Posted by KaraS on March 17, 2005, at 18:04:43
In reply to RE: DLPA » KaraS, posted by Elroy on March 17, 2005, at 15:40:26
Gee, that sounds awful - but at least you have doctors who seem to be getting to the bottom of things (rather than writing you off as a hypochondriac). I'm sure it will be very helpful once they pinpoint what is causing all of this extra cortisol, NE and therefore, anxiety plus all of the other related health problems. It's good in a way that you have some physical problem causing all of the rest of the problems because then it can probably be cured rather than just treated.
Anyway, I can see that you're going through a lot and my thoughts are with you.
Kara
> Actually, there's now being some concern expressed that a tumor found in my left adrenal gland (small lesion, about 2.1 x 1.8 cm) may have something to do with all of this. The contrasting CT scan showed it to be benign. This was found back in late September after it was discovered that I had sky-high cortisol levels. In fact, they first thought that I probably had Cushing's Syndrome caused by a adrenal tumor (the one that was found). Further tests showed however that I didn't have Cushing's, so the adrenal lesion was written off as an "incidental non endocrinological tumor" (that's just sitting there doing nothing). But now there's some question as to whether or not this tumor might be causing unnatural secretion of adrenaline / NE (and thereby causing the anxiety, the raised cortisol, the breakdown of the HPA Axis and HPAT Axis, the neuropathy pains, the tinnitus, etc.). You've got to rememebr that the adrenal has two layers, an outer layer that is the "cortex" and secretes hormones like cortisol, testosterone in women, etc., and an inner layer called the medulla that secretes adreneline and NE.
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> My regular doc is trying to locate a follow-up separate enocrinologist to send me to who would strictly look into the possible problems with the adrenal tumor and what - if anything - it might be doing......
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> My own speculation is that if I have an irregular / continual secretion of NE going on, that would account for the constant anxiety (which isn't a social anxiety or a trauma-oriented anxiety, but is a GAD type anxiety but very severe if I'm not on consistent heavy meds - like Xanax). The other symptoms - including the elevated cortisol and the prostatitis type symptoms and peripheral neuropthy and tinnitus and hypogonadism then could be caused by some combination of the high NE and high cortisol and severe anxiety (???).... and would maybe explain how any little spike in the incoming NE (like Effexor) would trigger a prostatitis type flare up....
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> > That's amazing - esp. considering that Effexor has much less NE at starting doses than Cymbalta. For some reason the NE was more available to you from the Effexor. At any rate, I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope that your nature and deficiencies (as defined by Dr. Braverman) don't require taking meds or supplements that impact NE and would aggrivate this problem.
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poster:KaraS
thread:452259
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050225/msgs/472214.html