I'm blind.

Well, not blind blind but my eyesight is so poor.

My eyesight is less than perfect, but not so bad that I really need glasses in everyday life. Just when I need to see something that's far away. My knees are in pretty bad condition, though, after numerous injuries and problems related to excessive strain, but that I can also deal with. So I consider myself relatively lucky.

I suffer from a disabling illness related to fibromyalgia (M.E.) and the suggestion that fibromyalgia is psychosomatic is actually quite offensive and is a misconception which sufferers have been struggling against for years. If you are interested in "telling the truth" then perhaps you would do well to read up on the subject, whereupon you'll find that research has conclusively dispelled the notion that it is a psychosomatic disorder.

I've got an ankle injury.

Fell out of a tree house I had.
Then while skateboarding I hurt it bad went for a X-ray and the doctor said my ankle had been fractured for over a year. There a little piece of bone broke off and it had rounded off.

Psychosomatic doesn't mean it's made up though. It just means that the real physical debilitation is partly caused by psychological factors. From members of my family that have ME it seems that willpower can be a real aide to overcoming the symptoms, even if there may be an underlying physical cause. I still think we need more research on it though, for some reason it seems to get swept under the rug a lot.

I have a thing with my shoulder blades causing stress on my back but thats minor. I also have a lot of trouble with my left knee since injuring it about a year ago since then I have been on crutches and torn things in it 3 times. Im on crutches now waiting for surgrey to repair the tissue and ligaments. I wear a stablization brace that holds my knee cap into place 23 hours a day. (Without it my knee moves freely with no resistance.

Once you ruin your back, there's no turning back.

-.- I've told 2 times already that a psychossomatic cause doesn't mean the pain is phony, and it doesn't mean you're crazy, millions of people suffer from these conditions. If you're getting pain from muscles or tendons contracting for example, what causes those contractions? It may be low blood pressure, but what causes that? It's the brain who causes it, to serve an unconscious purpose. Our brain can reduce blood pressure and contract muscles in a matter of milisseconds, Dr. Sarno even explains how the brain does this. You're the one who should read up on the subject, not me. The broad ignorance about this amazes me, so many people suffer so much from these problems unnecessarily, because most doctors (that shouldn't be blamed, because nobody teaches this at the university yet) keep insisting that the cause of these problems is a physical one, when it's more than proven that it's not.

You should get "The Mindbody Connection" by Dr. Sarno. Don't believe me if you want, I'm just trying to help. I can tell you that I'm probably the most skeptic person you could ever meet. When I first heard of this I was desperately trying to prove this was wrong, because of the prejudice I had that psychossomatic ilnesses don't exist, that pain can't be caused by the brain. I was thinking wrong though, because the brain doesn't directly cause pain. The brain can make muscles contract for example, so saying the pain has a psychossomatic cause it's like saying it's the brain who is commanding muscles to contract.

With regards to M.E. it is a neurological illness and has been classified as such by the WHO for decades now. There are lesions on the brain and autopsies have revealed inflammation of the spinal cord. It is true that psychological factors such as stress can exacerbate symptoms - I know it does in my case - but psychological factors are not the cause of the illness itself. AFAIK the cause is still a bit of a mystery at the moment, but there's interesting research going on at the moment which should throw more light on it. Unfortunately there still exists a lot of ignorance about the illness, not least within the medical profession itself. Thankfully though the tide seems to be turning.

Tosh, I'm certain there is a degree of mind-body connection with some ailments. But until Dr Sarno publishes a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study to prove his theory I won't take him seriously.

RG colour blindness. Its awesome though, I get to see hot pink pigeons as opposed to just light brown ones. Your loss.

Agree with Sneakmaster.

I'm so pissed right now I can't type anything more on the subject without probably getting banned. :fumes: As the proverb goes, "Argue not with fools lest you be mistaken for one yourself"

I'm sorry but this is completely ridiculous. You skimmed my post enough to assume I had the kind of "back pain" that can be treated by your beloved Dr. Sarno, thoroughly insulting me in the process, and only now that I've told you essentially "hey, actually read my damn post" and you've realized that (doh!) I have an actual disorder that the mainstream medical community agrees exists, you're letting me off the hook and focusing all your attention on preaching to Alaisiagae? :facepalm:

You. Aren't. Helping. Anybody.



Are you kidding me? Look at your posts. You've only referenced a single doctor in all of your posts, the great and all-powerful Dr. Sarno. You're going on and on about a controversial treatment created by a single person and that the global medical community isn't accepting. And you're calling other people ignorant? You're ignoring the entire medical community and years upon years of research in favor of believing a single person, yet they're ignorant?

History is full of individuals who proposed radical ideas and flipped the beliefs of the rest of the world upside down. But there's a good reason why Dr. Sarno isn't one of them. It's true that, judging by wikipedia, there are quite a few doctors who agree with him. But his work is still controversial, and it's not because the world is ignorant, it's because Dr. Sarno hasn't presented all the facts and hard evidence needed to be taken seriously by the mainstream medical community. The individuals who proposed those radical ideas gained acceptance by presenting all the facts and evidence necessary to win people over. Until Dr. Sarno can do that, you might as well be trying to sell snake oil to those of us who recognize the difference between a worldwide scientific and medical community, and a single person.

For those interested (and fellow afflicted) The latest lead on fibro is that people with it have an overabundance of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_p (hyperlink to the pain subsection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_p#Pain).

There is still much to learn about the human body and its disorders. It would be foolish to think that anything we can't explain now must therefore not really exist as a physical disease.

Recently in the wall street journal there have been some articles about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the frustration facing researching trying to pin down the cause. The latest lead is a retrovirus. One story about it was about a small town doctor who talk about how one winter a group of children all got sick at the same time with what looked like the flu. but they didn't get better over the weeks and months and years. Other "outbreaks" have been recorded. And of course the battle has not only been with research and techniques, but also against long-standing preconceptions that CFS wasn't "real" and was just in the patient's "head" and they were making it up. I think that's what pisses me off the most, when doctors who don't know the answer just say "it's in your head." You ever watch Mystery Diagnosis, it is amazing the hubris and idiocy of some doctors to just ignore problems that they don't understand and can't explain.

On that show, it seems most of the time the doctors plain have never heard of the illness. When I hear them say things like "the doctor said she was fine and sent her home" when she clearly isn't, I wonder how these people got their medical license in the first place. :facepalm:

Apart from awful hand-eye co-ordination, nothing.

You know, this was one thread about illness that could have been discussed here. But after reading through it a bit better, there are some very rude and judgemental posts going on and so much lack of compassion it's crazy. I'm going to close it before I ban half the folks posting in here. Talk about having no empathy. :flamethrower: