Alexander Walker8 said:Lately, there’s this one car in my parking lot that is driving me absolutely insane. Seriously—I head into the office in the morning and the entire lot is empty except for this one single PGA. And every single time, without fail, it’s parked across two damn spots. Like, what is so hard about just walking back out to the car and moving it?
Maybe someone who’s basically a George Costanza is leaving it there on purpose—just to make everyone else think they're the first ones in and the last ones out.
It’s honestly tough to pin down because the whole thing usually boils down to serotonin, dopamine, or just a messy mix of both... personally, I’m pretty sure my dopamine and cortisol levels are through the roof—I know for a fact because I had my levels checked and while 500 is normal, mine hit 870. Take something like Sulpiride, for example; it works on dopamine by blocking most of it while letting just enough trickle through to balance things out. It’s an old-school med, but seriously one of the best for psychosomatic issues. Lower doses help with the depression and anxiety side of things, whereas anything over 200mg is usually aimed at psychosis or schizophrenia. If you want a solid SSRI for psychosomatic stuff, I’d say Paxil... or maybe Cymbalta if you're looking at SNRIs... then there's that third option involving Lyrica and Sulpiride...
It sounds like you’re dealing with a psychosomatic disorder—basically a messy cocktail of anxiety and health anxiety. You might need to look into medication. I’ve been on Sulpiride, and honestly, it’s helped me out a bit. I’m about six months in now—and yeah, I’m taking Xanax pretty much every single day. Plus, Sulpiride can actually help with stomach ulcers, which helps deal with H. pylori too...
Heavy metal testing. Before you even think about it, you’re looking at live poisoning.
If you've got the cash to burn, go see some guy at a local burger joint—you’ll just end up boosting your hypochondria, and honestly, the symptoms will feel even worse. If you actually think that's the worst-case scenario, you are dead wrong.
Look, you could run a million tests and everything would probably end up landing within the "normal" range anyway—this whole thing is just noise. Half the population carries H. pylori and they don't even know it, let alone care... it's like how every fourth person has had mono at some point; most people just breeze through it without any lasting issues. You really need to focus on your mental state here—you already mentioned you struggle with anxiety, depression, and being a bit of a hypochondriac.
The thing that actually worries me most in your results is that B12 deficiency (especially if you aren't vegan). How low was it?? Mine was sitting at 512, though I couldn't get my B6 levels measured. Hitting the gym, swimming, staying on nofap... that’s the kind of routine you should be sticking to.
Yeah, Burek. I dropped about 5k... they send the Borrelia samples from Quest Diagnostics over to $233 Germany for some immunoblot test, and I came back totally negative for multiple strains—and honestly, I don't even remember ever getting a tick bite...
I’ve tried a few different antidepressants, but none of the SSRIs really did anything for me—SNRI works slightly better, I guess. Right now, I’m just on 100mg of Sulpiride. Honestly, nothing hits quite like an anxiolytic—something like a benzo—but that's obviously just a short-term fix.
Give us an update... I'm curious to see what Burek says, though knowing them, they'll probably just predict the worst-case scenario so you end up spending more money.
If I were you, I'd get a full panel done... ANA, RF, anti-CCP, EBV, CMV, thyroid antibodies, and then start with that Borrelia testing. That whole Borrelia thing feels like total quackery to me.
I’m about 99% in the same boat—the only real difference is I’ve probably run a few more tests than you have. I ended up leaning heavily into neurology and immunology, specifically hunting down Lyme disease. The main outlier for me is that I’ve been on antidepressants for about six months now, since everything else came back clear. My only official diagnosis so far is benign fasciculation syndrome from a neurological standpoint. I managed to bump my Vitamin D levels from 16 up to 120 (though honestly, it didn't change a thing), tested positive for H. pylori via bloodwork, and my morning cortisol levels are running high.
At this point, I’m pretty convinced I’m dealing with fibromyalgia and chronic anxiety. For me, the fibromyalgia shows up more as paresthesia—that weird tingling sensation—rather than actual muscle weakness.
Anxiety and hypochondria... I honestly can't figure out what's actually triggering these sensations. Maybe it's a dopamine spike or just hyper-sensitive nerves—who knows? No doctor seems to have a straight answer for what's happening inside my head. My psychiatrist even tries to claim none of it is actually real, but let me tell you, it feels like something is constantly digging around in my brain—it's enough to make me want to scratch my head like a madman.🤔
dustyfalcon4 said:So, what did the tests actually show? Honestly, I think I’m dealing with anxiety too—there was a stretch where I was having full-on panic attacks and all those other classic symptoms. Like I mentioned in another thread, when I'm actually busy with stuff, I'm fine; it's only when I have downtime to sit around and overthink things that the whole issue starts ramping up again. It's a bit tough to get an appointment with my doctor right now because of everything going on with COVID, but I'm still going to try and schedule a checkup.
I went ahead and got an MRI of my brain, neck, thoracic spine, and lumbar spine—plus a brain scan with contrast. For the most part, everything looks normal. My brain scan showed some tiny lesions, but they're just migraine-related or microcirculation issues—nothing to worry about—and the angiography was totally clear. My neck has some minor degenerative changes and my thoracic spine has some lordosis. Basically, the results were pretty okay. Of course, I was convinced I had MS. The neurologist, after looking at the scans and doing a color Doppler, diagnosed me with benign fasciculation syndrome (basically, my muscles twitch). Also, bloodwork came back positive for H. pylori and I was severely deficient in Vitamin D. Everything else—immunology and Lyme disease testing—came back negative. I've done every test under the sun and I'm officially calling it quits. Antidepressants didn't really do much for that tingling or "pins and needles" sensation—maybe an anxiolytic would help more, but honestly, I think I'm just chronically anxious since that's pretty much my default state.
Apparently, it’s just my anxiety acting up. I constantly have this weird sensation in my head—like something is crawling or prickling against my scalp all the time. I went ahead and got everything checked out, including a full MRI with contrast and an MRA of my brain.
Richard Wilson4 said:I just finished watching the Korean classic Memories of Murder, and man, I'm craving something newer with that same heavy atmosphere.