Dr. Schechter Can TMS cause inflammation?

This question was submitted via our Ask a TMS Therapist program. To submit your question, click here.

Question

This question is probably for a medical doctor: Can TMS cause swelling, eg, inflammation? I developed a nerve-like pain on the top of my foot, over the metatarsals. The x-ray found no stress fracture and there has been no signs of inflammation until the last couple of days, a couple of weeks after it began with no trigger. I am a runner and haven't been able to run for 2 weeks and it seems to have worsened a bit in the last few days after feeling better. Thanks!

 

Answer

TMS does not cause inflammation and therefore does not typically involve swelling. As for localized nerve like pain--- xrays are not enough--get a good examination, by a podiatrist, orthopedist, or foot specialist and nerve testing might be needed. As a runner, issues of shoes, compression, etc. may be playing a role. Be thoroughly evaluated. If nothing concrete is found, try thinking it away. Also keep in mind what NOT running can do to a runner's psyche and how that fear-pain cycle can begin to contribute to a worsening or perpetuation of an otherwise mild condition. But be evaluated first.

---

Any advice or information provided here does not and is not intended to be and should not be taken to constitute specific professional or psychological advice given to any group or individual. This general advice is provided with the guidance that any person who believes that they may be suffering from any medical, psychological, or mindbody condition should seek professional advice from a qualified, registered/licensed physician and/or psychotherapist who has the opportunity to meet with the patient, take a history, possibly examine the patient, review medical and/or mental health records, and provide specific advice and/or treatment based on their experience diagnosing and treating that condition or range of conditions. No general advice provided here should be taken to replace or in any way contradict advice provided by a qualified, registered/licensed physician and/or psychotherapist who has the opportunity to meet with the patient, take a history, possibly examine the patient, review medical and/or mental health records, and provide specific advice and/or treatment based on their experience diagnosing and treating that condition or range of conditions.

The general advice and information provided in this format is for informational purposes only and cannot serve as a way to screen for, identify, or diagnose depression, anxiety, or other psychological conditions. If you feel you may be suffering from any of these conditions please contact a licensed mental health practitioner for an in-person consultation.

Questions may be edited for brevity and/or readability.

 

Sorry I was searching through the forums and decided to piggyback my own question in case anyone had some feedback. If symptoms like tension headaches and migraines are possible TMS symptoms, as well as muscle pain, wouldn't this at least involve inflammatory chemicals or messengers even when there is no actual redness or swelling? Sorry I was under the impression that a lot of these pain-related symptoms from TMS are caused by the autonomic nervous system, which releases cytokines or inflammatory chemicals to cause the pain even when there is no actual structural problem in the body.

 

Hi. I have the same question. I have i c. I believe this is TMS. 100 per cent but when I drink alcohol my bladder burns. This would indicate inflammation? I don't know.

 

Macro inflammation is when you have localized swelling in an acute injury. Micro inflammation is systemic and seen in certain diseases. TMS does not cause inflammation and inflammation does not cause TMS. I had swelling and color changes with CRPS, but it was not "inflammation". This term gets thrown around a lot and it's also used to market vitamins/supplements, special diets and drugs. Don't buy into the nonsense and myths.

 

The answer is no. IC is a million percent TMS.

 

Had to chirp on this, especially after reading the Doc's statement.
circa 2010 my knee got swollen and painful. Because of the visual I was certain it wasn't TMS..... Than I changed my mind and realized I was going through a painful time (divorce) and treated it like TMS (running, challenging it, using recurrent sources of irritation to distract myself) and it went away...Not the swelling, the pain. I really don't care if it's swollen...just how it feels (LOL)

The longer I have done this, the more peculiar things I have discovered are TMS. It's like my Body has to get creative because it knows I don't believe in the traditional back/neck/shoulder/joint pain.

 

Hello Baseball65! long time since I’ve seen your name. Just checking in here. Rinkey

 

I'm a manual therapist and medical intuitive in practice since 1995 and have also healed myself of 5 pretty serious TMS conditions, even before I found Dr. Sarno's work. I have seen with EVERY client I've ever worked with the emotional stress reasons for their health conditions. The primary modus operandi for creating local inflammatory changes is the belief that we are not safe. I've seen that it starts actually in local connective tissues (fascia), which "clenches up" to self protect, then that sends a neurochemical message to the brain that we are not safe, and the brain sends back the message to tighten up to the point of symptoms. The autonomic nervous system is primary in this process too. This is why therapies that address this local fascial tightening can relieve the symptoms, usually only temporarily if the emotional stress is still being regularly triggered. It's kind of like an amoeba-our peripheral nervous system senses a threat based on our past emotional traumas, when triggered by current events or relationships, that causes changes in our local connective tissues, which sends a message to the brain that our environment is not safe, and it tells the body to contract to protect itself. I have seen this in that when I share with someone what I am intuitively sensing about the belief level cause of their symptom, and they work through it, they heal. Same with my own life. What's utterly remarkable is that the symptom can resolve ON A DIME, which prove Dr. Sarno's assertion, and proof through hundreds of thousands if not many millions people's total healing with no residual physical trauma, that there is no permanent danger to our physical body. Remarkable.

 

Thank you Theresaan, for this message it abolutely makes sense with everything I´m experiencing right now.

 

I personally believe that inflammatory conditions that are not clearly related to acute injury or illness can ABSOLUTELY be brought on by constant exposure to stress - however you choose to define it (job stress, relationship stress, depression or generalized anxiety stress, emotional repression stress, fucked-up-world stress... etc etc etc).

I blame my sudden-onset, late-in-life RA dx on multiple sources of stress, exacerbated by my own mindlessness about how I was not coping with stuff, and ultimately brought to a head in spring of 2020.

The thing about auto-immune conditions is that medical practitioners are more than happy to tell you that stress will exacerbate the condition - but they appear to still be a long way from being willing to say that stress can CAUSE an auto-immune condition. No surprises there.

 

I am a previous neck/back pain sufferer who healed by understanding TMS and perform journal speak and somatick tracking. As an anatomist I study the autonomic nervous system and more specific the neuro immune link. Our autonomic nervous system regulates our physiology but also our immune response. Immune cells are in proximity to nerves in various tissues (in secondary lymphoid structures like the spleen and lymph nodes, but also in peripheral tissues like the intestinal wall, nasal mucosa, corpus ciliary (the latter three are currently being studied by my research group).

If the nervous system can alter blood flow and cause TMS, it can also cause alter the immune response, right?

So why shouldnt inflammation be a symptom of TMS (if you use TMS as a name to refer to physical symptoms without a physical cause)?

Auto immune disease is acknowledged as TMS. In my opinion, this could be explained by dyfunctional neuro immune regulation e.g. in lymph nodes that drain the tissue thst shows auto immunity.

I am wondering if chronic inflammations might be TMS as well. So, if the subconsious is convinced that the specific body part is in danger, in addition to pain it can ramp up another protective mechanism; our immune system.

I would love to hear peoples opinions and experiences on this.

 

I believe autoimmune and local inflammation can totally be mind-body, what else is hives? This is mast cell/immune activation, totally (usually) stress mediated. At the end of the day, all physiological responses/reactions/manifestations are caused by the brain/nervous system. The body can be reacting to an agent, such as chemical toxin, or physical trauma as well, or a combination of both, ie, inflammatory diet/insulin resistance and stress creating inflammation. Probably why when people go on a very low inflammatory diet/detox (ie all raw fruits and veg diet or juice fast) symptoms resolve even though stress causes are still present. Just things I've seen with myself and my clients over the last 30 years. ALSO, with hypnosis experiements, people can create and resolve inflammatory conditions via suggestion only. Pretty interesting!

 

I agree 100% with @Baseball65 @JanAtheCPA and @Theresaann. I had swelling and redness of the skin as one of my CRPS symptoms. All resolved with TMS work. Please note that Dr. Schechter's post is 8 years old, science and medicine move.

 

TMS does not CAUSE inflammation. Inflammation is caused by the brain on (hyper)protective/distractive mode. Our brain is ENORMOUS powerful in causing ALL kind of conditions. An obvious example: CRPS

 

Exactly - and as @TG957 said (who beat me to it) perceptions and understanding of this connection have changed quite a bit since 2015, so we should take that into account with older posts.

Although we still do not yet see the wider medical community embracing stress as a cause of inflammatory conditions. They are still looking in all the wrong places for the source of autoimmune diseases - IMHO, of course.

Gabor Mate MD was explaining the physiological effects of long-term repressed emotions years ago in his seminal book, When The Body Says No.

I consulted Dr Schecter in 2020 when I received my RA diagnosis, because I desperately wanted to treat it as TMS. After reviewing my test results, his answer was essentially that I could and should do that BUT (and this was a big BUT) I also had to follow my rheumatologist's recommendations and take the medication, because now that I had a measurable autoimmune/inflammatory process going on, I had to treat it or risk serious damage.

The good news is that not only is good old methotrexate still working well after three years, but based on my last 5 quarterly labs, my CRP has been so low that I reduced the dose a few weeks ago. My doc will evaluate again in June, so fingers crossed.

 

@Theresaann - Yours is one of the best descriptions I have read of how the MindBody works to create sensations of tightness and pain. I’m working to fully recover after a car accident where I walked away but my car was totalled. There’s no physical reason for me to be experiencing shifting symptoms nearly three months out. The explanation about the fascia mildly tightening and sending signals of “unsafety” to the brain which sends signals back to the body that there’s danger/pain sums the problem up so nicely.

Thank you!