I've been a lurker for a little while but now wanted to post my own experiences related to health anxiety, partly in the hope that I'll get some reassurance, and partly to offer reassurance to others that it isn't just them with these kinds of worries. I suffer from health anxiety. This is the best board I've found for people who suffer from health anxiety, regardless of whether you have BFS, because many (if not most) of us on here also suffer from it. Whenever I've noticed a new "symptom", whatever it is, I've searched for it on here first, because I know someone else will have perceived the same symptom, thought they had some fatal disease, and received reassurance that they don't. It started for me in April last year (though I've worried about other symptoms in the past). I had a headache one day, which lasted over 24 hours, and turned into what felt variously like tingles, numbness or twinges of pain in my head for many months. Naturally, I thought I must have a brain tumour. Much googling of symptoms later, I read somewhere that such tumours can cause twitches. I have since come to accept that twitches caused by tumours would be nothing like those due to BFS (and would most likely be localised anyway). But at the time, I became ultra-aware of my body, wondering if I'd made this or that hand movement deliberately, or was it a twitch... and I started to twitch for real. I remember lying in bed a year ago, petrified as my fingers or toes twitched on their own, or some random muscle I never knew existed started twitching somewhere else in my body.The feelings in my head went away. But not before I'd had an MRI which confirmed there was nothing wrong with my brain (and still I was thinking, did they miss something?). While I was still worrying, I started to question whether I was feeling sick (another brain tumour symptom). Maybe due to anxiety, or maybe due to concentrating on this part of my body, or maybe due to some other reason, I developed twinges of abdominal (and chest) pain. This went away for a while but then came back, and has been back for about three months now. So now the (hopefully) irrational part of my mind is telling me I must have some form of cancer. It doesn't help that I also have heartburn related to this on occasion (it started around the same time). I'm hoping that I've just given myself IBS or something like that because of the anxiety. It doesn't seem to have affected my BMs though... I don't know...Having had BFS for about a year, I now completely accept that my own health anxiety and obsession over what my body was doing must have caused it. But there always seems to be some other symptom I'm worrying about. None of my aches and pains are ever severe, but I can't stop concentrating on them, worrying that they'll get worse, perceiving that they're worse than they are. In the last few weeks I've thought I could feel something in my throat - is it a tickle, is it soreness... and now I've started having twinges of pain in my ears. Could it be throat cancer? But then why would it have started with the abdominal pain? Does this mean it's another cancer that's spread? You see the sort of thought processes that go through my mind?! This must be familiar to other people on here. Hopefully someone will read this post and realise that I'm still alive, things haven't progressed, and so it must just be anxiety-related. It's much easier to accept that with other people than yourself though.Finally, has anyone else noticed that their twitches concentrate on the part of the body they are anxious about at the time? It seems to be my stomach muscles that are twitching a lot these days, presumably due to worrying about my abdominal pain.
Health Anxiety: Finding Support
- Thread starter PickItUp
- Start date
Hi, just wanted to respond to your post because ever since my twitching and other sensory symptoms started, I have secretly had a fear of it all being connected to a cancer somewhere in my body. I also went through months of being very worried about having a neurological disease, but without any clinical weakness, and a hand full of negative test, this seems more and more unlikely. But back to the cancer fear....I began fearing it because of my age ( I just turned 40) and I have been a smoker for 20 yrs, so in my mind, it only made senses to consider Cancer as a cause for all my freaky symptoms, but every scan I've had, and every blood test I have taken, have all been clear.Please dont worry about cancer, you would be so much sicker by now, seriously.I understand the thought process, and I'm sorry you are struggling with this. It truly is a horrible thing to have health anxiety, but we are here to help answer your questions, and offer support, so Welcome to the forum.Feel free to PM me if you ever have a worry or concern that you may not feel comfortable posting on the board, I'll help if at all possible, because I have been there.Take CareRobynn 
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)ionyZarrion
Well-known member
Lets not start posting cancer symptoms on top of everything else!!!
Thanks for your response Robynn. I am 35 and feel this is on my side; I'm not a youngster but cancer is still unlikely at my (and your!) age. I also smoked but gave up (except for the very occasional relapse) a few years ago. I so want to believe that you're right in saying I'd have more severe symptoms by now, but what if I didn't have it when this all started but do now?! See, I'm a hopeless case, whatever you say I'll still have niggling doubts! I guess that goes for lots of us here. Thanks for the reassurance though - it really does help. At least I really do believe that my BFS is just that - benign. I've had it for long enough to know that. And if our bodies can do that just from anxiety, I guess that means they can give us all kinds of other symptoms too...I sometimes wonder what I'll be like when I'm in my 70s or 80s - actually at an age where dying isn't so far off... I wonder if I'll have come to accept it by then and not be so worried?! It would be a shame to think I'd spent the last 40/50 years in fear rather than just relaxing and enjoying life!Paul
SecretAgent007
Well-known member
Have you ever looked into the possibility that you may have developed a food sensitivity or intolerance? My sensitivity to gluten started out with headaches and eventually evolved into twitching. Everyone is different and manifests their symptoms differently. Some people don't twitch at all when they become sensitive to foods and just have bloating or bad gas. Anyway, because food sensitivities are so difficult to pin down, I'd recommend seeking the opinion of a homeopathic doctor who specializes in digestive health before writing off food sensitivities. I think a lot of people hardheartedly experiment by trying to take gluten out of their diet and don't see any results so they write it off. Unfortunately with the condition that causes us to develop food sensitivities in adulthood, causes us to develop multiple food sensitivities and very quickly. Therefore with experimentation on your own, you might be removing one trigger food while still unknowingly still eating another trigger food. When you don't see any positive results, you just assume that its not food related. I'm still of the belief that most people on here have food sensitivities and they don't even know it. The symptoms I experienced were about identical to 90% of the people on here and my symptoms are responding to treatment. That is just too big of a striking resemblance to be a coincidence. Anyway, I'll be around. Let me know if you have any questions as I am currently living through this now. Good luck.