What is psychosomatic illness?
Psychosomatic illness – ETHOS HEALTH CARE
What is psychosomatic illness?
Psychosomatic illness is the group of illness that affects or involves both mind and body. Most of us are aware of negative influence of emotions on health as in hypertension. Psychosomatic illness is broadly divided into following types:
- There are both mental and physical illness and they affect each other.
- Physical illness due to psychological disorder.
- Mental disorder due to physical illness.
- Physical illness manifest as psychological symptoms or vice versa.
Another group in Somatoform Disorder as follows
- Body dysmorphic disorder – Preoccupation with a minor imaginary body flaw such as wrinkles or the shape or size of body parts. It causes severe anxiety.
- Conversion disorder – Person experiences difficulty of movement and senses like seizures, incordination or paralysis.
- Hypochondriasis – Fear of having a serious disease. They go for repeated investigations but still continue to fear.
- Somatization disorder – Person experiences physical complaints, such as headaches, diarrhea, or pain without physical cause.
Difficulty with Psychosomatic Disorders
There are two major difficulties. Such disorders may be treated only one sided for example only as physical sickness or mental sickness resulting in little or no benefit. Secondly patients suffering from such disorders are usually referred by one doctor to another. Medical doctor believes it to be a psychological condition and psychiatrist as physical ailment. In the process, patient continues to suffer.
Hope of Holistic Medicine
Holistic medicine, especially therapies like acupuncture and homeopathy, scores high in treatment of psychosomatic disorders. They take into account complete details of patient including physical and mental symptoms, origin of ailment and present circumstances. Such holistic diagnosis is able to support holistic treatment of psychosomatic disorders with complete relief.
What are the common psychosomatic illnesses?
- Cancers – Contributory factor
- Cardiovascular system – Hypertension, hypotension, palpitations, irregular heartbeat, ischemic heart disease
- Child psychosomatic troubles – Abdominal Pain, Enuresis, low appetite
- Dermatology – Psoriasis, eczema
- Digestive system – Indigestion, flatulence, acidity, gastric ulcer, constipation, diarrhea, IBS, Anorexia, Bulimia
- Endocrine diseases – Hyperthyroidism, diabetes
- Gynecology and Obstetric – Dysmenorrhea
- Immunologic disorders – Allergy, asthma, frequent infections
- Lungs diseases – Cough, dyspnea, asthma
- Nervous system – Fatigue, twitchings
- Pain – Back pain, fibromyalgia, migraine and headaches
- Musculoskeletal – Rheumatism, arthritis, lumbago
- Sexology – Erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, vaginismus, loss of libido
- Stress – Mental and physical
