Your health problems are all in your head

Being someone with chronic headaches and nausea (probably as a direct result of the headahces), this article caught my attention: Gastrointestinal Problems May Be Associated With Other Health Problems And Even Previously Experienced Abuse

People with recurrent gastrointestinal complaints often have other concurrent health problems, seek medical care more frequently, and experience lower quality of life than those without such complaints. Evidence also suggests that women with gastrointestinal complaints may have experienced various kinds of abuse earlier in life.

While I am all about medicine taking a more holistic approach (maybe the GI problems are a result of allergies, or stress, or an eating disorder, or muscle fatigue, or who knows), I hate when my medical problems are brushed off as psych issues. I’ve never heard the abuse thing before, but it’s frustrating to have medical complaints brushed aside because of an eating disorder history.

First, with my old pediatrician, if my vitals were fine, my weight not horrific, and my EKG clear — then I was fine. I don’t think I was ever asked how I felt. Headaches, stomach aches, tiredness — all obviously because of stress over eating. Knowing about my mental illness history didn’t enhance my treatment, but really rather gave my doctor an excuse to chalk my other complaints up to psych issues.

Recently I’ve seen a new doctor, and during my first appointment she said, “I don’t have any experience with eating disorders and I’m not sure what your doctors have done in the past, but you have these chronic headaches and stomach aches that need attention. I want you to feel the best that you can, and these need to be treated.” I was really stunned, especially since I had just explained to her that the nausea was probably from my calcium supplement and that the headache and stomach ache were just consequences of my ED history. It was really nice to see someone who cared about more than my weight and vitals and who didn’t think the headaches/stomach aches were all in my head.

On a slightly different tangent, one other point in the article:

The results also showed that people with gastrointestinal complaints who seek help at health care centers made approximately twice as many physician visits and calls to the centers as people without such problems. They also obtained more prescriptions and took considerably more painkillers. In addition, they more often had other concurrent health problems.

No, you don’t say — people with stomach pain went to the doctor more often than people without pain? Imagine! And then they took the advice of those doctors and obtained the prescribed medication? Novel. Come on now, this paragraph is basically saying “Sick people go to doctors more than health people, and then they take more anti-sick meds than those who aren’t sick.” I really hope that something more than this revelation came out of the research.

Tags: Eating disorder, anorexia, bulimia, nausea, gastrointestinal problems, abuse, holistic medicine, mental health, mental illness, stomach ache, chronic headaches

Tags: abuse, Anorexia, bulimia, chronic headaches, eating disorders, gastrointestinal problems, holistic medicine, mental health, mental illness, nausea, stomach ache