Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicknerd
I'm so annoyed...I just wrote this long shpeal, and it was all deleted! Argh-okay...here we go again! lol
Alright, so last year, and even the year before, I was under a lot of stress-lots of negative emotions due to negative situations. I would experience my slurred and nasal speech often during arguments. I've thought about it, and there's a possibility that this could have been happening because I was talking for 'too long' or longer than usual. I noticed that before my speech problems became apparent to others, they were already slightly apparent to me, at least on a subconscious level. I can't really explain this other than to say that I detected there was something wrong with my speech even before it could be heard to myself, I just felt very aware of my muscles when articulating and such. I actually even had a dream a couple of years ago that my speech was severely mushy and incomprehensible. It was really vivid, and I told my boyfriend about it the next morning. Suffice it to say, when my speech did become bad, and I remembered the dream and reminded my bf about it, we were both really disturbed and didn't know what to make of it. I'm sure that my body 'knew' something was up before my mind did...I know it sounds crazy, but that really did happen. 
I strongly believe that stress makes my symptoms worse, though, as I'm sure you guys experience too. Everyone around me notices this as well. If I'm discussing something upsetting, my speech goes down the tube. I was really upset once, and tried to walk away, and I felt like I was in quicksand' my legs seemed like they weighed 1000 lbs.
I just wonder what happens during negative emotions that seems to turn on the immune system. I sorta understand why this might happen in a biological sense. The body must think that it's sick when we feel negative emotions, and must turn on the immune system to deal with possible antigens (today's 'new' stress is yesterday's 'old' infections?), but I wonder through what mechanism this is happening. I know that antidepressants can affect the immune system, possibly through numbing anxiety? The drug naltrexone increases production of endorphins which is supposed to positively affect the immune system, not through suppresion, but by actually reving it up in a 'good' way where it can fight infection (they use it for CFS and MS patients, who they suspect might have infections as a cause) and add to that possibly turn off autoimmunity.
So I just wonder what happens during stress which leads to the immune system being activated.
Another sorta contradictory thing that I've read is that stress causes people to be more prone to infection, so then wouldn't this imply that it weakens the immune system? Not sure if this was a long-term effect (which would make more sense), or a very short term effect.
What do you guys all think about this? |
Nicky,
we are very complicated biological systems. and every function is regulated and inter-related to many others.
stress, the level of various electrolytes and metabolites, different pharmocological agents etc. have an effect on a myriad of systems in our body. the immune system, the muscles themselves, our brain and the way we interpert what is happening to us etc.
some people have a higher level of awareness to their body's function and others have a lower level of such awareness.
congenital myasthenia has nothing to do with the immune system and yet patients suffering from this disease, may have symptoms that are very similar to yours.
the fact that you are aware of your weakness before it is apparent is not at all surprising. when the weakness is relatively mild you can experience it, but easily overcome it, by putting a little extra effort. I don't know if you have weakness of your arms, but if you do think about it- aren't there times in which you can easily lift a cup, other times in which you can still lift it, but it feels more "heavy" (even though it is the exact same cup, and its "objective"weight has not changed), and still other times when lifiting this same cup is totally impossible?
for someone that is looking at you, or even for you, the extra effort it takes to lift the cup, may not be apparent.
so don't stress yourself too much about stress. as I personally think that too much stress is put on the importance of stress in our lives.
alice