Q:

I'm a 19 year old female and for about 4 months now I've been losing weight without trying (I went from about 140 lbs to about 110-115 lbs) and yet I feel like I'm eating plenty of food everyday. I also feel like I've been getting a lot stupider, if that makes any sense. I've never gotten lower than a 3.7 GPA in a class in my entire history of school but I've been putting as much or more study time into subjects that are very interesting to me and getting lower grades than I've gotten in my whole life. I get bouts of flu-like symptoms weekly (usually 1-3 times a week) involving a lot of sweating, shaking, nausea, and a severe headache. If I take some tylenol w/ codeine the symptoms usually subside after a while but if I don't take any meds then I'm bedridden for hours. More recently I've developed a constant tremor that makes it hard to draw (which is one of my favorite things to do in my free time) and I've been feeling very uncoordinated (for example, I can no longer cary an open drink because somehow or another I'll manage to spill it everywhere). The weirdest thing is that if I sit in a certain position where my back is slightly arched forward in a particular way, my upper back starts tingling and I have a sensation that if I stayed in that position for too long my whole upper back would go numb. I also get these weird waves of being way, way too hot but only while I'm in bed. Sometime I wake up drenched in sweat and sometimes I'm still awake when they come about and I have to rip all my covers off the normalize my temperature.

A lot of the symptoms of cognitive decline are really hard to explain. For a long time I thought I was just stressed or tired but it keeps getting worse and then when I started losing weight and developed a tremor I started getting worried. I'm wondering if this sounds like any medical condition or if maybe it's all just in my head and I'm worrying too much? Does it sound like I should seek medical attention? Any input you have on the matter would be most appreciated. -Thanks!

 

A:

Yes, there is no question you need medical evaluation. There are a number of nutritional, hormonal and metabolic causes for symptoms like this so you need to not delay getting checked out.

~The Doc