Day 11 Exercise

I exercised last week with my strength bands and the next today I did notice some crunching and cracking in my neck and shoulders. These noises seem to be relatively constant even with no exercise, however I am now reluctant to continue as I found myself fearful of structural issues. I don’t think this is productive when I am attempting very hard to convince myself 100% of the TMS diagnosis. Can anybody provide any commentary? Thank you. Also, I have begun some light swimming and have found this activity to be very beneficial.

 

It'd be way too weird to have crunching and cracking 1 day after exercising with bands unlses you always had crunching and cracking. Bands give hardly any resistance unless you're using multiple black bands and it's still nothing like heavy weights. Are you sure you didn't always have crunching and cracking? I have cracking in my right shoulder from a motorcycle accident but I don't have pain in it anymore even though I still hear a crack every time I do one shoulder abduction rep. But If you've never injured those body parts I've never heard of someone getting those noises out of no where besides from natural aging because of crepitus which everyone gets. I have insane crepitus in my knees and probably my neck because i always hear crunching when i move my neck. And mind you I resistance train my neck and have no pain in it. You should get it checked out anyway to ease your mind.

 

Hey Ronnie, you’re doing great dude!
Don’t worry about popping, cracking and crunching. They’re not an indication of structural damage. When there’s muscle tension, which is typical with TMS there’s more resistance to the bone and joint movements. You’ll notice as tension goes away you hear these sounds less. It’s also entirely possible you’ve had these sounds for some time but now that you’re dealing with chronic pain you’re more hyper focused on your body and picking up on something that’s been there.

i deal with the same! TMj has been my main symptom but i no longer fear it, so it’s improving rapidly. When it was bad, there’s a lot of tension and I hear constant cracking when I shift my jaw or popping in my ear, right now there isn’t much tension so the sounds are much less. 2 days ago I had zero pain or tension and noticed zero sounds.

when I dealt with TMS in my knee I noticed a ton of clicking and popping, now my knees don’t bother me and I don’t notice any clicking, maybe it’s there but I’m not hyperfixated on it.

all of this is part of the game and the more you hyper focus on these benign sensations the more they will stick around and you’ll fall into the fear loop. Try not to dwell on them, I know it’s hard, especially when we’ve been taught that these sounds can mean arthritis or damage.

the goal of TMS is to distract you, these sounds do a good job, they’re scary. I was scared of my jaw popping for so long, I’d constantly adjust my jaw, scan my jaw, feel the muscle knots. I don’t do it at all anymore, and reaching that level of acceptance was key to getting over the fear loop.

if you weren’t focusing on the sounds what would be on your mind?

this is all part of the journey, it’s a wave just ride and don’t panic if you get held under a bit, the surface is always close

I swim a lot too! Pretty much all my symptoms go away in the pool, is it similar for you?​

 

I can vouch for this. I’m so tense from TMS. My muscles are very tight. My knees pop and crack because of it.

Woohoo!