Mind the Body
Hi Byte Wellness Fam,
How are you feeling?
I’m feeling a strong sense of anticipation! Feels like we and our community are on the edge of something big- something more powerful than we can imagine. Keep reading to see why.
Discussion Question
When is the last time you noticed a bodily sensation (goosebumps, rumbly stomach, sweating, sore or relaxed muscles)? What caused that feeling?
In our #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop this week, we shared how interpreting messages from our bodies helps us get in touch with what’s going on in the deepest recesses of our minds. We also referenced this book: The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul (get two free chapters here ).
Check out the recording here.
If you’re not getting invites to the weekly workshops, jump on the text thread: Text TEXT to 1(224)302-6224.
The Body as a Stress Weather Vane
For the last couple months, we’ve been talking about understanding and managing stress. When folks talk about stress, we tend to focus on our brain and our thoughts. But, it’s easy to overlook just how closely our brains talk with our bodies, and vice versa.
So, the last couple weeks, we’ve spent time exploring how the body alerts us to stress and other thoughts and feelings that we usually assign to the realm of the brain.
Unlocking the unique language our brains and bodies use to communicate with each other might turn out to be one of our most impactful wellness superpowers. Let me show you why.
A few weeks ago, I saw a patient who was pretty healthy as far as lifestyle-related chronic conditions go. Unlike most of my patients in their 60s, she had normal blood pressure and no diabetes.
She’d never had a heart attack or a stroke, and she didn’t need a cane or a walker to move around freely.
But she was on tons of medication. These meds, she explained, were prescribed for her fibromyalgia- a brain-body syndrome that made her life difficult with an array of symptoms (horrible chronic pain throughout her joints, insomnia and headaches).
She told me these symptoms first developed about a decade ago after her parents died suddenly. In the aftermath of their loss, she tried to continue with her life. She had children and a husband to take care of. She thought she was handling their loss well enough despite the grief blanketing her life.
But, her body had a different message for her. Eventually, the hurt she felt was more than psychological and emotional. She began to feel physical pain…all over.
She talked to 3 or 4 doctors before one primary care doctor took her symptoms seriously and sent her to get a battery of tests.
All the tests were negative. They couldn’t explain why she hurt so much.
She took those test results to another doctor, who finally understood what was happening: the brain-body syndrome called fibromyalgia.
This doctor prescribed her the types of medications that classically improve fibromyalgia symptoms. AND, importantly, this doctor referred her to a therapist. She told me that after about one year of therapy, her pain had improved so much that she was able to drop most of her meds.
She stopped therapy after her therapist retired, and she felt great for years!
Then, about 3 years ago her husband died suddenly- leaving her to finish raising two teenagers alone. As she told me, not only did she lose her partner of multiple decades, but she lost the life she’d known.
She’d been a stay-at-home mom and housewife; now she had to clean houses everyday to make ends meet.
She’d lived in a house with a yard. But, she’d had to sell her home and move into a trailer community.
Possibly the greatest blow for her was learning to live with the strain of being a single mother.
All this change was the redwood tree that broke the camel’s back.
Her fibromyalgia came roaring back.
Now, this wonderfully strong woman is back on her old cocktail of fibromyalgia meds and is looking for a new therapist to continue the mental work that helped to cure her fibromyalgia the last time. If prior performance is any indicator, I think she’ll be okay.
When this patient shared her story with me, I knew this was one you all needed to hear. She’s a wonderful example of how important it is to hear our bodies’ complaints as signals of a greater problem.
Horrible new pain or sleep disruption should sound the alarm that something is going wrong in our lives- possibly in our minds. We have to know our “normal” baseline and be able to articulate to healthcare providers exactly what has changed in our bodies.
We also need to interrogate for ourselves what has changed in our lived experience. Are there stressors that we aren't handling as well as we thought?
The woman I was so fortunate to meet was able to advocate for herself and participate in her own healing because she was so clear on her brain-body narrative. #Goals.
Happy Healthy Living,
Dr. Wuse