Cured of some TMS problems, trying to determine if other symptoms are also TMS?

Hello, I recently discovered that my long-running RSI problems from using a computer were actually TMS, and have recovered accordingly. (detailed in this post: http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/trying-to-determine-whether-or-not-chronic-and-mysterious-rsi-problems-are-tms.18257/ (trying to determine whether or not chronic and mysterious RSI problems are TMS?)).

Now that my RSI is gone, I essentially have my life back, and am ecstatic! But in the course of reading about TMS, I found mention of a few other conditions that I have that are appparently often TMS. They're not ruining my life like the RSI was, but they're certainly inconvenient, so I thought it would be worthwhile to investigate whether or not these are also TMS. So here they are:

Scoliosis/Back Pain:
I was diagnosed with scoliosis in 6th grade. My curve progressed until they decided to brace me near the end of 7th grade (the top curve, which was the worst, was about 25 degrees). I wore the brace 22ish hours a day until 10th grade, at which point they said I was done growing, and I could stop wearing it during the day. Then, a year later, I got it off entirely. Which at first was great. But then I started to get back pain from sitting too long. After getting the brace off, my back pain intensified for a while, then plateaued (which was at least loosely correlated with my curves returning from nearly zero to their pre-brace states (this is apparently expected behavior with scoliosis, and they monitored it with x-rays)). Since about junior/senior year of high school, my pain has been pretty significant. It is exacerbated by extended sitting/standing, especially in the wrong positions/postures. It is made better by wearing a back brace (which squeezes your spine straighter), and by doing anything active (the more explosive, the better, like basketball, football, frisbee, etc.).
-arguments for it being tms: seems to be less exacerbated by walking than standing, even though these activities are physically very similar
-against: back pain came on exactly when I got the brace off, and before I got the TMS-RSI pain (which was at the beginning of college). It is very physically consistent--exacerbated by inactivity (especially in certain positions), improved by activity. Further, being vertical is worse than being horizontal, and lying on my side never hurts, while lying on my back eventually hurts. This also makes physical sense because my spine is essentially an S, and when gravity tends to squish it straighter, it feels better. When it squishes it flatter, it feels worse. Finally, my pain occurs in the region right by my most extreme curve, and I've never had any back pain near the more minor curves.

Plantar Fasciitis/Foot Pain
Starting in college (when I had to walk around a lot more than before), I started to get pain in my heel/along the bottom of my foot. I went to a doctor, was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis, and got inserts. The inserts solved the problem, but weren't very durable (they would break from playing basketball, and once they broke/shifted around in my shoes, they would be worse than no inserts at all. Eventually, I got more durable, custom orthotics. These haven't broken yet, but they do have the tendency to shift around in my shoes, and they cause me pain when shifted.
-arguments for tms: came on and intensified at similar times as my RSI-TMS. Walking around barefoot, at least around the house, seems to be fine. It's long walking/running with no inserts, or especially with incorrectly adjusted inserts, that hurts.
-against: intensified by walking/running, but not biking, which put pressure on different parts of your foot. pretty much went away from inserts, until they break/get misaligned. hurts faster from basketball than walking, where you put much more pressure on your foot

Dust Allergies
Until about senior year of high school, I had no known allergies. Then one day I went on a cleaning rampage, and cleaned the crap out of our garage, largely with a vacuum cleaner. There was a ton of dust, and I was also putting a lot of pressure on myself to clean the garage perfectly (because I'm a perfectionist). Since then, I've had moderate/severe dust allergies. They're not a problem most of the time, but every time I move into/out of a new place, or really clean up (anything with significant quantities of dust), my nose runs A LOT.
-arguments for TMS: came on totally randomly when I was putting huge pressure on myself to clean the garage, while exposed to dust
-against: ?

Food Intolerances
In the quest to diagnose my RSI problems, I recently discovered that I have a few minor food intolerances. I seem to be intolerant to milk, onions, and olives. I don't get terrible stomach aches, or cramping, but I used to have diarrhea on a pretty regular basis, and now I don't. It appears that milk was the main culprit, because I used to drink a lot of it every day, while onions and olives were more occasional/in lower quantities. Apparently there's no medically accepted blood test for food intolerances, so I did an elimination diet to make these conclusions (milk/onions/olives significantly increased my gassiness, and usually led to me having semi-diarrhea)
-arguments for TMS: ?
-against: had regular diarrhea pretty much as long as I can remember (far before TMS-RSI problems), went away since stopping these foods. Apparently, a large portion of the adult population is lactose intolerant. Finally, my grandma was apparently severely intolerant to milk and onions.

Overall, I doubt these are TMS (except for the dust allergies), but I thought I'd post about it, because it would be great if they were.

 

Hi Mysteriousmonkey29,

As I read your "against" statements for foot pain, back pain, there are clearly conditioned responses to certain conditions: brace or not, position, orthodics, activities, etc. It seems you tend to "believe" the reasons why the pain is physically caused, while as an outside observer, there is no evidence to refute TMS diagnoses.

I had long-term foot pain which seemed to respond sometimes to new orthodics, and biking did not cause symptoms, for example. But it was all TMS.

The food issues are likely TMS, given the other symptoms/TMS experiences you've described. Grandma's findings can clearly be TMS as well.

As long as we think something will --or might, cause symptoms, it will. Good luck in sorting this out.

Andy B

 

I guess I was just trying to say that the conditions under which the pain happens tends to make physical sense to me. I agree that they could just be conditioned responses. I think that's one of the things that's tricky about TMS. Interesting about your feet. And I agree that the food issues seem more likely than the feet and back to be TMS. And although it's certainly possible my Grandma's food intolerances were caused by TMS, it seems like it would be quite a concidence that her TMS intolerances happened to be 2/3 foods that I'm also having problems with. Like I would expect TMS just to cause essentially random food intolerances, if it caused them at all, so it seems like the fact that the foods are so similar is evidence against.

And thanks for your response. I'm not trying to say that these symptoms definitely aren't TMS--just playing devil's advocate. Hopefully they are.

 

Other points in favor of all of them being TMS is that I definitely have TMS in other parts of my body, and they are all listed as potential TMS equivalents.

Also, update on the food intolerance thing: I decided to do another round of elimination diet/intolerance testing, and interestingly enough, had no noticeable reactions to a decent amount of milk and onions. So it appears these intolerances have gone away, at least for now. Definitely a point in favor of TMS, although it's possible that it could be instead attributed to me recently becoming a vegan (around the same time as discovering/recovering from TMS).