To think we are becoming a country of hypochondriacs?

As you've been assessed for sickness benefits, you'd obviously know it's not that easy. What's easy about telling some stranger about your health conditions? I was lucky that mine was a GP so had some understanding of my conditions. And then there's the waiting to see what they've recommended - fit for work, possibly fit in the future or unfit for work

As someone who is living with two unseen health conditions its easy for people to look at you and think that there is nothing wrong, I live every day in constant pain and have to take medication every day to help ease the pain.
10 years ago I would have considered myself to be fit and healthy, since then I have had a twin pregnancy which has caused a diastasis recti and umbilica hernia which I am waiting to be repaired.
I have also been diagnosed with an underactive thyroid and fibromyalgia both of which cause extreme fatigue and constant pain, its easy to judge when the conditions are unseen.

There is a large gap between going to the GP with a minor complaint and ignoring more serious symptoms.

I agree about the 'illness culture'. I don't live in the UK and know very few people with the illnesses much of MN seem to have, and not nearly as many people WFH either. I also don't know anyone who has been signed off work for stress which is frequently suggested to posters on here.

I see you're doubling down on the migraines.

Why?

I am in my early sixties, too sedentary, overweight and have a health problem I was born with. But I do not get the age related aches and pains I hear my friends complain about.

Absolutely 💯 this. It's definitely a lot of genetics and luck. My adoptive DM is mid-70s and very healthy, but never does any really strenuous exercise (but is by no means unfit and eats everything mostly cooked from scratch). She's been told once by a nurse that she has excellent genes, so coupled with her lifestyle, it's helped to keep the illness at bay.

I've had a lot of bad luck being unwell in recent years, and if it hadn't been for my genes, I might not have been injured adversely by an off label antipsychotic. I'm guessing if I'd been biologically related to my DM, this might have been a different outcome.

Conversely, I was incredibly fit when a young teenager and before my ill health, and played hockey, ran half marathons, didn't have any aches, oral health problems or any neurological issues.

Life isn't really fair sometimes but it is mostly due to luck of the draw with health IMHO.

Maybe I am sanctimonious, maybe I’ve just had my fair share of health problems and quietly judge people who seem to use the slightest problem as an excuse. There are times over the last 3 years where I could have easily just thrown in the towel but I didn’t.

People seem really disappointed when they discover they are actually quite healthy.
Negative results and being given a clean bill of health should celebrated. When youv’e had cancer every negative result is a massive win. I would dearly love to be boringly healthy, but I like to think that most of the time I’m really lucky. I’m quite happy just being “ fine” at the moment.

MN is a particular stronghold for the worried well, so maybe this thread is a bit red rag to the bull.

I agree. I'm still reeling a bit from the very blunt and hurtful remarks my friend from school wrote in a Christmas card about 4 years ago, after I'd been through hell with post natal depression which triggered a flare up of my movement disorder symptoms (as dopamine is affected by oestrogen, and i think the low hormones after birth had exacerbated my symptoms). My friend wrote that she hadn't been in the right place to speak to me, and hadn't the energy (even though she'd been fit enough to train for marathons and didn't have any children or associated responsibilities).

That hurt quite a bit, but she'd always been someone who didn't mimce their words. She is also a nurse, so i kind of hoped she might have a bit more empathy too...😳😞

Funny how sometimes health problems can create a wedge between friends. The healthy person most likely won't always relate, but the unwell friend might need to offload at times too. It's hard.

That must be an exhausting way to live. I hope you can let a few friends know. I'm useless at keeping secrets so would find that an impossible way to live.

Once people find out that you have a chronic condition, everything you say and do is judged in that context. It isn't enough to not talk about your condition. If you show any sign of discomfort or any negative emotion about anything, then people think you lack resilience and your condition is probably in your head anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I would never discuss my chronic health conditions with anybody other than very occasionally with DH. I once did a course for people with chronic conditions.The upshot of it was that if your condition isn't going away, one of the most important things was making your condition as easy as possible for other people to live with.
So don't talk about your condition, work at making sure that discomfort isn't obvious from your body language, and always appear cheerful however you are feeling. That way, you might still have the illness but you may still have friends. It is fucking lonely though.

How tiresome.

Yes, parents adore having their children diagnosed.

It's really easy to get a diagnosis.

And cheap.

And quick.

And there's so much support.

Not!!!

If you actually looked up the stats you'd find UK diagnosis rates are a) much lower than the media frothing suggests and b) not dissimilar to other developed nations.

It is also not unusual for ASD and ADHD to co-occur.

@2Rebecca Who needs a referral for an official diagnosis these days? Everyone seems to self diagnose through the help of Dr Google. Every second person I know 'has ADHD' & parents everywhere are pushing to get their children diagnosed with something or another. What's happening to us..

Totally agree with you OP, it's almost like everyone is in competition with each other to be 'more unwell' if I've got a cold, someone else will have it 10 times worse.
The amount of people off on long term sick is also ridiculous, the government have made it too easy to be off 'on the sick'.

OP would have been so proud of me last year. I had cystitis, but wouldn"t have dreamed of going to the doctors with something so minor, so I dosed up on home remedies. Then I started getting a temperature but I didn't take time off work, 'just dosed up on paracetamol. When I started getting back pain for no reason I assumed it was psychological, and anyway back pain equals skiver doesn't it? Two days later I was in the High Dependency Unit in hospital with sepsis from a kidney infection.
Now I have post sepsis syndrome, but I am also autistic so I am probably hyperfixating and just need to get a grip, according to people on here.

I'm really interested in this. For personal reasons I won't go into, I had to gen up on collagen disorders a bit some years ago. I also know several people with properly diagnosed EDS / hypermobility and neurodivergence etc. I have selective hypermobility TMJD and Sacroiliac Joint dysfunction. The latter is apparently related to pregnancy hormones and ligaments. Neither of my conditions are any more than sporadically inconvenient so far, for which I'm immensely grateful, and recently two professionals I've dealt with have questioned if I have ADHD so..... I'm kind of wondering if there is something biochemical / hormonal / etc at play.

Research onto Osteogenesis Imperfecta and EDS shows multiple sub-types, but collagen is involved in both. I'm really interested as to whether alot of research should be done into collagen and it's function in the body which is essentially to hold everything together and keep us flexible.

Sorry, basically thinking out loud here - shall probably take myself off to Google and look up things like environmental impacts on collagen..... like radiation.....

2Rebecca evidence?

Everyone and their dog wants referrals for ADHD and ASD. They don't care which one they have and don't tend to know the difference. It's mad. People wouldn't want referrals to try and get a diagnosis of angina and/ or dementia and be keen to have a diagnosis and be disappointed if told they don't meet the criteria.

There's a very strong association between autism and hypermobility (which is a major cause of POTS, Fibromyalgia and CFS/ME) so it's not a coincidence at all that this small subset of people have the same conditions. There's a very real biological underpinning to these conditions that connects them. I'm not saying that those conditions (including autism) don't suffer from self-diagnosis, they do, and as someone who has formal diagnoses for autism, hEDS and POTS I find it very frustrating at times, but it's a real pattern you're seeing in this subset of people, not hypochondria or psychosomatic symptoms.

This is well-known in the medical community, at least amongst the relevant specialists, but it's not well understood why connective tissue disorders are linked with neurodivergence.

@TroysMammy There are also people with debilitating problems such as OCD and health anxiety that do not have a diagnosis from a psychiatrist and rely upon treatment in primary care (which can be very good). There can be a lot of shame attached and so people often play down or conceal their struggles, so it can be very hard to distinguish between the ones who say “I have OCD” whilst quietly having huge struggles day to day without a diagnosis and those who say “I have OCD” because they like a tidy desk. Not having a diagnosis from a psychiatrist doesn’t mean someone hasn’t got a debilitating psychological problem.

For someone with such a list of ailments you're incredibly sanctimonious, judgemental and keen to encourage other HCPs to join forces with you. I feel for any of your patients.

I have a number of chronic health conditions and had breast cancer 3 years ago.
A week after surgery and once I had had the drain removed I was stood on a touch line watching DS play rugby.

I had a hemithyroidectomy and my consultant laughed when I asked how long before I could return to work. He said that usually people asked how long they should take off work.
I had a number of miscarriages and was back at work after a couple of days, only because I’d had a D&C and couldn’t work for 48hrs.
My breast cancer surgeon talked me into taking time off, not for the physical recovery but because my job is stressful and she said I needed a phycological rather than a physical break.

If people ask me how I am, I’m always “fine”. My nurse always has a giggle when we see a patient who has a list of wishy washy ailments that are self diagnosed. I think she would love to tell them to man up. I prefer not to use my health as an excuse, but just occasionally I get pissed off when I receive a sarcastic comment about working part time and politely apologise explaining why I struggle to work full time nowadays. I don’t look ill or moan about, well maybe to DH occasionally.

However, I have a lot more empathy for people who have endured cancer treatment. Most of the long term side effects are hidden. Most people are grateful to be here and don’t tend to moan about the chronic joint pain while on adjunctive drugs, or the fatigue that seems to knock you sideways after radiotherapy.

I asked a local GP, during the pandemic and the rise in long covid, if she was able to predict which patients would present with it. She rolled her eyes and said yes. They are the same ones that have every side effect on the leaflet that comes with their meds, the worried well who spend half their lives in waiting rooms.

I had one patient, I’m a dentist, who had an A4 folder crammed with her own notes, studies and papers she’d downloaded from the internet and countless letters from the consultants and dentists she had seen.

I came across an article about a niche area of body dysmorphia and realised that she fitted the description like a glove. Unfortunately, treatment has nothing to do with dentistry and because it is a rare psychiatric problem, very difficult to treat. Convincing a patient that she has a specific and severe form of health anxiety is difficult. And with the added risk that there might actually be an organic cause hidden amongst the red herrings, you cannot dismiss their concerns and once you have exhausted the diagnostic tests and procedures there is only one resort, call it fibromyalgia and they move on to the next clinician. I suspect she is still hawking her growing file to dentist/doctors in the hope that there is a magic cure.

Fibromyalgia is an odd condition. It’s widely diagnosed but there are no definitive tests. It’s the conclusion of exhaustive exclusion of every other disease. I have seen a considerable number of patients with a diagnosis but they are all women. Predominantly peri or menopausal, which leads me to think that it has some link with hormone levels and dietary deficiency.

When I hit peri menopause I suffered from muscle and joint pain, tried HRT but nothing worked apart from exercise. I take Anastrazole, a hormone blocker, the muscle and joint pain can be awful but I have a cause. I have found magnesium and vit B12 & D a game changer. I think if I’d gone to my GP I would have been told that it’s fibromyalgia, which it is, but to me it’s a symptom not a whole illness.

Again it boils down to a healthy diet and supplements. Maybe the menopause alters our biochemistry so we develop deficiencies more readily. Whatever it is you can improve many problems with exercise and diet. I force myself to walk the dog daily however much it hurts because I know that I’ll feel the benefit. It is all too easy to give in to lethargy and just rest. I hate that my body can no longer do what I want to but I refuse to just give up and use my medical conditions as a get out. My DH despairs at times when he finds me up a step ladder or loading up the car with rubbish for the tip.

Obviously there are genuine debilitating illnesses where exercise isn’t a solution but not many where your GP will prescribe sitting in a chair or bed 24/7.

I’ve often seen the “it’s not anxiety if you don’t have a diagnosis, it’s just normal feelings of anxiousness” and I wonder if these people have ever actually tried to access any fucking mental health service on the NHS. Your GP will not diagnose you with an anxiety disorder. Even if you’re having debilitating panic attacks. They will give you setraline or beta blockers or maybe both. If you harass the life out of them they might refer you for talking therapy. Then you might wait a year to see someone. Who also won’t diagnose you with anything. So where are these magical diagnoses coming from that allow people to have their mental health condition taken seriously by the arseholes of Mumsnet?

My mum, who took her own life due to her anxiety didn’t have a diagnosis. Was she ill? Or a snowflake who couldn’t cope with normal feelings.

But you have and got a diagnosis. There are plenty on Mumsnet who say they have but it's something that is bandied about, a bit like those who say they have a little bit of OCD because the tins in a cupboard are higgledy-piggledy.

Reading some of the lived experiences of people on this thread really brings home that kidding oneself that there are simple solutions to such complex problems is an issue in itself.

Lifestyle factors are but a small part of the issues described and it's shocking that some conditions and illnesses are compounded by medical treatment if it can be accessed at all. Cover up and denial are real in those situations and the knock on effect of institutional gas-lighting is pretty traumatic.

People may try and claim it's rare, but just from here, and my own multiple experiences including delayed cancer diagnosis in my own family can be extrapolated statistically across the population to show it's a significant number.

No doubt there will be those who wish to excuse or deny or throw "resource issues" around but it's really not good enough.

If you want fewer sick people, diagnose and treat them. If you want people with disabilities to fully engage with society, support them. If you want people to value themselves enough to participate proactively in their own care, don't treat them like naughty children or belittle them. In short, don't start a battle by assuming people are thick, lazy, self indulgent or whatever. That would be a bloody good start, no?