Archived News of the Week

Hypochondria

Very Much Alive but Raising Miserable Hell in the Older GenPop.

"But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown."
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

As we get older, we think  rather, we are convinced - that more is wrong with us and that some heinous unknown thing, perhaps a cellular bogeyman, is lurking undetected in some vulnerable body crevice. And some of us - the hypochondriacs among us - always think - rather, we are convinced - that we are on the brink of one health disaster or another. I see this tendency in my older patients, and yes, in myself. Unfortunately sometimes we are right, as all of our risk factors for disease, statistically at least, rise exponentially with age.

That dark "growth" we had on our ear in our thirties that we worried not a whit about becomes "suspicious" to us in our later years and we worry about it, strain to see it in the magnifying mirror and as we are planning our memorial service, we pick at it to see if maybe - hopefully - it's a scab or something. On a positive note, while we are gazing in the mirror trying to see that sucker, we note happily that if we bite the big one within the next year, we will still look good in the casket and in the poster sized photos at our memorial service.

The hemorrhoid we were gifted with during the birth of our second child suddenly becomes rectal cancer - for only a week but that was not a happy week. Don't ask. That constant rumbling and tightness in our stomach is probably the precursor to a fatal bowel obstruction when our guts will explode unattractively in the middle of Whole Foods and all the stuff that has collected in there will spill out onto the floor not only killing us but embarrassing us. This is the last thing anyone would want to do in Whole foods and we worry.

The older years contain some dark, dark days, folks, and some days are just filled with dread and apprehension. Not all the time, of course, but unlike when we were in our prime, the older years can be rife with fear about that final disease - the one that takes us - of infirmity and finally of death.

We take every symptom seriously. Too seriously. That ache in the left jaw suddenly becomes ominous instead of a TMJ issue from a visit to the dentist; the sharp stabbing pain in our left chest - well, you know - is this the Big Denoument or is it just that pesky 4th rib again? What about that ongoing pain under the right ribcage? We look up the local hospice number and write down the telephone number for the Hemlock Society. We review our Five Wishes document.

Then we find that we are adding another layer of apprehension to our hypochondriacal worry and it is this: Since the body is a duplicating machine for the mind, are we unwittingly creating the very thing we want to avoid? We desperately try for a cease and desist with our preoccupied and OCD mind. Sometimes it cooperates, but eventually, our squirrel mind searches the Google of our memory and sooner or later it will land, like some malign homing pigeon, in that one mental lacunae that we don't want to revisit - yes, those hypochondriacal fears.

And we become the hamster on the wheel again running in the bad neighborhood of our mind. We might notice after some time that we are OCD'ing again about disagreeable and scary subjects, like painful illness and death, and we again try not to think about it. We manage for a while to actually be in present time with what we are doing but then... we notice that our mind is like a computer without a delete button and the Velcro thoughts come storming back. And so it goes.

There are three ways to approach this older age tendency towards hypochondria: One, get every single possible medical test that exists in the world today, including your DNA which will disclose every single possible skeleton in your genetic closet and will also give you enormous opportunity for worry. Explore every orifice with long tubes, invent new orifices and new tubes, get pictures taken in noisy machines from every slice and angle possible, order the most abstruse lab tests, pester your doctor for more drugs and more tests, have complete physical exams three times a year and whatever you do, don't see a natural doctor. This group is hugely hypochondriacal and perhaps they suffer from a touch of Munchausen's as well. And it's self- fulfilling because if you look long and hard enough in every fold, crease, organ, sinus, involution and sulcus of your anatomy inside and out you eventually will find something about which to go "Aha! I knew it!" Happy now?

Second scenario: Get only the barest minimum of the recommended tests done - the colonoscopy at 50, the yearly exam and lab work, the mammogram and PAP and whatever Dr. Oz has currently declared a good thing to do but see a natural doctor, too. These people are by and large pretty healthy, are pragmatists and don't worry too much about their health. When something goes wrong they may see both me and their GP. They make up the bulk of my practice.

Third scenario: Don't have anything at all to do with AMA medicine including so called "preventive" tests (which aren't preventive; they are disclosive). These people do alternative medicine only. They see lots and lots of practitioners and they and their natural docs figure out how to (allegedly) keep them well and happy and energetic until the last exhale which they hope will be later rather than sooner. These people eschew the colonoscopies as they have read the statistics and they are not persuaded and then there is that scary bowel perforation thing. Same stats go for mammograms and PSA's. They keep track of their own blood sugar and blood pressure and if something goes a bit wrong, they ask their natural doc to help them normalize the numbers. They will go to the AMA doc as a very last resort.

These patients know that diet is key to everything, and they have, by and large, gotten over their bad selves and have stopped whining about how they can't indulge in junk foods anymore. They elect to treat themselves with utmost respect and dignity. They agree with the maxim that we were blessed with bodies, these bodies are holy and we must treat them as the gift from God that they are. These patients tend to have a touch of hypochondria along with their health hubris but this just adds fuel to their fiery zeal to stay healthy and to live long and well.

Addendum: Most research as published in "reputable" medical journals is fabricated. This implies that it cannot be replicated and this is the gold standard for the legitimacy of research. For example, fully 90% or 47 out of 53 cancer studies published in the world's top medical journals could not be reproduced which means they are utter fabrications done by researchers benefitting from the deep pockets of Big Pharma. Consider yourself forewarned and question your MD about every single drug s/he wants to give you, esp. a new one. Don't become a fatal statistic, like the unsuspecting patients on the FDA approved drugs Avandia and Vioxx, now off the market. Your M.D.'s, at least most of them, are innocent. They too are in the dark and are operating with the mistaken belief that their peer reviewed journals are honest. They are not.

No statement or content in this web site shall be construed as offering diagnosis, cure, mitigation or prevention of any disease. Anyone having questions regarding the content of this site should contact their own health care provider for verification.