Dry mouth

[JanAtheCPA]

I totally forgot that, @banjoman - but yes indeed, she certainly would have!

 

[Tenley]

Mina, I’m so sorry to hear about your experience. May I ask, have you improved? Im dealing with similar symptoms now myself. Thank you.

hi everyone, I wanted to tell my story as I feel so alone and confused with what happened to me... I woke up 9 months ago suddenly with a dry mouth and throat, two days prior I had Angular cheilitis..sores around the sides of mouth and boom dry mouth just like this.. I didn't think much of it as I thought maybe its something I ate, but then I realised I also lost my taste buds, partially and thought it was very strange.. the dry mouth was just unbearable and i started to panic and get scared , I thought about a million reasons why I have this and went down the rabbit hole.. I saw so many doctors and one of the oral specialist in UCLA said I had acid reflux in my mouth causing this .. another ENT Doc said your vocal cords are perfect and there is nothing wrong with you. feeling helpless my level of fear was very heightened that my symptoms started changing .. I started to have excess saliva and spitting stickiness in my mouth and very weird scary sensations .. I ran so many tests and everything seemed normal, people were saying maybe you got covid tongue where the saliva glands are attacked, but I did the antibody test and it was negative. I did an MRI as well where they found tiny lesions in my brain but the neurologist did a thorough exam and excluded anything serious .. I also did the antibody test for Sjögren's syndrome and I was negative, I have multiple symptoms ranging from acid refux stomach aches numbness and tingling low grade of tinnitus and the list goes on.. but my mouth symptoms are still there and they change ever so often, the drooling and excess saliva stopped and im left with really strange symptoms in my mouth from dryness that can become severe to tightness of the cheeks, sticky toffee feeling to clicking noises.. I don't know what to do? no doctor has helped and I am thinking this could be TMS? but I just don't know if I had covid early on and it went away and I am left with phantom symptoms that my brain is creating .. I know that something is really off and Im sad .. I used to be so positive and a happy go lucky person that never really sweated the little things. this has made me so depressed anxious and scared for the last ten months. I would be so grateful for any input? thank you so much!!!

 

[Tunza]

hi everyone, I wanted to tell my story as I feel so alone and confused with what happened to me... I woke up 9 months ago suddenly with a dry mouth and throat, two days prior I had Angular cheilitis..sores around the sides of mouth and boom dry mouth just like this.. I didn't think much of it as I thought maybe its something I ate, but then I realised I also lost my taste buds, partially and thought it was very strange.. the dry mouth was just unbearable and i started to panic and get scared , I thought about a million reasons why I have this and went down the rabbit hole.. I saw so many doctors and one of the oral specialist in UCLA said I had acid reflux in my mouth causing this .. another ENT Doc said your vocal cords are perfect and there is nothing wrong with you. feeling helpless my level of fear was very heightened that my symptoms started changing .. I started to have excess saliva and spitting stickiness in my mouth and very weird scary sensations .. I ran so many tests and everything seemed normal, people were saying maybe you got covid tongue where the saliva glands are attacked, but I did the antibody test and it was negative. I did an MRI as well where they found tiny lesions in my brain but the neurologist did a thorough exam and excluded anything serious .. I also did the antibody test for Sjögren's syndrome and I was negative, I have multiple symptoms ranging from acid refux stomach aches numbness and tingling low grade of tinnitus and the list goes on.. but my mouth symptoms are still there and they change ever so often, the drooling and excess saliva stopped and im left with really strange symptoms in my mouth from dryness that can become severe to tightness of the cheeks, sticky toffee feeling to clicking noises.. I don't know what to do? no doctor has helped and I am thinking this could be TMS? but I just don't know if I had covid early on and it went away and I am left with phantom symptoms that my brain is creating .. I know that something is really off and Im sad .. I used to be so positive and a happy go lucky person that never really sweated the little things. this has made me so depressed anxious and scared for the last ten months. I would be so grateful for any input? thank you so much!!!

How are you doing now Mina? I have Sjogren's syndrome (autoimmune). Like around one third of people with it I don't have the antibodies so it had to be diagnosed with a biopsy of my salivary glands. It took 8 years to get a diagnosis and getting a diagnosis was helpful. But not the end of the story as I think I need to do mindbody work to reduce the impact of the disease on my body. Getting the medications to help with the symptoms really reduced the discomfort but now I am working on the TMS side of things from the angle that even autoimmune conditions can be sometimes put into remission with really good mindbody work. Wishing you all the best, whatever your situation. If you are still investigating the Sjogren's angle note that there is a lot of poor info on it online. The best places to get advice are the Sjogren's Foundation website and the Sjogren's Advocate website.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

that even autoimmune conditions can be sometimes put into remission with really good mindbody work.

Thank you for this post @Tunza! I agree 100% the the emotional stress component MUST be part of self-treatment of autoimmune conditions.

I am "treating" my RA this way - which developed during the early pandemic stress of 2020 (I believe the sudden onset was directly related to extreme job stress due to the shutdowns - combined, of course, with my still-somewhat-obsessive perfectionist and goodist tendencies and a strong desire to pitch in during a crisis).

The RA developed 9 years after I successfully did this work in 2011, maintaining pretty well with regular participation here and using my skills when needed. The RA diagnosis was crystal-clear from the first inflammation blood test my primary doc ran, and very consistent in the battery of tests the rheumatologist performed later. In a second-opinion consultation, Dr. David Schecter MD (a well-known TMS practitioner who knew Dr Sarno) reviewed my labs and told me that I had to follow orders (take the methotrexate) but that remission was possible, especially with a TMS-knowledge mindset.

It hasn't been easy (it's not like the world is that much less stressfull now than in 2020, and I'm one of those people who is very sensitive to external world dysfunction) BUT my test results for inflammation have been at the bottom of the range for the last 5 quarters, so my rheumatologist recently said that I can reduce my dose, and we will revisit my progress in June.

Also, that's great advice to stay away from non-authoritative web sites. They tend to be full of victims desperately hanging on to their victimhood. And while the authoritative sites aren't ready to say that AI conditions can be caused by stress (this is my firm belief), they at least all state that stress reduction must be included in a plan of self-care and lifestyle changes in order to control the symptoms.

Cheers,

~Jan

 

[Tunza]

I'm sorry about your RA experience Jan. I can trace the first of my autoimmune symptoms to during and extremely stressful period of thousands of aftershocks that we experienced in my city (Christchurch, NZ) after a couple of very large earthquakes, one of which killed quite a few people and pretty much flattened our central city. There were a couple of other life stresses happening at the time, and like you I am very sensitive to environmental stressors and a goodist, so it was definitely a situation where the natural disaster overflowed the bucket of stress. The aftershocks lasted for several years and there have been many people develop stress-related chronic illnesses from the impact. There does seem to be a good acknowledgement of that by the medical profession here so that's good.