problem with diseases we do not understand yet. How do you measure objective improvement there unless with secondary factors like hours worked, physical activity, or dosage of medication needed, etc.?

The psychogenic proponents keep claiming that changes in thought lead to all sorts of changes in brain, yet proof is lacking. I do not doubt there is some limited change. The question is how much, and does it lead to objective improvement? If, for example, CBT were used to improve coping in ME, and excessive claims about efficacy were not made, and it were an optional therapy for patients to try if they wanted help, then I would have no objection to it. I have done CBT myself, back in the early days when it was still about rational thought and not behaviour modification on top of that.

Once we have objective outcome markers for ME, such as PEM markers, then the efficacy of many treatments can be tested. Who knows, maybe CBT of types other than currently used in psychogenic ME research do help! We are just not at that point yet.

 

[kisekishiawase]

Using mind to 'blame' on everything is like using 'miracle' and 'mind-power' to say we can shape reality according to our 'faith'.

Mind vs brain. How can we prove the mind? Isnt mind and brain are one? Mind is how brain process things.

Anyway can someone help gather prove to show the fault to this psychosomatic theory...

 

[kelly8]

"Please does someone have prove to break this dogma that this famous theorycould be wrong??"

Sorry my quote thing is not working today. I'll tell you that this is wrong from my own experience. They sent me to therapy for 7 months after my son was born and I had a flare up. I couldn't walk so I had to crawl to his crib and sometimes I was so weak I couldn't pick him up. I'd usually lay on the floor and talk to him so he'd stop crying.

Therapy did very little. Yes I had a shitty childhood but what did help was fixing my gut, detoxing, and taking steroid medication for my improperly functioning adrenal gland. Once I was able to get help I didn't need to look for help on the internet anymore.

I still have set backs and that is usually when I go to the drawing board and try to fix things with scientific articles and possible new therapies. The regular medical Dr's gave up on me years ago, but I didn't give up on myself. I was given a brain for a reason and it had helped me find the help I've needed.

I hope that guy has to deal with ME/CFS sometime in his life so he'll know the hell it is to not be able to find help and feel like you have to do it on your own. My Dr says that you need to help someone feel better even if you can't fix them because quality of life is more important than anything. All I was looking for was quality of life and once I found that I didn't need to look for help unless I started slipping.

And by the way there are very real quantitative things that go with this disease like POTS that can be tested.

 

[Wishful]

• You have excessive and persistent thoughts about the seriousness of your symptoms, you have a persistently high level of anxiety about your health or symptoms, or you devote too much time and energy to your symptoms or health concerns

One of my doctors told me to stop obsessing about the symptoms. My response was that there was no way to avoid being constantly aware of the symptoms. I then asked him if a patient came in with an arrow stuck through him, if he'd tell the patient to stop obsessing about it. ME symptoms are no easier to ignore than an arrow.