When Symptoms Move from Year to Year

When Symptoms Move from Year to Year

When I join up the records of people who have come over several years, something stands out.

Two years ago they came about digestion. Last year it was headaches. This year they say their sleep is shallow. Each time they were tested, and each time they were told there was nothing much wrong.

We count this as illness arriving several times. I read it differently.

Where the Sign Appears Differs Each Time

In a body whose coordination has been shaken, the sign does not appear in one place only. It appears wherever gives first at that time.

In a year when work piled up, the digestive side gives first. In a year of long hours on the neck and shoulders, it comes out as headache. In a year when the sleeping arrangements changed, the sign shows in sleep. What changed in the body is one thing, and where that one thing surfaces differs from year to year.

So symptoms moving about does not mean there are several illnesses. If anything it is a clue that there may be only one.

One Thing Shows Itself in Several Places

Why this happens is not merely a guess.

Studies that have looked at states in which the circuits handling pain have become sensitised find that the change does not stay in one painful area. Sleep, fatigue, digestion, and sensitivity to sound and light appear bound up together. When the regulating side of the body tilts one way, that tilt catches several systems at once.

The autonomic side is the same. The degree to which the heart sways with the breath — the sway that shows how alive the coordination is — moves together with the degree of pain. A sore place and the heart's timing look far apart, and they rest on the same coordination.

So I Ask About the Years

What this picture does in the consulting room is clear.

I do not ask only where it hurts now; I also ask where the trouble was before that. How were things three years ago, and what changed between then and now. What looks like a digestive problem when the present symptom stands alone becomes a different story when the two preceding years are set beside it.

When I use herbal medicine I do not aim at the one symptom that has surfaced now either. I work on the coordination underneath, the one along which the sign has moved for three years. So even when someone comes about digestion I deal with sleep and tension together, and I look at the same things when they come about headache.

However, a symptom that stays in one place, a symptom that only worsens, a symptom that wakes you at night is a different story. That it does not move is itself a different signal. Such a symptom has to be checked at that site first.

When people tell me their symptoms keep moving about, they usually say it with worry — as though the body were breaking down here and there.

I hear it the other way. That they move about often means not that several parts have broken, but that no part has broken yet. A damaged part does not move its location.

Symptoms that have appeared in different places over several years may not be a list of different illnesses but several scenes of one story. Joining those scenes together is what I do in the consulting room.