Weird Physical Symptoms

[ididthatonce]

I've noticed lately that I have weird physical effects of my depression/anxiety. For instance, my whole body is sore every morning, which I'm 99% sure comes from tensing up in my sleep. I already know that I grind my teeth while sleeping, and that is exacerbated by stress, so tensing up seems like part of the same phenomenon. I also get crazy stomach issues when nervous. Everything from general queasiness to (grossness ahead) taking a huge shit after a panic attack.

Do any of you find that your body does strange things when your mental illness is acting up?

[Cherry_Iceee]

Before i quit my job i had all sorts of wierd things going on with my body. My last year there i was continuously sick. I had sinus infection after sinus infection, along with ear infections. Then i would be given antibiotics and id get yeast infections. I never got yeast infections from antibiotics before. I was contantly itchy it was like i was allergic to my clothes. At one point i was bruising very easily. Which normally you almost have to break bones before id ever bruise. I thought i was dying or had at least something chronically wrong with me. Went to a doctor told me i was fine. I also had bloody noses each morning. It finally got to the point where i could only eat with taking tums before and after. And eating them for breakfast to start my day. My body was always heavy like it was an effort to drag my ass out of bed or to do anything. I just felt like i had weights around my legs and body. Once i quit my job i realized three days later i hadnt had a bloody nose in those three days. A week later i woke up hungry not sick to my stomach like i had been. Sometime after that i realized my body was no longer heavy and tense. I gotta say the past year since i quit that job not one sinus infection or ear infection. Everybody has been sick with the colds and flu and i still havent been sick.
Stress and depression can make you physically sick. Ive been suffering with depression the past few months and ive noticed the heavyness in my body is returning. And sometimes i itch but i hope to crawl out of the depression before it gets horribly bad. I too clentch my teeth. Im amazed that i even have teeth. I clentch mine so tight sometimes i cant open my mouth hardly enough to eat. I hope thid lets you know your not alone.

[MizLzie]

Stress/Anxiety hits my stomach big time. Complete loss of appetite for days, weeks, I think the longest was about a month. My latest round, which is still kind of happening, I only ate at night, at home, and it was crappy food, since I couldn't get it together to cook anything healthy. I get nauseous and full on sick at times. When I first got it really bad, I was in college and was worried about my roommate situation. Actually fearing for my cats safety, it was terrible. The stress and anxiety made me so sick I would leave class to vomit. My record was 10 times... I resorted to sucking on candies on a professors recommendation, just to get through.

I've been in the middle of eating lunch and an asshole coworker would make a degrading comment, instant loss of appetite. Even though I am SO hungry, I can't even imagine eating. First ever experience with the icky stomach was in high school. So nervous one weekend about a boy that I barely ate anything for 2 days. Even last month I was finally getting back on track with a normal eating pattern and I got an email that triggered it. Instant loss of appetite and ready to run to the bathroom.

One of the reasons I haven't been drinking, is that drinking normally happens when going out with people, so when I get anxious about the upcoming interactions, I can't eat and I drink WAY too fast. Never a good idea.

I usually assume it's stressed related, but even writing this out I can see how much anxiety is involved, a nice little circle of the two.

[ididthatonce]

Cherry_iceee, you reminded me that I used to get sinus infections all the time as a kid! I had to have my adenoids removed because I was just constantly on antibiotics for it. And then I wound up having strep throat for about a solid 9 months and had the tonsils removed. I actually started having anxiety attacks right after the tonsillectomy. I bet there's a connection there.

MizLizie, I know 100% what you mean about the nervous stomach. A lot of my anxiety is related to my phobia of throwing up, so before I was properly medicated, I barely ate for fear of vomiting. My therapist just this week informally diagnosed me as anorexic during that time. (Er... weird sentence construction.) I've actually had to teach myself to eat while nervous, which is a fun experience all around (not). I get attached to certain foods during times of high anxiety and tend to rely on those. Apples are always a good standby for me. And peanut butter crackers. And, weirdly, Captain Crunch, which is also the story of how I almost got scurvy in college.

[Livian82]

It's my stomach that suffers the most. I know I'm not allergic to anything I eat it's literally dependent on how stressed I am. I have to force myself to eat and when I do I usually don't feel better anyway. I kind of use it as an excuse to eat junk since if I don't I won't eat at all. Luckily it doesn't end in vomiting but the other end doesn't have much fun, and I ended up diagnosed with IBS. I read somewhere there's so many nerves in your stomach it's like a second brain. Some days I don't know how I'm still classified as a functioning human being.

Also a teeth grinder, tried endep (Amitriptyline) but basically ended up self medicating because the dose the ENT doc gave me was too low to have any real affect on my mood or sleep. Right there with you cherry, still wondering how I haven't cracked a tooth yet.

And even though my blood pressure is fine I still find myself short of breath and sighing a lot.

Oh olanzapine makes you gain weight like crazy- three women ended up asking me if I was pregnant.