What can happen when a 50-year-old man pushes beyond his limit?
Below is my personal experience associated with this interesting topic.
As I wrote in my previous post,
I ran the Kyohou no Oka 20 K Road Race this past Sunday
and renewed my personal best.
I didn't realize it then because I was ecstatic at that time,
and was completely unaware of the repercussions
resulting from the extreme physical stress
that I had to endure during the race.
However, as the excitement of the race subsided,
a number of signs of illness manifested themselves.
The first was an acute joint pain.
It hit my right shoulder.
I had always felt a slight discomfort in my right shoulder joint,
like something feels stuck in the joint.
It started when I was a junior high school student,
and when I would play tennis day after day.
And this uncomfortable feeling that something was off
has been with me since.
But the sensation that hit the joint was of a different kind.
It's not discomfort. It was clearly pain!
And it wouldn't go away no matter how I moved my arm to find a less painful position.
I couldn't fall asleep because of it, and even after I fell asleep,
I woke up because of the pain more often than once.
It's less painful now, but discomfort remains.
The second sign was a stomachache.
It hit me two night ago.
It started with a slight discomfort during commute.
By the time I got home, it had increased significantly.
When I went to bed, it turned into pain,
and it grew in intensity.
Out of desperation I took a few pills of diarrhea medicine,
because it was the only intestinal medicine available then,
though I knew it was my stomach that was a problem,
not the bowels,
so its effectiveness was doubtful.
Naturally, it didn't work.
And I had to put up with the growing pain for almost two hours.
Lack of sleep took a toll on my entire body...
The third was minor.
It was a dermatological symptom.
The skin on my left middle finger started peeling off.
I had no idea what was wrong with me.
It wasn't itchy, nor was it painful.
But it was not pleasant-looking.
As time went by, all three symptoms got less serious,
and I am now feeling increasingly normal.
In fact, I feel ready to hit the road for a few miles of jogging.
So what did happen to my body?
My tentative hypothesis is that they are cases of TMS,
or tension myositis syndrome, a notion advocated and systematized
by John E. Sarno, MD
Sparing you heavy technical explanation,
TMS is our subconscious's reaction to a repressed feeling
that you do not want to deal with.
For example,
my conscious mind says, "Be stoic. Be strong."
On the other hand, my subconscious mind says, "Let me take a rest."
My subconscious is like a free child.
It demands freedom from pain.
However, when I have this consciousness that is so strong,
it doesn't not allow to admit the free child in my subconscious.
What will happen?
Well, my subconscious gets angry and forces me to somehow deal with it.
Not directly though.
But in the way which is acceptable to my conscious mind
that do not want to admit that I in fact have another self
that is not as stock and strong as conscious self.
How does my subconscious do it?
Well, at this point, maybe I should say how does my mindbody do it,
because the subjectivity between conscious and subconscious is kind of blurred,
and a physical symptom is a holistic reaction of my mindbody.
Anyhow, getting back to the point,
what my mindbody does is it shifts my conscious attention from my inner conflict
to a purely physical problem,
such as shoulder pain, stomachache, and peeling skin,
Do you believe what I just say?
Or does it sounds like some kind of rambling that has no scientific basis.
If you want to delve into this topic a little bit more,
I suggest reading, "Healing Back Pain" and "The Divided Mind"
by John E. Sarno, MD.
Both are great reads.
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