03/19/2025
For almost five decades, I struggled with a long list of medically unexplained symptoms. When one symptom was managed, mysteriously another symptom would arrive in a new location in my body:
🔹 Migraine headaches
🔹 Knee pain
🔹 Grinding teeth
🔹 Vertigo
🔹 Pelvic pain
🔹 Muscle tension & chronic joint pain
🔹 Thoracic, lumbar, hip, leg, and foot pain
🔹 Stomach issues
🔹 Chronic numbness & tingling in arms and legs
🔹 Sciatica
🔹 Carpal tunnel
🔹 Heart palpitations
🔹 Chronic anxiety
🔹 Chronic fatigue, insomnia, and brain fog
🔹 Fibromyalgia
🔹 Chronic neck, shoulder, & arm pain
🔹 Skin rashes & chemical sensitivities
Some healthcare workers dismissed my symptoms, and a few even labeled me a hypochondriac. I felt demeaned & demoralized by their words.
But deep down, I knew it wasn’t true. I wasn’t imagining my pain. I began fighting for answers in my late 40s.
The journey of finding real answers led to becoming a NBC-HWC & brought me to this moment writing these posts to help people understand why so many are in pain, why they aren’t improving, and the real solutions to the silent epidemic of pain.
When I finally looked at my entire medical history as a whole instead of focusing on one symptom at a time, the real pattern emerged. The problem wasn’t in just one body part. The nervous system was the source.
Pain Science Explains This:
Chronic pain and medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) often occur when the nervous system is in a prolonged state of high alert (hyper-vigilance).
When the brain perceives threat—whether physical, emotional, or environmental—it can trigger pain and other symptoms as a protective mechanism.
Pain is a harm alarm & a teaching signal for danger.
A threat is registered a threat in the mind/body regardless of whether the threat is to our physical body/life, or to our sense of self, self-esteem, beliefs, feelings, race, culture, etc.
Each symptom I experienced was a warning signal from my brain, not just isolated medical issues. My nervous system had learned to be overprotective, amplifying pain and discomfort in multiple areas.
The turning point came when I stopped chasing physical causes and started addressing the root of the problem—my brain and nervous system.
I had to fight for my recovery from pain.
There were times when I had to question the way mainstream medicine approached chronic pain. My doctors recommended a spinal cord stimulator as their only remaining solution, but I knew it wasn’t right for me. When I brought pain science to my appointments —showing evidence of better outcomes than a spinal cord stimulator—they dismissed it entirely.
The emerging science of neuroplastic pain was right.
Now, as a nationally board-certified health and wellness coach (NBC-HWC) & a credentialed professional in the healthcare field, I support others in transforming their pain experience.
It was worth the fight.
