Nothing helps acid reflux, horrible pain can't sleep

Digestive health
1

I would really appreciate some advice, since my husband has been going out of his wits for over two months! Severe esophagus burning, burping and pain behind ches tbone.

His endoscopy was clear, apart from mild gastritis and a very mild hiatal hernia. I’m saying “clear”, because that was the conclusion, that these two things cannot account for the symptoms.

Blood work showed only two things:
Helicobacter antibodies
High feritine levels

PPIs (he changed several types and dosages) were aggravating his already tremendous pain. After having finished the treatment for Helicobacter, he stopped taking them and his pain improved somewhat.

All the usual antacids didn’t help! I mean they really did NOTHING.
Doctors kept saying that he should take them along with the PPIs, but nothing worked.

When he stopped taking them he started drinking milk in sips and that brought some relief.
Then he started taking apple cider vinegar diluted in water before meals and he believed that that too has helped.

He can’t eat more than twice a day: breakfast and lunch.
If he eats after 3 PM, hell suffer hell in the mate afternoon, evening and night.

Doctors did a whole bunch of test for autoimmunity and everything got back OK. They did an abdominal scan, and it got back ok too.

After a couple of days of bearable pain, he’s having a pretty difficult night. To describe the pain, he just says that this is no way to live. He tried taking a H2 antihistamin blocker, but after 40 minutes he said his pain got worse.

All the advice that we keep getting is something that either doesn’t apply to him and he’s been already doing it. He’s not obese, he doesn’t smoke/drink, he sleeps practically sitting up…

Burning is behind his breastbone and between his shoulder blades.

He’ll have three major med. exams in two months to measure the ph of his esophagus, its muscles, the way food moves through his digestive tract. But he doesn’t think he can deal with the pain while waiting.

The doctors have put him on bromazepam at night, but t does nothing to help his pain or to help him sleep.

He’s lost 30 lbs, is pale and has dark circles bellow his eyes.
I really worry about him.

I was thinking to pay for ferritin test and transferritin saturation and maybe genetic test to look for haemochromatosis. I’m no doctor, but I spent over two months days and nights reading up on this. I just don’t know how to help him more.

Thank you!

2

Hi, you might find this surprising but I believe it can be anxiety related / induced or muscle spasm / nerves related as well. I send this message out to people nowadays as I’ve gone through the same things and its been quite a revelation once you spot this pattern. This message is for your husband:
I have had this very same symptoms often, even very bitter, acidic taste in my mouth but usually only when I think I have them and I focus on them for a little while. Try to break out of it and see if its correlated in any way to your mood, notice if you feel it more when you might think you’re having them, or when your mood is down (especially if you are generally worried about it and you know the symptoms that people feel normally). You probably don’t have this when your mood is up or when you do something that gives you positive emotions. I often try to fight it with my brain by forcing myself to believe that I don’t have anything and that I am making it up and in a couple of seconds the symptoms go away fully, or I try to redirect the pain and imagine I am feeling it somewhere else in the body. If this works then you should see an immediate pattern between the way you think (discouraged, negative, anxious) with the level of pain you’re feeling, especially if you consciously focus/ ruminate on it too much. This made the chest pressure and pain behind breastbone, back, shoulders blades go away completely as it seems that your brain is inducing either muscles spasms in muscles or it triggers the nerves around that side of your body that produces the sensation of pain. So notice if that makes it go way, if it its that then its anxiety related, I know it feels very real but there’s actual studies that show how you body becomes more sensitive (mentally) and then gives you these sensations or triggers some of the nerves/ muscles that make you feel this way. But please do the necessary medical investigations either way if necessary, even for your piece of mind! Please try it, its been quite a revelation for me! All the best!

3

Thank you so much stefanpavel98 for your reply and support. I will make sure that my husband reads this again! He’s profoundly grateful for your understanding and advice… me too!

You sending us this reply this evening was one of the best examples of synchronicity I have ever experienced!

Since this morning my husband has been doing a 24 hr Esophageal pH Monitoring - he has a tube going down his nose into his esophagus sending info about the pH level to a machine around his neck.
He was advised by his doctors not to take any (home) remedies to soften the “flare ups” and ideally he was to provoke an incident so that it could be caught and recorded.
Due to some unfortunate circumstances our much loved stereo system broke down and my husband went berserk. As his level of stress rose, so did the pain! He experienced one of the worst episodes ever.
And a few moments later, your message arrived…

Bless you!

4

No worries! I recently had Covid and this together with stress / occasional anxiety has produced most of the symptoms your husband shown, especially the pain under breast bone which extended around the back, shoulder blades and left arm (along with the other mild acid reflux symptoms), but in my case being able to recognise what symptoms are real vs induced by the mind (psychosomatic) was the deal breaker. So it turned out that since I became so inactive due to Covid my muscles we’re aching anyway and so anxiety and stress made them quite tense and stiff (especially at night) which can cause mild pain around those areas, together with the fact that I couldn’t eat properly as well as a little bit of depression due to the same reason. In addition, I only spoke with my GP on the phone and I’ve been put on Omeprazole, not knowing what or if I had a problem of that kind which I am sure messed up my stomach a little bit.
I am quite certain that there might have been some sort of digestive issue which was exacerbated by Covid (I am getting that checked as well in any case at the moment) but the pain went away almost completely when I recognised that it was psychosomatic and induced by worrying / muscle inactivity. I would say that from my experience, exercising (getting the muscles moving quite a bit) and so preventing them from getting tensed up while stressed, together with a good diet as well as working on the mind and keeping it in check will improve things quite a bit. But I’m not a doctor and I don’t know all the specifics of your husband’s situation so bear that in mind, I just thought I would help your husband recognise the strong role that the mind has in inducing and exaggerating every little symptom and discomfort.
Please refer to one article (among many others) that explains how anxiety / stress can cause physical symptoms, especially relating to muscles:
https://www.intrepidmentalhealth.com/blog/10-most-common-physical-symptoms-of-anxiety
All the best!