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Old Sep 06, 2015, 08:57 AM
Anonymous200325
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Quote:
But if it's not what is the point of taking these meds if they are not going to help, and where do I go from here to try and determine what's going on?
I know, it's extremely frustrating. Even if there is something else going on besides anxiety and depression, that doesn't mean that the meds won't help you at all, though.

I have a combination of anxiety and depression and three autoimmune or immune-mediated conditions and the psych meds that I take (Cymbalta, Remeron, clonazapem) help my medical conditions as well as my psychiatric ones.

If you have an undiagnosed medical condition, it usually (but not always) will get worse and eventually be diagnosable. Or medicine will change and start to recognize it.

My advice for now would be to be an aggressive advocate for meds or whatever it takes to get your sleep back to normal or close to normal, and to try to eat regular meals with protein at each meal.

There are lots of books and web sites out there about healthy eating for people with depression or autoimmune diseases if you want to check those out.

Aside from that, try to find a form of exercise that you can do. I like yoga a lot because it somehow (mysteriously) helps a lot of body functions to work better.

Be attentive to your body, note what's going on with it, and maybe work on acceptance of where you are right now healthwise. It sounds like a paradox, but it's possible to both be accepting of where you are right now but also to look for ways to improve your health or figure out what's going on with it. It's more a matter of focus and of how anxious you get about what's going on with your health.

If you can find a good primary care doctor who is supportive of you as a person, that is an enormous help. I was lucky enough to have one during those years before my health problems became diagnoseable.

He treated my symptoms and let me know that he thought that I was a reasonable person dealing with a difficult situation. He never made me feel like I was a hypochondriac or a bother.

I also am not trying to say that the only outcome for you is diagnosis of a serious chronic illness. I have known people in the situation that you're in whose health later improved greatly and they never really knew that had been the problem.

The situation that you're in makes a person aware of the limitations in our health care system. Instead of saying "this person has severely limiting symptoms and we must use all our tools to find out what's wrong and to treat her", we instead get caught up in the "best practices" model, where we're treated more as a member of a group and the question is "what's reasonable to test for with a person with these symptoms?"

That can be very frustrating to suspect that the answer to your problem is out there but that you're not being given access to it. On the positive side, it can protect you from "quackery".