Thanks for the article! I recognize the syndrome -- over the past 2 years my husband self-diagnosed any number of ailments, most of them life-threatening or at least life-altering. At first I was alarmed but as the visits to specialists proliferated and they all found nothing of concern, it became hard to take him seriously. He talked about his ailments endlessly, certain he was dying. The symptoms and his theories about them kept evolving. He became distraught with anxiety, lost his appetite, couldn't sleep. There were blood tests, x-rays, MRIs, nerve-response tests, and more. All showed him to be a middle-aged man in above-average health. But he refused to accept reassurance, insisted on seeing yet another doctor. He stopped working, talked constantly about dying and began spending most of his time in bed. The one doctor he refused to see was a psychiatrist.

I was way out of my depth. For a long time I thought if we could rule out all the catastrophic possibilities he might calm down, but there was always one more to test for. If I managed to get a doctor to talk to me privately, the brusque advice I got was to get him medicated. After many months, my husband finally agreed to take anti-anxiety medication, if only to help him sleep.

Eventually we found a specialist who gave him a diagnosis of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy -- a very mild case. Being taken seriously by one doctor went a long way toward easing the panic. Nearly a year later, he hasn't gone back to work but is a lot easier to live with.

What a great article to come across. The laughs alone provide a decent treatment for hypochondria. As someone who has suffered from anxiety for quite a while now, I definitely related to this piece. There are very real reasons for out-of-control anxiety, and the suffering is profound. It's a double-edged sword for sure. No matter how bad you feel (heart attack? brain tumor? ulcer?), you tell yourself it's none of those, just the usual dose of anxiety, and you press on. ... But I'm 50 now; how long can I keep ignoring the symptoms? Forever? I think so.

He asked that "I told you I was ill" be put on his Tombstone at St Thomas's Church, Winchelsea, Sussex, but the Chichester Diocese refused to it. They got around it by carving it in Irish Gaelic "Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite."

The root cause of Hypchondria is are fear of death. Most people are afraid to die and that is understandable,however the constant stress can cause the very thing were trying to avoid and that is illness. Most psychological disorders have there root cause the fear of death, fear of people , fear of inimacy, fear of failure or success. Fear can destory us It can lead to depression, anxiety, panic attacks, obessive cumpulsive disorder, gastrointestal problems, heart desease. However hard it may be people must accept the fact that they are mortal and someday they will get sick and someday they will die. Accepting this fact or more generally speaking accepting the things we can not change will lead to a more happy and fulfilling life.

About a month ago I was complaining to a friend about some spots in the vision of my left eye. They were fixed in my vision, not floaters or anything. A friend of mine, a doctor herself but 1200 miles away, said it sounded exactly like posterior retinal detachment.

I looked it up, I asked her a few more questions and my boyfriend and I headed off to the emergency room to have them check for possible retinal damage.

The ER doctor read my file and came in already having decided I was a hypochondriac. When I explained the PVD and the necessity of checking for retinal damage he sneered and said "i don't even think that's a real thing."

The more I tried to explain my symptoms the more he was convinced that I was a hypochondriac. Seems the more you know about something the less credible you are.

He checked my eye with a Slit Lamp but did not dilate my pupils beyond making me sit in the dark for two minute. He declared that he could not see my retina and set me up with an ophthalmologist appointment for after the weekend.

The ophthalmologist was the same way. The more informed I was the more like a child he treated me. He even patted my knee and said "I'm sure there's nothing wrong, probably just floaters. Do you know what floaters are?"

Yes, I fucking know what floaters are and by nature floaters...float. They do not remain fixed points in your vision.

Eyes dilated and he looks in there. Lights on, he grabs his model of the eye and starts describing my eyeball in terms of jello, sometimes the jello pulls away from the pan a little.

"Posterior vitreous detachment?" I ask.

"Well, that's what they call it, yes. The important thing is to make sure you don't have any retinal damage."

I don't know what to do. I know and understand a lot about the human body because I studied it. Also, I refuse to be uninformed about my own body. And yet, if you show that you have done any research you are labeled a hypochondriac and treated with scorn.

What did the hypochondriac have engraved on his tombstone?

Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

A previous writer mentioned the waves of new diseases that appear, peak and fade away in the U.S. Recently I was back in the states for a few weeks and one day turned on the television. I was shocked to see how many commercials were advertising drugs, advising people to "ask your doctor" about Falaxifan, Streptonoxiol, Calamitol, Flummoxicil, or any of the gigantic inventory of new drugs for sale. It sounded almost as if they were advertising the illness in hope that they would find a willing customer.

Almost 100 years ago, Mary Baker Eddy wrote:

Pangs caused by the press

The press unwittingly sends forth many sorrows and diseases among the human family. It does this by giving names to diseases and by printing long descriptions which mirror images of disease distinctly in thought. A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one hastens to get it. A minutely described disease costs many a man his earthly days of comfort. What a price for human knowledge!

***

I thought of this quote then. Advertising was once more about extolling a product's qualities. Now it's more about trying to create a sense of need for something, regardless of whether that need is real or not. In that light encouraging anxiety over the possibility of disease fits right into corporate strategy.

Hypochondria has been around forever of course and I'm not suggesting that blame rests solely with advertisers. But I also can't help but believe that spurring constant worry about health can't be healthy. While it's good to take care of oneself and treat disease, encouraging anxiety and fear of disease is only a few steps away from exposing someone to a flu virus in order to sell aspirin.