What does untreated depression or anxiety feel like?
It’s hard to describe.
My brain feels like it’s being compressed. Sometimes my brain only feels slightly compressed while at other times my brain feels like it’s about three or four times bigger than my skull.
Fire. My brain will sometimes feel like it’s on fire. This will often happen if my train of thought is disturbed.
Swimmy. My brain often feels like it’s swimming inside my head.
Dizzy. There are times when the memories come back that my brain feels like I’ve been spinning around.
When I get distracted, it feels like someone has punched my brain.
There may have been a time when I was younger that therapy and medication may have had benefits. But those days are long behind me.
And no, simply not thinking about matters makes my brain feel any better.
Touching grass?
Grounding myself?
Come back and talk to me when you’re not living in the fantasy world of make fucking believe.
I can only wonder if my depression was the cause of the two cardiac issues that I’ve had. Take for example the first time my heart put me in the hospital back in 2012.
When I went in blood testing showed that I was in the midst of a heart attack. The cardiac stress test I had the next morning showed that I had heart damage. The MiBi scan that I had next showed that my Left Anterior Descending artery was blocked. I got put on meds to slow my heart down to let it rest and relax. And I was scheduled for an angiogram to place a stint.
When I went in for the angiogram the Dr. performing the procedure was shocked to find that my LAD was wide open and my heart had excellent circulation and that there didn’t appear to be any damaged heart tissue.
I was booked in to do a treadmill stress test. I ran on the treadmill for 25 minutes without a hitch. Good blood pressure, good heart rate, good O2 levels.
The cardiologist that I had seen in 2012 had discussed with some of his cohorts the possibility of a “coronary vasospasm”
I had another incident similar to this around 2018.
Except this time they kept drawing blood samples every four hours. It was found that my troponin levels were abnormally high, but then plummeted back to normal a few hours later. I was sent for another treadmill test and ran that fine for 20 minutes.
It turns out that depression can have nasty effects on the heart.
Coronary Vasospams can be caused by depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. In a coronary vasospam one of the arteries involved with supplying oxygenated blood to the heart contracts and restricts blood flow to the heart muscles. The is the exact same way that a typical heart attack works, but instead of being caused by material blocking the artery, the artery constricts by itself.
All arteries in the human body are muscular. This is how the body can regulate blood pressure. And by being able to restrict blood flow to the extremities, the body can retain warmth in the core when the extremities become too cold. The interesting thing is that the muscle in the artery can respond to more than just a requirement to regulate blood pressure.
The links between depression, anxiety, mental health issues, and cardio vasospasm / Prinzmetal’s angina are known, but they aren’t truly understood.
Long term untreated major depression and severe anxiety have other ill effects on the human body which often manifest as actual physical symptoms.
Beeshive 