Thanks for allowing me into the forum. I am a 36 yo male, 5'11" 147 lbs with no history of health problems until the last couple of years. I am one of the many people here who complain of having chest tightness and severe bloating after meals and it is driving me crazy.
about
two years ago I began having issues with acid in my stomach. There would be days when I would feel acid welling up in my stomach and I would feel 'off.' Since I have always been a nervous person, I wrote this off to excess stress and tried to reduce it.
Last year, however, things got worse. For a stretch of 5 or 6 months I had severe constipation where I wouldn't dump for 4 or 5 days at a time. I made adjustments to my diet and got rid of that problem but I also began having chest tightness a few minutes after eating a meal. I would eat lunch or dinner (rarely breakfast) and about
5-10 minutes after finishing, it would feel like the area from just above my stomach up to my heart was tightening up or twisting inside. Sometimes my back muscles or shoulder muscles would behave in the same way.
At first it seemed that tomatoes were setting off this reaction (I would eat a small tomato every day for lunch and feared I was now intolerant) and stopped eating anything with tomato as a major ingredient. But I continued having this problem. I would feel tight for 20 minutes to a half-hour and then it would subside. After the discomfort (not pain) went away I would often have bloating, excess gas, flatulence, etc. At other times my gums would start burning, I assume from the acid reaching my mouth.
I saw my doctor for a physical in March. My blood work and urinalysis were fine, my heart rate and EKG were also OK. He did, however, tell me I needed to put on weight. I was down to 136 pounds (I should be around 150 at least) I'm guessing because the discomfort was putting me off to eating and I was consuming less and less.
My doctor told me that the problem sounded like acid reflux and referred me to a GI. A couple of weeks later I was given an endoscopy and was told that my stomach is 'full of acid' but I had no issues such as an hiatal hernia or digestive tract damage. So my system (or something) is producing too much acid but no one can tell me why. I was prescribed a PPI and used it for a week but it seemed to be making me worse. And anyway, the prescript
ion would only reduce the symptoms, it would do nothing about
the cause.
I went this recent summer without having these symptoms or a very reduced form of them. I kept my diet limited to bland foods and meditated (tried a gluten-free diet but that was a crap shoot, half of what I ate didn't agree with me). I also began stretching exercises for my chest muscles since I don't have very good posture and spend long amounts of time at my desk at work. But about
two weeks ago, the chest tightness and bloating came back, even with these new routines in place.
I'm really not sure how to go about
this. I'm led to think it's partly a muscular problem but I could be running to specialists forever with all of my guessing. Everything nowadays is so tied up in specialists and they won't give advice or referrals for anything in another area, even if they sense that's the right way to go... And from what I've read of other people on the forum this is a problem that no one seems able to solve.
This seems such a common problem, I don't understand why there isn't a solution or at least an explanation for it.
Post Edited (marlowe78) : 10/9/2014 1:43:32 PM (GMT-6)