Health Anxiety, vision problems, hot flashes. Expert opinion needed!

Hi Sean, all your symptoms sound to me to be anxiety related, ive no doubt that your GP would confirm this and perhaps prescribe medication to help you through this episode.

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Hey sean, i'm 21, and for the last 6 months i've had ALL of these symptoms, and constantly as well, they never go away. Ive had so many tests, blood tests, heart monitors, MRI, echogram, the lot, and everything is apparently perfectly normal, when i know full well something in my body is NOT normal. 

i've seen so many different doctors, and they've all told me i'm fine and maybe its just anxiety... I never heard of anxiety before, i thought anxiety was just something that happened when you got abit scared about something!! but i did my own research for absolutely ages as i thought i was genuinely going to die, and i think i have health anxiety, the doctor did diagnose me with generalised anxiety disorder, and thinking about it now i always have been an excessive worrier but just never realised it ! after 6 months of doctors and tests ive finally started to believe i do have anxiety. my worst symptom is my vision. its always blurred. it feels as if if just rubbed my eyes cosntantly, and theres like black dots everywhere. i constantly feel as if im not real, like im dead and someones in my body and im not in control, just watching from the outside looking in at my body. sounds ridiculous. i dont have the typical symptoms of someone who is anxious as in im not socially anxious, im quite confident, so thats why i never believed i had anxiety. but i think i do have it quite bad. what is your vision like? thats the only thing i am so worried about, i would do aanything just to be able to see like a normal person again, and feel real!!! been to the options and they said everythings fine, i can read clearly but its just as if ive got a permanent hangover and my head is spinning, and eyes cant ajust !! also i just feel "weird", like i cant explain it, like my body feels hollow, and im so aware of my blood running round my body!! is that the same for you ???

Maybe we do just have health anxiety, but its so hard accepting it isnt it!!!

youre NOT alone, i've felt so lonely for ages but after looking at all these sites it seems so many people have exactly the same thing. 

 

Ive also had these symptoms among other ones and im.starting to come to the conclusion of anxiety. What that perosn your referring to was not.just Lyme disease that is very sudden and you very clearly know you are sick. He is referring to a while nother disease known as chronic lymes disease, which is basically a recurring of symptoms after the initial lymes disease. Theres a huge controversy over this and most doctors d9nt even recognise it as an actual disease. Not saying its not just im going through the same exact thing as considering lyme as an option but the more i look into it the more i realize holes in information and symptoms. I have exactly the same symptoms as you with also headaches, and the stiffness and twitches has turned into a dull achey pain. Bit try your hardest to realize the initial cause of your symptoms ive very rarely had a time where i couldn't explain it at all besides the eye floaters but which ive had for ever since i could remember.

HI Everyone, 

Amazing to find this thread! I started to experience everything that you have described since living in London where I moved about three years ago. I do have Ankylosing Spondylitis and uveitis which is an autoimmune issue and covers my stiffness. However, mentally, a year ago I had a complete breakdown alomost at 34 years old. I developed a huge amount of anxiety after hearing some bad news about my friend and really struggled coping with any for of change. I became really OCD and anorexic and eventually had to stay with my parents for a year to try and get back on track. Now I am still a bit depressed and anxious, I have brain fog daily, sudden onset of that adrenalin feeling at times, inability to think etc. What's worse is that I have also become paranoid about my health which I am always researching (partly because I love medecine and really wanted to be a dentist growing up) and I have become totally paranoid about chemtrails and that we are all being srayed with chemicals. I even spent months going around London taking photos of them and planes which I believe were spraying chemicals. before I really had the breakdown I was admitted to Charing Cross hospital for hypokalemia because just about ALL of my potassium ran out of my system. The Doctors have no idea how I was able to walk into the A&E with a letter from the out of hours GP saying I needed to go urgently to hospital following a blood test I had on that day. He came at 3am to tell me!  Anyway, long story short, I've now found out that hypokalemia is an indication of barium poisoning together with some of my other symptoms which has just fanned my paranoia about chemtrails. I'm now considering taking lithium on top of my antidepressent which just isn't controlling this anymore! Thanks so much for sharing. Please undersand I am not a loopy person. I have been working for a well known financial services firm in London and had an otherwise good life but this is definitely ruining my life!

Best, Elide

Hello.

I think I'm having the same problems.

I keep seeing white flashes and random white things that vanish when I focus on them about the size of A4 paper and my vision keeps flickering too.

I have anxiety and Autism I've been looking on Google but it points mostly to eye problems but I think it's more of a mental thing.

Has anyone found anything on this?

Hi Sean,

I could have written your post! I have every symptom you described.

I'm also debating possible Lyme and waiting for private blood test results. Which tests did you get for Lyme?

Im hoping these are all 'just' anxiety though, and its something we can eventually manage without the need for strong antibiotics.

Please keep us updated on how you progress, I'd be really interested to hear if you get any answers, or find a way to manage these random symptoms!

Thank you again for posting.

Sounds like its anxiety. Probably mixed with anxiety attacks. Mostly health anxiety at this point. Sorry you are going through this,hope you are better now.

hi sean im feeling like you described? are you feeling any better now? ive been perscribed pregablin 50mg a day.anyone used this meds before?

hello sean,

I know its been a long time since you posted the above. I just wanted to say that tonight I decided to see what effect extreme anxiety has on the brain and eyes because 21 years ago i suffered what I consider to be a nervous breakdown due to chronic stress no doubt exacerbated by cannabis/skunk. I was clueless back then. Over the years I've tried to find out why after the breakdown my head didn't feel the same. I still suffer from depersonalisation, I ruminate all the time and for many years I felt like the emergency switch had been left on inside my brain. I soon noticed eye floaters, long twisty ones which were not there before. I suddenly became very sensitive to bright lights too. I was put on anti-depressants which I hoped would reverse these feelings, but it was clear over time that my brain wasn't going to return to normal, possibly ever. This was really hard to deal with and those closest to me took the brunt of my frustrations.

I remember going to the opticians soon after the breakdown hoping they would detect something wrong or see the floaters but they didn't. I, like you, read up on things which supported the depressing idea that I'd damaged my brain and I'm stuck with this condition till I die.

I wasn't sure if this was all in my head and my eyes were not the problem. I had an EEG test done to detect anything unusual in my brainwaves but again, nothing.

After time I became dissilusioned with finding any answers for my ongoing symptoms and all the time feeling that permanently 'on' emergency switch in my head.

Things got worse in 2002. After a painful end to a relationship I became psychotic. Although this was the worst time of my life I think I needed to go down that hole to hit rock bottom so I could put myself right once and for all, although it didn't feel like that at the time.

To this day I still have all the symptoms I mentioned earlier except the psychosis and I'm resigned to the fact that my eye floaters are here to stay and were formed as a result of a chronic and prolonged stress event. 

And this brings me to what I originally was talking bout. I typed into google and read a really fascinating article on how certain brain cells change in chronic stress situations and permanently so. Now I'm no expert but it seems I may be starting to find answers. At first I thought it was the skunk which had done damage to my brain. Now I believe it was the chronic stress which changed some of my brain chemistry.

I hope you don't think I'm saying that our stories are the same, I'm not. But I hope this may shed some light on what you have been going through. Also the good news is that these days evidence supports that the brain is very plastic and you can do a lot to get things good again.