Spasms in chest

Hi everyone:

I have had GERD for several years now.  I take 40 mg Nexium twice daily.  Lately the Nexium does not seem to be controlling the GERD.  I have been getting pains (with burping) in the evenings and have had problems sleeping due to the pain.  I have spasms that have been occuring for some time now.  I find they are worse when my GERD is acting up.  The spasms are not painful but it feels like my chest is vibrating.  The vibrating sometimes can extend all the way up my throat to my eyes, which sometimes feel like they are vibrating as well.  These spams are especially bad in the morning when I first wake up.  I feel the spasms for awhile and then they seem to go away.  Sometimes the spasms even keep my awake as they are very annoying.

Does anyone else experience these vibrating spasms?  Any idea what to do about them. 

Another question I have is:  Can your body get so used to taking the Nexium (after many years of taking it) that the Nexium becomes ineffective?

 

Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to see my doctor since last summer.  I spend the winter in Florida and my doctor is in Ontario, Canada.  I will have to see him when I go back in the spring.  When I saw him last summer he said that I would be on Nexium for the rest of my life.  Every now and again I find that the Nexium doesn't work for awhile and then I seem to get over the episodes and it works OK again.

The spasms I get don't seem to have any particular time that they effect me.  They probably occur during the day but I don't notice them as much.  I do notice them alot when I am trying to get to sleep and when I first wake up.

I do have a hiatus hernia.  Have had it for years.  It seems to be something that runs in my family.  I expect that that is alot of my problem with GERD.

What type of surgery did you have and did it help?

Actually I had the 270, but slightly different, called a Toupet. My wrap was sewn to the esophagus instead of to itself as in a full wrap. It stops the reflux but does not stop tachycardia from specific food triggers or esophageal or other GI irritation.

I still get tach if I eat anything containing sulfites, or from pills getting stuck in esophagus and irritating, gas bubble in the stomach, or more recently, from colon being irritated from an abscess forming and diverticulitis starting. The last one caused me to go to the ER after tach for 5 hours to get my heart reset. The GI connection to the heart is through the vagus nerve. There is something called cardio-esophageal reflex, or linked angina.

Have you seen a cardiologist about this problem? Before blaming the GI tract you need to rule out a heart problem.

Yes I have seen a cardiologist and even wore a monitor for a few days to rule out the heart.  When it first started happening, I really thought I was having a heart attack but all the tests ruled that out.   I know that I had a hiatus hernia and I had a test done two years ago where I had to have a tube up my nose into my esophagus and wore a monitor to test the acidity level.  It showed that my acid level was still very high even though I was taking Nexium 40 mg once a day, so the doctor put me on 40 mg twice a day.  Now that doesn't seem to be helping all that much. 

Yes I have had an endoscopy and a barium swallow but not sure about the motility study. Both of the two mentioned tests were done more than five years ago though.

Oh yes I have had one of those, two years ago.  I also had to wear a monitor with a tube up my nose for a whole day to measure the acidity in my esophagus.  As a result of that, the doctor put me on two pills of Nexium a day 40 mg. each.  I am going to go to see my doctor again when I go back to Canada in the spring, for sure.  Just hope I can get through until then without any major episodes.