Can Anxiety Cause Pain?

[Jh9938]

I am on several medications for Bipolar Disorder and Anxiety and every day I feel intense physical pain. Could it be my medications? I don't see pain listed as a side effect for any of the meds but I don't see what else it could be. Constant anxiety and full body pain.

I take for Anxiety and BP
Lithium
Seroquel
Clonidine
Fluphenazine
Benztropine
Metoprolol
Hydroxyzine
Latuda
Mirtazapine
Trazodone

[Jls34]

This is a lot of medicine, I hope you find some relief. Have you considered your diet as a possible cause, food intolerances can cause all sorts of symptoms not just gastrointestinal problems. Personally, I cut out wheat and gluten because I had gas and surprise, my gastrointestinal problems got better, anxiety went away ,, pain went away. Sometimes intolerance cause leaky gut, then vitamin deficiency, then hormonal imbalance.  Everything is related. If not wheat and gluten, possibly other common allergens like eggs, dairy, or sometimes carbs for some people. My lifelong anxiety went away in 10 days on gluten free diet. I had a stutter my whole life, now I feel better. I don’t know if this might help you but it’s worth a try, maybe .

[specialmom]

I think that's pretty rare to be honest. Good diets are important for sure and we have a lot of neuro receptors in our gut. But anxiety is complex and not as easy as a diet change for most people. I'm glad you are feeling better though.

[Jls34]

True, for most people, but still a chance that it could help. There is a link between bipolar and celiac. Non celiac gluten intolerance can have the same symptoms. Fairly easy to run a trial experiment see if it helps. Maybe a week of unprocessed clean foods.

[specialmom]

Never hurts to do an elimination diet.  I just think a lot of people want 'control' and think by giving up this and that food wise, they have it when it often doesn't result in anything. Takes a lot of work to eliminate and keep up with that. But definitely worth a try.

[specialmom]

You don't take ALL of the medications at the same time do you? Some are in the same class of drugs. I can't imagine any one doctor would  prescribe them at the same time like that. I mean, I don't know for sure and in psychiatry they do come up with cocktails. But seroquel and latuda stand out. Perhaps you take some to counter issues with others like benztropine to counter tardive dyskinesia . Lithiam is great for intrusive thoughts but not used much otherwise and on top of two other antipsychotics. Seems a lot. Anyway, tell us more. Are your psychiatric symptoms under control? Is your blood pressure/heart situation also stable? And when you say pain, can you describe it in more detail?

[Jh9938]

I don't take all the medications all at once, and I have stopped taking a few of them since this post (with my doctors permission). I've been told my blood pressure is high sometimes and other times not, but usually it reads high when I'm feeling anxiety or stress and normal when I feel okay. So I'm not sure. I was having panic attacks and went to the hospital and they did several tests on my heart and said it was ok. My psychiatric symptoms are not really under control and I don't think my psychiatrist knows what to do besides slightly tweak the medication. But anyways my main problem now is physical pain. After weeks of being completely miserable I finally found that if I do lots of chores/work for the first 2-3 hours of the day I feel alot better, but I still have pain and pain sensitivity from doing even the smallest tasks.

[specialmom]

ya.  For me, a person with high blood pressure now being treated, it would come down at times but was reading high at like every doctors visit or at least borderline.  Finally the reading at the doctor's office was higher than they were comfortable with.  It scared me and I started BP meds.  And surprisingly (or not), I felt SO much better once I did.  I think the BP being high made me feel crummy. I'm glad you had some of these meds removed. They overlapped and couldn't think of why they'd have you on drugs from the same class.   That's fantastic that you found out that getting up and going and doing chores first thing helps you!!  How is your sleep doing?  Are you less tired doing that or more tired?