Day 10 Is a cold/sinus infection TMS?

[Daisy2]

It's been a really stressful couple months, and I've gotten sick twice (was better in between for less than a week). I'm definitely having a hard time believing its TMS, only because I'm really not sure!

There is at least one thing they have in common though - I can't seem to stop focusing on how I feel, and worrying about how long it's taking to get better. I'm not sure if I'm obsessing by resting a lot or if that's what I need to be doing to recover!

 

[Dorado]

Stress is a notoriously huge factor behind one's susceptibility to viruses such as colds:

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/12/science/a-cold-fact-high-stress-can-make-you-sick.html (A Cold Fact: High Stress Can Make You Sick)

https://www.health24.com/Medical/Flu/News/can-stress-cause-colds-and-flu-20170615 (Can stress cause colds and flu?)

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/chronic-stress-feeds-common-cold-study-finds/story?id=16054304 (Chronic Stress Feeds Common Cold)

As Steve Ozanich says, this holds true for many infections - upper respiratory, urinary, genital (non-STD), bronchial, etc. It's also possible to have symptoms that perfectly mirror viral or bacterial infections when no actual sickness is present; I've had this happen with symptoms that were identical to UTIs and strep, but testing showed no signs of any infections whatsoever. This has occurred when (A) I never had an infection to begin with, as well as when (B) I did previously have an infection that was successfully treated with antibiotics, but I continued to have symptoms even after it went away (one example is when a throat culture showed that my strep was indeed gone, proving that my recurring symptoms were simply from the mind-body connection/TMS). I needed to stop obsessing over the symptoms, accept that I was OK, and get back to fully living life to feel better again.

There is at least one thing they have in common though - I can't seem to stop focusing on how I feel, and worrying about how long it's taking to get better. I'm not sure if I'm obsessing by resting a lot or if that's what I need to be doing to recover!

This is your problem: fear and obsession feed symptoms. You're activating your sympathetic nervous system when you fear and obsess, and as the ABC News article above states:

Men and women who had chronic stress caused by work woes or marital strife were more likely to develop persistent cold symptoms after inhaling the cold virus than their stress-free counterparts. The culprit: cortisol, a stress hormone that serves as the off switch for the body's inflammatory response.

"The symptoms of a cold are not caused directly by the virus, they're caused by the inflammatory response to the infection," said Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and lead author of the study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "You want to produce enough of inflammation to fight off the infection, but not so much that you experience cold symptoms."

With chronic stress, cortisol is overproduced, and the immune system becomes resistant. In the absence of the off switch, inflammation lingers long after the cold virus is gone.

Steve Ozanich says the same:

Tension reduces the immune system's ability to protect against inside and outside invaders.

Don't worry about how long it's going to take you to feel better - your body is designed to heal. None of this is permanent. You will be OK! You just need to believe it, and manage your fear and obsession. Give your sympathetic nervous system a break and do something you enjoy.