Day 1 hoping for improvement this time

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I'm just starting here too. The mindbody connection is a powerful thing. Personally I'm still trying to accept the diagnosis of TMS as the root cause of my pain but guess its always a work in progress. I did cure my IBS with extensive research in some pretty cool new theories in nutrition. The most interesting and powerful diet I've found for healing the gut is "The Body Ecology" by Donna Gates. She emphasises a diet high in vegetables, low in mycotoxins and high in cultured vegetables for natural probiotics. Whole foods is key and keeping an alkaline balance. A good rule is 80/20. 80% of each meal being alkaline (veggies) and 20% being acidic (grass-fed meat, wild caught fish, farmed eggs, white rice, sweet potato, etc.).

I'd be happy to help out with any nutritional questions you might have. If you you don't mind me asking, what's your diet like now and what supplementation are your doing?

 

Over the years I have had so many symptoms it is embarrassing to list them all: scoliosis, neck pain, low back pain, abdominal cramping, TMJ, allergies, asthma, butt cramping, tight inner thighs, shin splints, tingling in my hands and feet, RSI, IT Band pain, sleep disturbances, pelvic pain, knee pain, foot pain, bladder pain, UTIs, depression, tension in my neck and shoulders. The list goes on and on.

I knew when I started reading The Divided Mind something was going on. It was really weird to read a book and feel a slight ease in pain. I tried to journal but got stuck. Then I read the book again. Then I finally found this site. All my physical ailments over the years are TMS. This $18.00 book and the TMSwiki changed my life forever. It will yours too.

Remember to focus on the psychological not the physical. Get ready for an amazing journey.

 

Heinrich, welcome to our community - and I hope you can find answers to your questions here!

The only thing you really have to understand, and then truly accept, is that your brain is in charge of every single physiological process in your body.

It's really that simple - your brain is completely in charge of your symptoms. This is mostly easily seen in things like blushing and stage fright, which cause real physical symptoms - symptoms that are absolutely not connected to anything other than your state of mind. Your brain did that all by itself.

The neuroscientists are telling us that our brains develop patterns of behavior, and those patterns can become hard-wired - but they don't have to be permanent. They can be changed, but that's the part that is NOT simple - it can be very hard work - harder for some people than for others, and harder for some patterns than for others.

This is probably what's going on with you. And while we know that it is possible for long-term stress to create actual physical changes, it's unlikely that you've done anything at this point that can't be reversed.

Special diets often work for someone who has TMS, for the following reason: they provide a tool on which to focus your mind, so that you can visualize digesting properly and feeling good. But without addressing the underlying emotional repression, the symptom will eventually return, or it will be replaced by some other symptom.

It's possible to accomplish the recovery without a special diet - I know, because I did it myself, right after reading my first book by Dr. Sarno. I'd been going through all of that digestive stuff - convinced that I was developing food sensitivities, and horrified as I watched the list get longer and longer - wondering when it was going to include the foods I didn't want to live without. When I discovered TMS theory, I simply told myself I didn't have any food sensitivities, and that was it. I've never looked back.

Mind you, I was into "real" food long before the brilliant Michael Pollan wrote his book - but it's easy these days to avoid eating fake processed food, and still eat whatever you want - and that includes pizza and all those other foods you used to enjoy - as long as they are made with quality ingredients, and eaten in moderation. If you don't know Michael Pollan, his advice is simple: "Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables".

Remember how I mentioned above that changing your old ingrained brain patterns covers a wide range of easiness or difficulty, depending on the person and on the pattern? For me, the food thing was easy to change. I've also had very good luck getting ridding of my pain symptoms, with only minor and short flare-ups. But the symptom I can't seem to kick, the one that comes back instantly in times of stress, is dizziness. That's the one pattern that I can't seem to get past. But I've banished it in the past, I've been checked out and given a clean bill of health, and I know I will banish it again. I've only recently been learning about all of this brain pattern/neurological stuff, and it's pretty fascinating, so these days I'm really working on changing my brain.

I hope this helps! Keep working on the SEP, reading and participating in the discussions here, and be sure to read lots of success stories. The place to do that is the Thank You Dr. Sarno project (just google it).

Jan

 

I could sit here and tell you that strictly cutting out gluten, dairy and sugar will ease your IBS. That eating cultured vegetables and taking probiotics will balance your gut flora. But like continually peeling back the layers of an onion, I'm learning that the physical symptoms go deeper than physical action. The "symptoms" are triggered by your perception. I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that physical symptoms are not necessarily controlled by physical actions but more of an alteration in mental states. Now since I strongly believe that eating a diet low in mycotoxins and high chlorophyll helps balance the body, it will. That eating grass-fed beef adds beneficial nutrients and fats to my diet, it will. Maybe if I truly believed that eating commercially processed hotdogs and hot pockets everyday was healthy, it would be. I guess I'm just saying that I feel the key to balancing your body and calming down inflammation in the body is to find a diet that your happy with. A diet that makes you feel good about what your putting into your body. When you truly feel good about the foods and supplements that your eating, they'll be nothing but beneficial to you. So find what works for you and stay positive. And again, if you have any dietary or supplementation questions feel free to message me.

 

Aaron put it better than I did!