Can anyone answer..."Why do Chiari symptoms wax and wane?"

I am curious if there has been an NL or NS to explain this to you? And what their explanation was?

I have never gotten a clear explanation from a doctor, but from my own experience, I think it has a lot to do with our environment. By that I mean weather, stress level, activity level, diet, exercise and support system. When I overwork myself because I am trying to do everything myself, my symptoms are much worse. I am convinced that barometric pressure will affect my headache level. I don't think the medical professionals know anymore than we do!!

Great answers ladies :) I couldn't agree more.

What's been bugging me lately is that a LOT of people have had complete recovery of symptoms after their surgeries... I'm just hoping that this is all because I'm still healing, because I definitely am haha. It's only been a month, and a lot of things have gotten so much better, but some things have not... and like you said, they go up and down in severity. Humidity seems to be my biggest trigger. Stress and pressure from others doesn't help either :) But this is why I got the surgery in the first place... anyways, very much looking forward to my MRI and CineMRI in November. Stuff like this picture seems to help, I hope it helps anyone :)


I have one other thought on this but it's just my uneducated theory... If you've had surgery, the ability of your nervous system to function properly has been altered (hopefully in a positive way :) ). Over the course of our long histories with CM I'm guessing our bodies have adapted as much as they can to function normally under abnormal circumstances. I remember hearing that the nervous system controls every cell in our body or something like that, which obviously sounds absolutely incredible :) So perhaps all these ups and downs are simply part of a very large process of our nervous systems retuning themselves (to say the least haha).

Bill,mthats a rurally very similar tomhowmmy nl described it. He said our bodiesnaremresponding to the pain as if it’s normal, so for it to adjust takems a long time.

haha wow thanks for that <3 That gives me a lot more hope :) It sure is a roller-coaster though uggg and yay ^_^


Bower0730 said:

Bill,mthats a rurally very similar tomhowmmy nl described it. He said our bodiesnaremresponding to the pain as if it's normal, so for it to adjust takems a long time.