Hey Paul do you really think cancer will be solved before fibromyalgia? Also, stress being a factor, but stress is not just psychological right? Stress can produce physical changes especially in the genetically vulnerable? Stress shouldn't cause health meltdowns but maybe in some people they do but since there was no way to ever prove so it never entered the collective psyche. Popular theory among CFS patients who seemed to develop their symptoms during stressful periods is that stress weakened their immune systems, leaving it vulnerable to asymptomatic infections. Though I agree it's a useless idea.
I am reminded of the old-timey notion that stress causes ulcers.
Turns out Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers, and having the interior of your stomach lining eaten away by pathogens is ~really fucking stressful~.
Barry Marshall got a Nobel for proving this by drinking a bunch of H. pylori and getting gastritis, but the notion that ulcers are just a consequence of being a "Type A" person is still bizarrely persistent
I love both the content and tone of this entire post.
My mental health is, frankly, shockingly robust, thanks to my hard work and persistence. Sometimes I think I take such good care of it largely out of spite so that whenever some quack says "it's your mental health" I can say "fuck you." But also because it's one of the few things I have some degree of control over, and like you said... it's worth doing anyway.
Hey Paul do you really think cancer will be solved before fibromyalgia? Also, stress being a factor, but stress is not just psychological right? Stress can produce physical changes especially in the genetically vulnerable? Stress shouldn't cause health meltdowns but maybe in some people they do but since there was no way to ever prove so it never entered the collective psyche. Popular theory among CFS patients who seemed to develop their symptoms during stressful periods is that stress weakened their immune systems, leaving it vulnerable to asymptomatic infections. Though I agree it's a useless idea.
"It’s not going to make me any more eager to make my life less stressful. I’m already very eager for that" hehehe..
Excellent post. Thanks Paul.
I am reminded of the old-timey notion that stress causes ulcers.
Turns out Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers, and having the interior of your stomach lining eaten away by pathogens is ~really fucking stressful~.
Barry Marshall got a Nobel for proving this by drinking a bunch of H. pylori and getting gastritis, but the notion that ulcers are just a consequence of being a "Type A" person is still bizarrely persistent
I love both the content and tone of this entire post.
My mental health is, frankly, shockingly robust, thanks to my hard work and persistence. Sometimes I think I take such good care of it largely out of spite so that whenever some quack says "it's your mental health" I can say "fuck you." But also because it's one of the few things I have some degree of control over, and like you said... it's worth doing anyway.