Rheumatoid arthritis

I have a good friend with Rhematoid Arthritis who is suffering a lot with pain and I can see his mental outlook is not good. Does anyone know of any stories/people with TMS and Rheumatoid Arthritis? I can't remember anything in my reading/research.

 

Anne, since I discovered TMS two years ago, I have come to the conclusion that TMS knowledge and awareness can help with ANY condition. Anxiety will make pain worse. Stress will worsen your overall health, and I believe that includes the pathology of metabolic diseases such as RA. I became even more convinced of this after reading When The Body Says No, by Dr. Gabor Mate, MD.

For an example of the relationship between anxiety and pain, I look back to my bike crash in 2008 when I broke my hip. This was three years before I discovered TMS and Dr. Sarno. I was overcome with terrible pain and overwhelming anxiety until the ER docs told me that I could have surgery to insert a few pins into the femur and that I'd be up on crutches the next day. I was so overjoyed that the only pain medication I took during the entire ordeal was ibuprofen and tylenol. After the surgery, whenever they came around asking about my pain level I finally started saying "I've had cramps worse than this - just give me some ibuprofen". I realize now that all of my worry was about being incapacitated, and once I discovered that I would be able to move around on my own just one day after the surgery, my pain level diminished to almost nothing.

Now, I realize that the vicious cycle of chronic pain is a whole different thing. I also don't know if RA is TMS (although I believe that Dr. Mate thinks it is a stress-based disease - and he says that stress physiologically changes our bodies - which goes well beyond TMS, which Dr. Sarno says is reversible). But I do believe that at least some pain of even a pathological condition can be relieved with mind-body awareness.

You can put Rheumatoid Arthritis into our new search engine on the wiki: http://search.tmswiki.org/ There are quite a number of hits, and it will be interesting to see what has been said about it in relation to TMS.

All the best,

Jan

 

Jan, thank you so much! Yes, in my heart I feel like even if TMS awareness and therapy would greatly help him even if it does not completely cure the illness. I know he is in a dark place focusing on how helpless he is and I am sure it is making it worse. I will do the search and figure out some way to introduce him to the idea. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

 

Hi, Anne. Jan is right on with her reply that rheumatoid arthritis can be caused by TMS anxiety and stress. It's all part of the back pain syndrome as far as I'm concerned. Pain is pain. If you, like I, am somewhat comforted by the "misery loves company" idea, you may feel better by knowing a report says there are about 40 million adult Americans suffering from anxiety, about one in four people, including many famous people such as Woody Allen, Johnny Depp, Barbra Streisand, Burt Reynolds, Cher, and Kim Basinger the actress who had it so bad it developed into agoraphobia. And many other famous people. Jan's suggestion was excellent, to look at TMSWiki entries on rheumatoid arthritis. They also confirm it is TMS-caused. Hope you can encourage your friend with RA to join TMSSWiki.org and get help from us.