Lots of anxiety over symptoms

Hi guys,

I'm 21, overweight, have huge anxiety problems regarding my health. I won't go much into it as I have a thread on it but I joined this forum a few months ago to help me deal with some problems I had fearing that I had something like stomach cancer. The support I got from these forums was overwhelming and it really helped me get through. It also helped me decide to go to therapy, which I had two sessions for introduction and am still waiting in queue for my therapy to begin over the coming months.

My previous thread (https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=9&m=3696490)

Recently however I have been dealing with stress over symptoms I feel like I have experienced over diabetes. It has been a much more personal fear than previous, as I am overweight, quite inactive (though I will be out and working in a few weeks now), and have experienced a huge sweet tooth most of my life, so I'm not really sure how to deal with this. There was I believe a 'breakout' of diabetes type 2 in the UK uncovered recently though I don't want to look too deep to it out of anxiety. I have so far told no one about these current fears I have, as I am not sure if I want to have people deal with the drama like I had in the last couple of months.

I have no family history on diabetes with exception of my grandmother getting (type 1?) at a very late age around 80, about a week or so just before christmas I had a blood test to check for irregular thyroid activity, all the results came in as fine, I don't know if this might help or not if they would have diagnosed any potential diabetic signs.

Getting diabetes has always kind of loomed in my head in the recent years, and it has only increased recently, particularly this week where it has exploded particularly. It started when I had an uncontrollably itchy anus after going toilet, no matter how much I cleaned, I looked up on the internet for possible reasons (not a great idea), there were plenty of harmless ones, but as soon as I saw diabetes I exploded, and looked for further symptoms. I have been scratched by my kittens quite a lot, and the wounds do take almost weeks to completely vanish. My urine rate is at least 2, maybe 3 times every night (though I do stay up late however to socialize with friends online, usually until 5am). Particularly today I have been really startled about my vision, as symptoms suggested my eyesight would blur more, and whenever I try to focus to test it I just stress out way too much to read anything from a certain distance. Finally tonight at least, which has caused me to post this now, is that my mouth has become slightly dry and I cannot quench it with drinking water. This probably sounds all silly exaggerations and I should just brush this away, and honestly I really should if so, but until I can deal with my anxiety problem this things just come to pile and pile on me and it's tormenting me. I could see a doctor about it but I've been told that this could simply cause worse anxiety for me.

Thanks a lot for reading, any help and/or advice will really help!

Thank you so much for the response LaineG and thank you for understanding. I felt pretty embarrassed posting this thread as I felt and still do feel that time could be spent helping people with actual health problems, but my anxiety is losing control. I have taken consideration on your advice to see a doctor to help me, but is difficult for me as I feel pretty embarrassed at how frequent I went to the doctors about my cancer scar despite constant reassurances. What I will do before that is make contact with my therapist for some help and take up some serious exercise to lose weight so I can build myself some confidence over my health.

As for my current diet I've been avoiding unhealthy snacks mainly, if any snacks at all (originally I would have something like a large pack galaxy bar for an occasional snack or after dinner at least once a day before all this started, but I've forced that to stop now). I will take up exercise today, mainly jogging, and start a routine about it. My diet has been fairly generic, mainly pastas and roast chicken is what I mostly have during the week. One problem I have however is my sweet tooth, and I occasionally become irresistibly peckish for things like biscuits and hot chocolate together, if you can give any tips to help fight these urges they will help immensely. I plan on slowly improving on all this, such as going to the gym, especially when my job hits on a week or so and I will have a more active lifestyle.

Yesterday however, I went to the toilet to urinate about six times throughout the day, once during lunch, and then another at 20:00 that continued every hour and a half to two hours until around 5am. My stress went off the roof to the point that the anxiety made it harder to sleep than any desire to pee. It was also freezing cold that night as well (in the minus). This has never happened to me before and is entirely exclusive.

Hello and welcome back! Sometimes the first step to control our health is the hardest and sometimes it's the hardest because we don't know exactly where to start. I personally know this so hopefully I can help you sort it out, but please remember that I am not a doctor (no one on HealingWell is) and so my suggestions are from what I've learned about my own experience with diabetes, blood sugar and my own health.

I think anxiety complicates things and your doctor needs to address this with you. Anxiety can even manifest itself in physical symptoms and even make us feel the need to urinate more often and since that is also a symptom of diabetes, that can make you think it's diabetes. AND feeling cold also makes us want to urinate more. So, again, the only way to know what's going on with your blood sugar (because that's a worry) is to have lab tests. These blood tests will tell you and the doctor how your blood sugar is when you're fasting overnight and so on. One of those tests will also give your average blood sugar over the past 90 days.

Regardless of the blood sugar, you mention being overweight. Barring any medical reason not to exercise, you can set up a routine of exercise that you can live with. Make sure it's reasonable or you won't stick to it. Whether it's at a gym or jogging, etc., it needs to be something you'll do regularly. Keeping a daily journal or log might help. Fifteen minutes walking or running a day, for example. Can that fit into your schedule? Or, ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the afternoon/evening?

Food. The best way to handle this (before knowing if your blood sugar is elevated or not) is to make sure you're eating three meals a day, not overloading on carbs, getting a proper portion of protein and vegetables and greens (spinach, lettuce, salads, etc.), some fruit, some nuts and some dairy.

Please do not be embarrassed about needing to see your doctor about how you are feeling. This is what they are trained for and I know they want to find out what's going on with you just as much as you need to find out.

You can overcome whatever is making you have these feelings but you need to make sure you communicate with your doctors. Post back and keep us updated! I'm glad you posted!

claps to lanie.