Question:
I am trying to find information that links stress and anxiety to dystonia.
If anyone know about any articles please let me know.
Answer:
With Dystonia, the nerve sends impulses of somewhat random
amplitude to the affected muscles. Above some threshold
amplitude, the pulse causes the muscle to contract. When
you are tense, your muscles tense now to increased level
of nerve activity to all your muscles. This background
level increase pushes the Dystonia impulses higher, so
that more of them break through the threshold and cause
muscle contraction. Therefore, increased stress and anxiety
should make Dystonia worse during the period of stress.
I can't speak for everybody but I can tell you that a great deal of
extreme stress causes my to be worse with my Generalized Tortion Dystonia..My
doctors agree unfortunetly I have no real written article to give you except in
the What Now Dystonia booklet it has a portion about stress and dystonia. I
can send a copy on disc if you don't have it, however it is the first booklet
that came out not the latest one. Basically they are the same and Susan Calne
said I could put it on disc and pass it out on the net. I have taken 2 six
month courses on how to keep my stress level down and it works for me....
I don't have any article to back up your question, however, my husband (who has
ST) and I recently attended a dystonia support group for the first time and one
of the questions another first timer asked was - "what was going on in your
lives when you first got the dystonia?" Everyone there said they had been
under a lot of stress. After 31/2 years of dealing with the dystonia with my
husband I am still convinced that stress is what brought it on.
I'd tell you which link but I forget off hand ,If you look in my
headache page I'm pretty sure it has Stress in there ,Also in the
General Health links and Physicians links ....I think !
Sorry but my memory ain't what it used to be .
Oh yeah ,And you may like to look at HON ,Medscape and Health A to Z .
