Tackling Symptoms Vs. Causes
In today’s episode I’ll be teasing out the differences between causes and symptoms and why we might choose or need to tackle one, or the other first. We’ll also be discussing when it would be beneficial to deal with them both simultaneously, and when tackling symptoms over causes could be problematic.
Welcome to the Harmful eating and how to eliminate it podcast, I’m your host behavioural health and resilience coach Karen Bartle. If you are experiencing symptoms and struggling to find ways to eliminate them, or in need of some help to identify and manage the driving force of your symptoms i.e., the underlying cause, go to karenbartle.com/contact where you can schedule a 30-minute free call with me to find out what options are available to help you.
If you’ve been tuning into the podcast so far you might have noticed certain patterns emerging with the journey’s that I, and my guests have been sharing so far. For example, in episode 1, I shared my story of having pain while eating breakfast due to a mouthful of ulcers likely to have been brought about by using a toothpaste containing a substance called sodium laureth sulphate which is abrasive to mucous membranes. And by eliminating the toothpaste and using something milder and kinder to my mouth, I don’t have to suffer these ill-effects when I’m eating.
So, in this instance I tackled the issue at cause and eliminated the probable trigger to what was causing the ulcers in the first place. If I had to use that toothpaste and had no other options, then I would have had to find remedies and workarounds to manage the symptoms so I could eat without too much pain e.g., eating a liquid or softer diet.
This would be the same for someone who has for example a gluten intolerance and consumes too much wheat in their diet and experiences symptoms of bloating, nauseousness or gassy, flatulence and diarrhoea. They could either manage the symptoms or eliminate the problem by not eating so much wheat in future.
In episode 2 I talked about losing dad due to chronic heart disease. Dad had a poor diet full of processed and refined foods, he ate and drank very little which caused malnourishment and dehydration, he was addicted to cigarettes, and dealing with severe chronic stress.
Dad was subject to what’s called in the health psychology literature unmitigated agency, where he had a reluctance to seek help, had difficulty with emotional expression, experienced low self-efficacy, and demonstrated non-compliance with professionals advice or adherence to prescribed treatment.
For example, one of the signs of his heart disease was his right foot being constantly cold. I would nag at him for weeks to see someone but he would always retort “nah it’s alright; stop worrying about it”. It then started to turn blue and was getting numb and he was having difficulty walking on it, and he still wasn’t seeking help. Eventually nags turned into threats, and he saw how anxious it was making those around him, andl under duress, he went to see his doctor.
In his heart of hearts, he knew something serious was going on but fear was the driver to preventing him from seeing anyone about it. He had good reason to be fearful. His chronic smoking habit which he’d been doing since he was 16, and his poor nutrition and lack of exercise, had got the better of him and after being diagnosed with peripheral artery disease in his right leg cutting off the circulation to his foot, and after a failed attempt to bypass the clogged artery, he had to have his leg amputated above the knee and spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair.
He suffered in silence past the point of no return before seeking help with his symptoms. A big motivator for me after losing dad was to change my diet and lifestyle so that I could mitigate my risk and potential predisposition to suffering with chronic lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular, kidney, metabolic diseases and cancers which are all prevalent in my family. So, for me it was all about prevention rather than trying to arrest or reverse an already existing disease.
I figured if I could for see a future where I had these kinds of symptoms would I prefer to eliminate them before they arise or fight a harder battle of living with the suffering of having them. Obviously for me it was a no brainer and I took action to change and influence what I could while I could which put me in the driving seat and empowered me to do something about it.
In episode 4 I shared my tragic story of having a disease flare with my autoimmune blistering disease mucous membrane pemphigoid. The recent graft on my eyelid which provided relief by taking the in turning lashes away from scraping on my conjunctiva had been subsumed by the disease i.e., it no longer existed!
In this case disease signs and symptoms were that my lashes were turning back in again and needing to be epilated more often, the graft had completely disappeared causing the eyelid to turn back inwards, and I had redness in the eye evidencing inflammation. The cause was the disease becoming more active, which we don’t have the answers as to why that happened but could be due to a temporary break in therapy. So we had to start treatment to manage the inflammation and to prevent more damage to the eye, and also have more frequent and increased doses or immune-suppressant therapy to eliminate my rogue B cells and prevent them from triggering disease activity in the first place.
In episode 6 Rose Huxford shared how her harmful eating and self-care neglect was due to other priorities taking her attention. The main issues were her worries about her son’s health and well-being as he was a picky eater and she had to learn skills and strategies with her home baking to get good nutrition into his diet. She and her husband were also building a family business and she was dealing with daily symptoms of her own which soon materialised to be associated with epilepsy.'
These were all stressful triggers which severely impacting her health and well-being and required her to focus on changing aspects of her own lifestyle and nutritional habits to manage stress, reduce overwhelm, and eating healthier.
In episode 7 whilst the obvious cause of my jaw to lock while eating breakfast was the cereal being hard, the cause was so much further back in a long chain of events. I, like Rose Huxford, had been experiencing a series of very stressful life events over a few years, which had been causing wear and tear on my bodily systems.
Whilst I was outwardly seeming pretty resilient in coping with them, something had to give somewhere, and for me it was my immune system mistaking my own healthy tissues as foreign, and attacking them causing inflammation, which lead to fibrosis and scarring in my eye.
For others it might be developing cancers, having strokes or heart attacks due to cardiovascular disease, or developing metabolic syndrome such developing symptoms of hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
In 2021/22 I had to have 2 basal cell carcinoma’s (BCC) removed from my face and scalp. They are a locally invasive skin cancer triggered by environmental and genetic predisposing factors such as being exposed to ultraviolet radiation and the onset of autoimmune diseases. In the latter case, when immunosuppressant therapy is being administered in high doses to manage disease, as was occurring in my case, the drugs reduce the ability of the immune system to detect and defend against cancer and other autoimmune diseases.
So typically, then when we are experiencing symptoms, we notice things appearing in our minds and bodies, such as tension, aches and pains, emotional dysregulation such as mood swings, depression, impatience, forgetfulness, intolerances to food and behaviours, skin complaints, and recurring coughs, colds and infections which we can’t shake off.
We might find ourselves managing these symptoms by emotionally or comfort eating more, eating things that aren’t good for us, using substances to cope such as alcohol, over the counter medications, cigarettes, or watching hours of TV, gaming, not exercising, or spending time on social media, all as a form of distraction and comfort.
Symptoms may be acute or chronic and go away of their own accord once the driving force behind it has been managed, such as stress at work. Eliminating the cause can manage the symptoms in many cases, however, if the cause is recurring, it’s likely we’ll have to go through the whole fiasco again each time it comes around. Symptom managing can often be an easier option to cope, especially if we’re already at capacity.
However, when we use coping strategies to eliminate one thing, we can often find ourselves dealing with another one which is equally, if not more, problematic. This is called the dandelion effect, for example, when we quit smoking to feel healthier or to save money and the driver for smoking is say stress, if we haven’t addressed why we’re stress, we very commonly find another something fills that void of helping us to cope with stress.
Commonly this becomes food or drink, and people then find themselves overconsuming food and/or drink and putting weight on, or becoming addicted or reliant on sugar or alcohol to cope. In these instances where there are clear drivers for the habits we do e.g., harmful eating or drinking, smoking, vaping, depressing, etc, it would always be advisable to explore and address the driver alongside the symptoms rather than simply eliminating the symptoms.
So if someone was stressed at work, developing strategies to eliminate the cause in the first place might be to e.g., assertively discuss the problem with a manager and find ways to reduce their workload. If that didn’t work it may be time to take more drastic action of changing jobs or taking a pay cut to have less responsibilities in the current job to reduce stress.
It’s a case of different strokes for different folks, isn’t it? And the most important pathway through all this is that if we use the right strategy to solve the problem at the time. For example, if it’s not feasible to take a pay cut or change jobs, then we could learn some better strategies to predict, plan for, and manage the stressful times when we know they are likely to arise which enables us to emotional cope better with the demands coming our way.
Remember, if you are experiencing symptoms and struggling to find effective and sustainable strategies to eliminate them, or you want support to identify and manage the driving force behind them, go to karenbartle.com/contact where you can schedule a 30-minute free call with me to find out what options are available to help you.
