patm - is there an instant cure?

[healthhealth24]

I dont need to tell you my story. I've gone through the stages most of you have. What I realised is everyone has drawn their own conclusions. This has caused for more division in the patm community. What professionals see when they look at us is, "that person needs therapy, they belong in a mental institution". I've gone through all these stages far from fnding an instant cure. I don't believe one person on that site has found a permanent cure and if they are calling it a cure to calm down their symptoms for a temporary relief and even though glitches of reactidons occur - this is not a cure.

[healthhealth24]

Everything you have just stated rings true with where I stand. I did a little sort of experimenting with myself and as soon as I started to feel on edge, unbalanced in some mentally way, throw in lot of rapid random racing thoughts and negative feelings (this is some sort of a frantic feeling where you can feel the mind running around, or almost rushing around). This rushing around feeling is like your whole mind and existence being felt like a violent buoency of something in water.  I would observe exactly where my thoughts were being projected and to whom (if anyone) as I sit at home. The buoyancy feeling comes in along with the bad thoughts. As this happens a family member is recording a video of their surrounding. I immediately feel my thoughts shifting and projecting in the direction of my sister. To no surprise she coughs. Sometimes it is a surprise particularly when you become so enrailed in it you  lose focus. When that part of the film plays she coughs. Rewinding and playing several back she coughs everytime.

[PATMsufferer]

          This is a good, 'emperor-has-no-clothes' kind of observation that merits discussion. It's important to remember that PATM is currently just a term of convenience - it's much easier to write "I get PATM reactions whenever I go out in public" than to constantly write "I reliably make people cough, sneeze, exhale loudly (as if to get something out of their lungs), rub their noses, act as if they're dizzy, etc., and they sometimes do this even across long distances (50+ feet) and across non-airtight barriers such doors, open windows, etc." The term PATM is just shorthand within our community, and I think when a "PATMer" talks about "PATM" to a fellow "PATMer", a lot of shared, unspoken thoughts and experiences are evoked by the simple term "PATM", and that's why we use it.
          But we still don't know if PATM is merely a common symptom associated with a variety of different diseases/conditions (e.g., candida, leaky gut, TMAU, etc.), or whether it's a disease in-and-of-itself.
          My personal opinion (and I emphasize that it's an opinion - I have no scientific studies to back it up), is that PATM is a common symptom that can occur with different conditions. I think the body's chemistry can be upset in such a way that certain chemical byproducts are no longer being "neutralized" by the usual detoxification pathways, and these byproducts are being released on our breath, in our sweat, etc. Most notably, these chemical byproducts are so offensive and irritating that even minute, trace amounts of them in the air around us are enough to cause severe reactions in sensitive people. These chemical byproducts could possibly develop/accumulate in our bodies because of leaky gut, liver dysfunction, TMAU (which itself is a dysfunction of metabolic processes associated with the FMO3 gene), candida, etc, so I would never discount people who argue that PATM is caused by candida, leaky gut, liver dysfunction et al. because it seems reasonable that it could be. I do sometimes wish, however, that people on this forum made their assertions in a more qualified, speculative way rather than with the confidence of a salesman selling us the next great health supplement, but I think their information is valuable nonetheless. I don't think we know what PATM is for sure, and even after 2 years of dealing with it, I still haven't discovered a way of reliably controlling it. Eating healthy, getting enough sleep (which is easier said than done), and avoiding scented soaps, shampoos, detergents, and deodorants are the best ways of minimizing PATM reactions until we figure out more.  

[healthhealth24]

Thank you for the insightful response. I sincerely do believe no one has yet found that instant cure. The closest I got it is being free from it for one good and solid month. The best I can give it is as a feeling of self-content. I was comfortable and satisfied with myself and my surroundings. I received no reactions through sensory observation. I also had no bad/weird thoughts and feelings. Another thing to add is that our thoughts are directed to people and that is when reactions occur. Have you noticed this?

[PATMsufferer]

I do believe that PATM has made me more vigilant for other people's reactions. Psychologists have long known about something called the "emotional Stroop effect", whereby stimuli that have significant emotional meaning for a person interfere with how that person processes information. For example, if somebody is obsessive-compulsive about germs and you give that person a task in which he sees a series of words printed in different colors and is asked to say the color of the word and not the word itself (the Stroop task), that person would be slower to name the color of a word like "germ" than the color of a word like "lamp". That is, the word "germ" carries such significant emotional valence for that person that it manages to draw his attention even when he's supposed to be focused on performing a different cognitive task (i.e., naming ink color).
          I think that for many people with PATM (myself included), coughs and other PATM reactions have acquired such significant emotional valence that we cannot ignore them. I think this might be why some people like to exercise their fantasy-muscle by suggesting that even people on TV might be coughing at them. They, of course, know that this is an utter impossibility, but they can't help but focus on coughs when they hear them (i.e., it's become impossible for them to tune coughs out, and it's become harder for them to accept that sometimes people cough for other reasons (like pneumonia, for example)).
          So I do think that PATM has made me much more self-conscious and vigilant towards other people's behavior. But for me, anyway, reactions seem to occur regardless of whether I'm focused on any particular individual or not. My mental state doesn't seem to have any influence on the frequency of other people's reactions - my mental state just affects how I feel about the reactions afterwards. If I'm somewhat content, I'll think, "Well, there were more people today who didn't cough than who did, so I guess life's okay." But on a bad day I'll tell myself, "Look, even just causing one person to cough so severely makes you an inhuman monster who needs to be quarantined, if you had any respect for your fellow man!" It's definitely better to stay positive, and positive thinking probably has positive physiological consequences like decreased pulse rate, less sweating, and a slower metabolism, and this decreased metabolic activity probably decreases the body's production/extrusion of PATM, so there is likely some connection between mental state and PATM reactions.