Why are all diseases from nerves and is it really so?

“Nerves are a very significant part”

Alexey Paramonov, gastroenterologist

“The nerves are just different. With a stroke or injury, part of the brain has fallen off — you will get a neurological deficit — the arm and leg on the one hand, for example, do not work well. And here, domestic neurology is at its best — a neurologist with a hammer and a needle will accurately determine the site of the lesion no worse than a tomograph.

Let’s take a little closer to the psychic sphere… No, if aliens come to you, you won’t have any problems either. At least diagnostic, and you’ll get your antipsychotic.

But let’s say you are the first vice president of a large company, a strong, intelligent, erudite, perspicacious, professionally competent person. And for the president of the company, God gave you the son of the main shareholder, half your age, a loafer who only has sports cars in his mind. But it’s up to you to run the business, and the shareholder will ask you for the profit.

And everything would be fine, but the young man does not understand the limits of his competence and is already teaching you a subject that has become a way of life for you, for example, financial management in construction. And he says nonsense, and he says okay, he does not sign the documents you have suffered through, necessary for the production process.

You negotiate with the shareholder. The papers were signed, the son received a scolding and held a grudge. But soon everything repeats again. And with each time, this denseness is becoming more and more difficult to overcome. Irritated and you, and the shareholder, and son.

And in the morning you go to the Ministry of Construction, and you wake up with incredible back pain. She soon moves to her stomach. The abdomen is tight, any attempt to move is a sharp pain. You have VIP insurance, an ambulance arrives from a well-known private clinic.

There is no obvious diagnosis, but the doctor is worried about the stomach, he suggests hospitalization. You did not agree, went to the ministry, but the ambulance takes you from there. Hospitalized under VHI in a leading departmental hospital. Surgeons prepare you for a diagnostic operation — laparoscopy.

And then the consultant-therapist, who is old and has seen a lot in clinical life, or, on the contrary, is young and reads a lot of professional literature, diagnoses that the origin of pain is neuromuscular, within the framework of a myofascial syndrome formed in response to chronic stress.

You are given a tranquilizer, an antidepressant, and instead of an operation, you are sent home in a satisfactory condition.

About the ulcer, too, not everything is so simple. Yes, Helicobacter plays a leading role in its origin. But if you ask, is it the most common cause of ulcerative hunger pain in the upper abdomen? No. This is functional dyspepsia, again a somatoform disorder, which in our dull everyday life is often called gastritis (gastritis also happens, but much less often, and this is a different disease).

However, if H. pylori is removed for functional dyspepsia, symptoms will resolve in 10% of patients. Here is such a dialectic. In short, do not be nervous, take care of yourself.

«everything affects everything»

Anton Tkachev, medical psychologist

«Yes and no. You need to understand that the topic of psychosomatics is very convenient for writing articles — you come to the hospital, conduct psychological testing, then test healthy people. Next, the results are compared and a convenient conclusion is made for the psychologist that the features he identified increase the likelihood of a particular disease.

True, it often happens that the next psychologist finds other features in the same patients and publishes his own, different conclusions. The literature describes the psychological portraits of all diseases (which is a little alarming). In addition, the topic is interesting to society and on the Internet you can even find a table that will say what emotions cause certain diseases — this is already beyond good and evil.

Also, there is always the problem of determining where the cause is and where the effect is: this disease has affected the human psyche or its mental characteristics have provoked the disease.

At one time, a very unpleasant story turned out with a stomach ulcer. It was assumed that this is a psychosomatic illness and causes his stress. Treated with proper diet and sometimes psychotherapy.

And then it was found that this disease is caused by a specific pathogen. 15 years passed before it was officially recognized. Psychotherapists then were very upset, and some comrades forget to mention this discovery even today, continuing to attribute gastritis to psychosomatics.

On the other hand, in such a disease as tuberculosis, the causative agent is completely understandable. But being infected and getting sick are two different things. The disease is caused by a decrease in immunity, and immunity can be reduced by regular stress. Or, for example, mental characteristics brought a person to prison, and there, against the backdrop of a bad climate and food, he contracted tuberculosis.

Question: what caused the disease? On the one hand, these are purely biological reasons, on the other hand, it can be said that his mental characteristics contributed to the onset of the disease. In general, everything influences everything.

Another thing is that for a person there is no difference whether he has a psychosomatic disease or not. It is impossible to cure psychosomatics (for example, asthma) with psychotherapy.

“Not from nerves except infectious diseases”

Rustam Magomedov, therapist

“Yes, of course, from the nerves. It’s just that this term should be understood more broadly — from our ideas about the world, from our hidden desires and fears, from chronic stressful situations. You are not surprised that in a nervous situation, the pressure rises!

And why then is the appearance of back pain, headache surprising? After all, the cardiovascular system is solid muscles, like the musculoskeletal system. Gastrointestinal tract — the muscular layer is also developed there. Stress ulcers are a well-known phenomenon.

Not from nerves, except perhaps only specific infectious diseases. Even injuries, very often, appear against the background of stress, especially chronic, when the extinction of reactions is already noted and the adequacy of movements is simply violated.

True, there is a downside. Any long-term suffering person from the point of view of psychiatry will have some deviations. It `s naturally. And therefore — it is not always possible to clearly understand what happened before. But this only speaks of the need for a psychological impact on most patients.”