Stress as Cause--Re: Digest Number 849

[Guest guest]

How many of you were severly emotionally depressed or terribly

> stressed just prior to the onset of your disease?

Negative here, I had the first signs of this since childhood, and had

very little stress then. Stress does seem to make me worse symptomatically,

though, reducing my ability to cope with the pain and fatigue, and making me

more likely to catch other illnesses that contribute to flare-ups by

generally running me down.

I also flared badly after drastic hormonal changes, like after puberty,

after miscarriages, and after childbirth and nursing. So I have to vote

against stress being a direct causative factor, but in favor of it being an

exacerbating factor, once the disease is there, at least in my own

particular case.

I've noticed a lot of people on the fibro newsgroup say that their fibro

was triggered by a shock or other stressful experience like a surgery. I

wonder if it is not the case that these diseases lurk for a long time,

producing little or no symptoms, then a stress/shock can make it worse and

bring it into the foreground. It is easy to dismiss the early symptoms like

fatigue, achiness, sleep problems, or to assign them to other causes or just

plain hypochondria/whining, just ask some of the doctors in my past! #; 0

Do I believe that my health problems are the fault of my inability to keep

my cool, my love for chaos, my overgrown imagination, the vast (not!)

complications of my former humble non-Type-A career goals?......well, better

men and women than me have said as much, LOL, but I'm not buying into that.

<G> Now don't anyone get stressed out over my humble opinions......Be well,

and Blessings to you all, Liz G