Beyond the Diagnosis: When Physical Health Feels Like Mental Illness – Part II

Camille McDaniel (00:07.336)
As promised, today we are going to be looking at part two. Last week we talked about part one in this two part series and part one was looking at healing the whole person, starting with God. Well today, part two is going to be looking at healing the whole person, looking at our physical health and issues that come up within physical health.

that mimic or may even cause mental health symptoms and problems. So if you have clients who are struggling with this, if you have ever struggled yourself with things like depression, anxiety, brain fog, moodiness, and traditional treatments or traditional medications for those issues are not working, then this episode may very well be for you.

and prayerfully provide you with information that will allow you to better advocate for yourself, better equipped clients so that they can better advocate for themselves in finding answers. Many people don’t really realize that symptoms like depression and anxiety can stem from underlying medical conditions. And so I know…

that in my practice, have definitely seen more so over the last couple of years, but I’ve definitely seen firsthand where a medical condition was presenting and showing up in my counseling practice as though it was a mental health condition. And it wasn’t until I…

was able to get information from my client about test results after they got their physical with blood work to find out that there were a range of things that some clients have been dealing with that were causing them to not really get better. And that’s because you cannot treat with psychotropic medication or with even

Camille McDaniel (02:18.562)
therapy, traditional treatment forms of therapy, when it happens to be a physical issue that needs to be resolved. So today we are going to highlight some of the most common medical conditions that present or mimic mental health disorders. And we’re going to kind of get started right with the most common. So the most common ones that you may notice are vitamin D deficiencies.

Right, so I just actually went and got a physical a couple of weeks ago and they took blood work as well and my vitamin D was low. And interestingly enough, the professional that I was seeing for my physical was letting me know that vitamin D seems to be notoriously low for a lot of people because you can get vitamin D through sunlight.

but you can also get vitamin D through food. And she was saying that there’s just not a lot of major like foods that have major amounts of vitamin D so that you get everything that you need. And she said, and people really aren’t getting it from sunlight the way that they may have in past years because people are wearing sunscreen. So she said there’s just a lot of ways that vitamin D is being blocked and people just aren’t getting enough.

Well, if you find that you have extremely low vitamin D, you could experience fatigue. You could find that you just really don’t have a lot of energy. You’re dragging, you’re struggling, and that can look like what? Exactly, it can look like depression. Low vitamin D can also lead to some brain fog. So, you if you come in for a counseling appointment and you’re talking about

not having a lot of energy, feeling like you have to force yourself out of bed, force yourself to do chores, force yourself to cook, you feel like you’re in a fog, you can’t get your thoughts together, you just don’t know what’s going on. And you’re thinking it has to be mental health. Well, it could look like you might be experiencing some mood issues, some depressive symptoms, and lo and behold,

Camille McDaniel (04:41.962)
it could be possible that you are struggling with vitamin deficiency. That has to be ruled out. The next one is vitamin B12. And vitamin B12 is great for energy. But if your vitamin B12 is deficient, then you may notice you don’t have a lot of energy. It can impact your thought process. It can make your thoughts not so clear.

it can then impact your mood overall. And from the like literature online and medical journals, I did notice that sometimes vitamin B12 can be common in vegetarians. So I guess, know, just having to make sure that no matter how you eat, I’m not a super big meat eater myself for no other reason than I just kind of was always like that since I was a kid.

And so, you know, I do have to be mindful that I am aware of what will still give me the vitamins that I need. Yeah. Another big one as we talk about that is iron, iron levels, okay? I learned something again from actually the doctor’s office next door, which is actually the doctor’s office is on the other side of this particular wall. And so we are attached in different suites.

And so the doctor’s office, one of the nurse practitioner was kind enough to sit down with me one day and I just had some questions for them as it related to some of the tests that they do in order to determine deficiencies and all of that. And they were explaining or she was explaining to me that we test for iron, but we also test for ferritin levels. And I was like, hmm, okay, didn’t know about that. So your iron levels could be low.

or ferritin, which helps to collect the iron. If ferritin levels are low, it may not be doing a great job collecting the iron. So either way, the iron is essential for transporting oxygen throughout the body. And if you have very low iron or even ferritin levels, then you may notice that you struggle severely with fatigue.

Camille McDaniel (07:06.83)
and obviously if your body is not getting as much, if the cells of your body and the muscles and everything, all the cells, if they’re not getting the oxygen that they need, they obviously are not going to be performing at peak performance and you may notice that everything starts to slow down to conserve energy and and for those clients they may show again a lot of fatigue, there may be some irritability,

There may be some brain fog as well. Now, if you have someone who’s like, you know, they have gotten, I actually had a client who just told me this a couple of weeks ago. They were hitting almost every, there were so many deficiencies when the blood work came back that we really had to kind of talk a little bit about a path to health. They hadn’t really outlined a specific path with their medical professional.

And so we were taking a look at like based on the medical professionals information, what they would need to do according to the instructions of that medical professional, what were they going to need to do because they had to put a plan in place. That plan was going to improve physical health, which also would alleviate them of some of the mental health symptoms that they were feeling because they were actually physical in origin. So, okay.

So if you if you notice that clients are struggling with extreme fatigue of any sort, you really do want to make sure that they have gotten some blood work done and and make sure that you rule that out, especially if like the last time that they had a physical with blood work was like a year or more ago. The next thing that can just throw things off and look like a mental health issue, thyroid imbalances.

If you’ve ever taken a look at at like the body, the anatomy and where all the parts are, the thyroid is so small and it is doing all the things, just a hot mess when it becomes imbalanced. And so if a person struggles with hypothyroidism, then that means their thyroid is underactive, it’s moving too slow and it can actually mimic

Camille McDaniel (09:32.706)
depression because an underactive thyroid can cause not only fatigue, but it can cause weight gain and also people being very sluggish. If you happen to have hyperthyroidism, then your thyroid is hyper. It is overactive and that actually can lead someone to look like they have anxiety, can cause a lot of heart racing.

irritability, restlessness, but yeah, it’s really well known that hypothyroidism mimics depression and hyperthyroidism mimics anxiety. So for that, you’re gonna want to have your client again, just that blood work is going, they have panels. They do like a whole panel of when they take blood work and it looks for all the vitamin deficiencies, it looks at the thyroid and all the good stuff to help diagnose the issue.

Now the doctor’s office actually should know what to ask for. If the client just says, I just want to make sure that it’s not a vitamin deficiency or my thyroid, because I’m exhibiting these particular symptoms. The next thing that we want to address that I just want to throw out there is sleep apnea. And a lot of people actually have sleep apnea. But you know, if you’re waking up tired, even though you had

what seems to be enough sleep, it could make it look like, you know, you’re just feeling like low and fatigued and slow and you just never can get enough sleep and you don’t know what’s going on with you. you know, all of that then impacts other areas of your life. So then it can start to look like, my goodness, my client is depressed.

they probably, you know, are just off in some area of their life that’s causing them depressed mood. And now it’s impacting other areas of their life when actually it could be that they’re sleep deprived. And we know that sleep deprivation, I mean, my goodness, it is so serious. you know, and having children myself, I just know sleep deprivation and it’s like, woo. So.

Camille McDaniel (11:53.762)
You know, it can look like brain fog. It can be irritability. It can be fatigue. know, sleep deprivation can cause a lot of problems. The other thing that we want to take a look at outside of sleep deprivation, the next one is caffeine. Okay, yeah, too much caffeine. And we, I’m sure we know about that, but we need to be asking people about their nutritional habits when we see individuals for initial assessment.

And we want to just make sure we’re aware of nutritional habits as we move on, you know, in different stages, because things change up for people, right? Depending on what’s going on in their life. And it could then impact and have a whole domino effect that then leads to some challenges in the mental and emotional department. But too much caffeine can cause anxiety-like symptoms, restlessness, jitteriness.

rapid heartbeat, right? Here’s the thing about asking about caffeine intake. Cups are no longer really eight ounces. So if somebody has a cup of coffee, you really honestly don’t know how much that is because cup sizes are, you know, not, like I said, they’re not just always eight ounces. Some people actually have mugs. Some people take it in a thermos to work.

you know or they’re driving and drinking their coffee in whatever kind of container that they have and it could be that honestly people are drinking the equivalent of maybe two cups or more in just one sitting. it could also be that depending on where they’re getting their coffee that the amount of caffeine in that coffee is higher than the caffeine that you might get if you just like brew some coffee from the store that you go to. So

We want to actually do just a few clarifying questions or ask a few clarifying questions so that we can figure out like, you know, what is exactly happening. I remember seeing somebody who drank actually it turned out to be the equivalent of over six cups of coffee every day. And when they did cut back, they actually saw improvement in how they were feeling, like just overall. The next thing that we

Camille McDaniel (14:19.532)
definitely want to stay aware of our side effects from medications themselves, whether that be psychotropic medications or physical medications. But since we’re on physical, I will say physical medications, right? And so some medications, for example, like steroids. I know people take steroids for a number of reasons, but I am

People take steroids who have asthma. People take steroids because steroids will help clear up your air pathways. And people take steroids for other issues that they have. so those medications, blood pressure medications, some allergy medications, they can cause jitteriness. They can cause mood swings, anxiety, and sometimes a lowered mood that can all look like depression.

anxiety and so we want to just be aware of the medications that individuals are taking and the side effects. Just remembering that everyone’s body processes in different ways and there is even information out there that says some people, their body will absorb a medication and use it up quicker than the bottle says it usually or the half-life

That’s like, you know, how long a medication stays in your system before just half the dose is left in the system. Like what’s the half life of a medication? Well, some people’s bodies process medication at warp speed. Some people’s bodies process medication very slow. So there might be a buildup of medication in their system.

And so you want to just be mindful of the possibilities. Because again, we are trying to put the puzzle pieces together. And so all avenues should be looked at. One thing that we want to take a look at as we are talking about medications, again, this moves on to diabetes and blood sugar imbalances.

Camille McDaniel (16:40.268)
So for individuals who may struggle with diabetes, if they are hypoglycemic, then they are struggling with low blood sugar. And that can sometimes mimic a panic attack. Like there’s like shaking, sweating, confusion. It can look like the person is, you know, having a panic attack. If you are aware though, that the individual struggles with diabetes,

then it could also be that they are struggling with hypoglycemia in that moment but we just want to check, we just want to be aware, okay and again you may remember the hypo and hyper from when we were talking about the thyroid but hyperglycemia means high blood sugar and so when the blood sugar is too elevated

can actually cause people’s body systems to slow down. So it’s like it looks like fatigue or they might have mood swings or they may have some brain fog and so again just being aware. So being aware if their blood sugar has been balanced or not, you know how are they handling that, how are they handling their nutrition, how are they handling their exercise to kind of keep everything stabilized okay.

The next thing that I want to kind of address would be substance use and addictions because you know obviously alcohol and drugs they are mood alterers so you know they can trigger things that look like anxiety, depression and even psychosis. So if there happens to be someone who is struggling through an addiction and trying to get clean and live a sober life and if there happens to be some setbacks

then you can also look to see if the symptoms that they are displaying might be attached to the alcohol or drugs that they might be using versus it being just strictly anxiety or strictly depression or psychosis but make sure that it’s not that it’s not drug induced. Yeah. Then you have just you know a couple of other areas but like the last one that I’ll just mention is just

Camille McDaniel (18:57.122)
keeping clear that individuals also who might be for whatever reason, whether it’s genetics, whether it’s certain stage of life where this might be more common, but sometimes there might be some cognitive changes and like early signs of like senility or dementia or anything like that. And again, that could be due to genetics. Sometimes you see that more frequently in certain age groups.

And so just being mindful that sometimes a cognitive decline can look like anxiety, can look like depression, but really the root of it might be something else cognitively related. then the other thing is wanting to just make sure I put out there, like any sexually transmitted infections, those can then impact.

our mood and cognitions if they are left untreated. So certain certain infections can then kind of wiggle their way into our bloodstream, central nervous system, neurological systems, all the all of that and can be causing problems. So the next thing that I want to talk about with everyone that I think is like beneficial for us to just make sure that we

I don’t know, just briefly, I know I’m hitting everybody with like a lot of information, but I’ve literally had so, so many experiences with different health things going on that I thought, my goodness, my goodness, I hope all of us are thinking this way. I hope all of us are kind of maybe even talking about this with our clients because it can just help us greatly.

cut down on just feeling like you’re going through a hamster wheel and just can’t figure out what in the world is going on. Why is this client not getting any better? And we just want to make sure that it is not one of these things that that we are talking about. I do not want to skip over the fact that for certain individuals, estrogen and progesterone imbalances are a thing.

Camille McDaniel (21:19.96)
testosterone imbalances are a thing. let’s just briefly, you you can definitely look into this even more, but let’s just kind of briefly take a look at. So estrogen, it’s a hormone that you’ll find in men and in women, but it does play a pretty big role in like women’s mental health. So like if you have fluctuation in estrogen levels,

whether it’s like puberty, whether it’s pregnancy, whether it’s postpartum or menopause or perimenopause, which is right before menopause, you you may notice that irritability changes in mood. So swinging from high to low or even depressive symptoms may actually occur. And it could be associated again with a imbalance.

of estrogen. Now, again, this would be on the panel that everybody would get done when they get a physical, they the blood work will show all all of that it should, you know, and if not, you just can give your clients a list, you know, just write down everything that we’re talking about today, and just give your clients a list if they have not been to the doctor if they have not gotten a physical with blood work in a very long time, and just let them know you’re just wanting to make sure that the physical with blood work is going to check.

for these areas and any other areas that your doctor thinks might be very beneficial to you. Progesterone, okay, so progesterone, it’s another important hormone and it can influence our mood as well. So if you have low progesterone levels, it can cause irritability, it can cause anxiety, it can cause problems with sleeping and…

Like many women may experience some kind of symptoms or difficulty as part of like their premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual dysphoric disorder, is PMDD. And then the last one that I talked about testosterone. So it’s usually associated with male health, but it is also important for women.

Camille McDaniel (23:42.688)
And so low testosterone levels can contribute to low energy. And again, like we talked about before, low energy feels like, you you can’t get motivated to do certain things and you just have to pull yourself to do things where you didn’t have to do that before and you just can’t figure it out, can’t get it together. So.

That is something that can show up in that way sometimes with women and sometimes in men. It can look like irritability along with like fatigue and slowness and can’t get motivated and mood swings. So hopefully this has given kind of like a lot. There’s so much I feel like I probably could come back. Maybe we could have done three parts because there’s even more when you even

look at and talk about like gut health, which is like a whole nother shebang to take a look at. But this is getting us started just looking at the whole individual when we are providing the care that our clients need. And as we provide care in this way, I think it not only benefits our clients and ourselves, but it just benefits our

practice in general, that we are practicing in a different way, not so narrow like I can’t step over into physical health because I’m mental health. I only talk about mental health. I only study mental health. I only look at mental health, but we want to, we have to consider the fact that our clients and just as we are, are multi-dimensional. It’s not just mental emotional.

There are other aspects and if we practice from a holistic perspective, we are going to do so much more good than if we practice more rigidly and only think mental emotional. So hopefully this, I feel like this was a lot. I hope I did not overwhelm with the amount of information, but as always, if you go to christinprivatepractice.com,

Camille McDaniel (26:08.073)
www.christinprivatepractice.com you will be able to download the transcript for this episode. I have that always on the blog area under this episode which is episode 22 and so when you go to episode 22 you will be able always to download a copy of the transcript

which has everything that was talked about today so that you can help your clients and help yourself. Until next time, bye bye.

CPP Ep. 22 Beyond the Diagnosis: When Physical Health Feels Like Mental Illness – Part II