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Diet should have zero effect on any inflammatory illness unless it works as a placebo. I really don't think it's response to diet would have a confirmatory effect on if it is physical or TMS. This is just my belief and I thought I would share it with you if it could help

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Originally posted by Darko



...I do agree about tension. Tension is major issue...

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Originally posted by art

I was quite hesitant to express my own opinions on TMS as I began to find my way, and it became ever clearer to me that psychosomatic pain is very often stress induced. Two things worked to encourage me to speak more boldly.

1: The overwhelmingly obvious fact that so many people on this forum suffer from hypochondria and health anxiety. These people are generally not going to be helped by being urged to plumb the depths of their subconscious minds to get to the bottom of their repressed rage. The whole notion became more and more antiquated to me.

2: The fact that many people were being urged to do just that. I realized the best way for me to help those people was to call it like I saw it.

It's important to understand these are not outlier or radical opinions. A quick Internet survey will reveal that professionals are increasingly understanding...and treating psychosomatic pain as a stress disorder...that it consciously experienced stress. No one is expressly disavowing repressed emotions as another causative factor, but it's clear which way the wind is blowing.


. Most practitioners now recognize consciously felt stress as a direct causal agent... in addition to repressed emotions. In clinical practice moreover, it is my understanding that the emphasis is frequently on consciously experienced stress, rumination, and worry.

http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Terminology_for_TMS/PPD

Alternative Names for TMS

Automatic Overload Syndrome (AOS): Dr. Scott Brady developed the term AOS to describe chronic conditions, which he discusses in his book Pain Free for Life. Brady defines AOS as a group of chronic pains and other symptoms caused by harmful levels of stress, pressure, and repressed strong negative emotions that have built up in the subconscious mind. The symptoms of AOS include back pain, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, and other chronic conditions. Brady focuses on stress and pressure that builds up in the autonomic nervous system, which causes these conditions. [Brady, Scott. Pain Free for Life. New York: Hachette Book Group. 2006. pg. 8]

Mind Body Syndrome (MBS): Dr. Howard Schubiner calls the condition of having chronic symptoms caused by psychological factors as MBS. Schubiner says "MBS is caused by a complex set of neurological connections between the brain and the body, rather than a disease localized in one area of the body." MBS symptoms include chronic pan syndromes, such as tension headaches, back pain, fibromyalgia, and Myofascial Pain syndrome, as well as autonomic nervous system related disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and Reflex sympathetic dstrophy. Other symptoms are also included in MBS like insomnia, Tinnitus, Anxiety, and Chronic fatigue syndrome. [Schubiner, Howard. Unlearn Your Pain. Pleasant Ridge: Mind Body Publishing. 2010. pg. 8-19]

Stress Illness: Dr. Dave Clarke has coined the phrase Stress Illness to diagnose conditions that are chronic and caused by psychological factors of stress and the repression of emotions. Clarke argues that there are five different kinds of stress that create physical symptoms such as childhood, current, traumatic, depression and anxiety disorders. Clarke argues that other names such as psychosomatic and somatoform disorder suggest that the patient's symptoms are either not real or are part of a psychological disorder instead of being cause by stress. Clarke writes "Sufferers are often unaware of the nature or degree of the stress that makes them ill. Symptoms can occur anywhere in the body and can be just as severe as symptoms caused by any other disease, but x-rays and blood tests cannot detect the cause." [Clarke, Dave. They Can%27t Find Anything Wrong. Boulder: First Sentient Publications. 2007.]

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