Hello I'm Heather,
I came across this site through some google research I've been doing. I'm relieved to know I'm not crazy and I'm not alone in fighting this mysterious esophageal motility disorder.
I'm a 27 year old, healthy, stress free girl but in the last 2 years I started having weird esophageal encounters. It started with my food getting stuck in the middle of my chest, causing severe pain. I would try push the food down with a big gulp of water, which is the scariest thing ever because sometimes that wouldn't even work because the water couldn't even go down. On one occasion this happened, causing so much pain, followed by a weird popping in my throat, which eventually lead to me hanging over the sink and my mom having to give me the heimlich maneuver to force it all out! I'll clarify that for me this is not a choking issue, the food is well past my throat at the time of it getting stuck and I always eat slow and I chew my food well. After this scary incident 2 years ago, I had the endoscopy test done and they told me that I have a "shelf" in my chest but there were no serious signs of any potential issues. So I figured I'm fine I'll just go on with my life, so I did and I had the rare occasion where food would get stuck but I kind of figured out what foods triggered it for me; such as rice, breaded foods, pork etc. so I stayed away from those foods so for the most part I was fine.
But then in the past 5 months my symptoms have progressed to extreme chest pain, heartburn (only sometimes), shortness of breath, lightheadedness, lots of pressure build-up in my chest and all on random occasions from random foods! These symptoms are happening very frequently. I'm a pretty tough girl but the pain is so extreme that I start balling my eyes out and head over to the E.R. but as soon as I get there the pain usually subsides and I figure that they can't really help me anyways so I head home. For me the pain is very rarely in the morning and it's always after I eat food. The pain usually lasts anywhere between 5 minutes to 2 hours and these episodes happen almost every day.
So I recently went back to the doctor, insisting that there's obviously something wrong and a week later I was booked for a barium swallow test. The test showed no blockages or whatever else they look for but the doctor asked me a few questions and by what I told him he figured that I had an esophageal spasm but he told me that when I go for my PH testing in a couple weeks, they'd be able to tell me for sure.
The more I read of esophageal spasms the more freaked out I get because it doesn't sound like there's much hope. I would like to clear this medical issue up holistically if possible. If it's a diet thing, easy, I just need to eliminate the "trigger" foods........ NOT EASY!!! How can I tell what foods trigger a spasm when EVERY food triggers a spasm and it's so random. I can eat the same meal one day and have no problems, then eat it another day and BAM so much pain. It's weird too because I used to kind of be able to "control" the spasms but now they seem just too random and frequent. I did take Rabeprazole for a week just because the heart burn got so severe at one point and I actually did notice a lot of relief with this drug. I will not continue use because the drug is not actually solving the problem it's just masking it. I'm not even sure if the heart burn is even related to the spasms but I have never really experienced heart burn until now.
So after all my blabbering I would like to know what helps everyone. Any advice or feedback is greatly appreciated.
P.S. I have noticed that drinking carbonated drinks with meals relieves a good amount of pressure build up during a spasm but it doesn't totally clear it up.
Post Edited (heather777) : 8/5/2015 10:53:48 PM (GMT-6)