Achalasia and other digestive mystery

[Zyriel]

I'm not asking for advice about my known medical condition (achalasia), though maybe with the unknown one (digestive). Mainly I want to vent, particularly in a place where others know the frustration of dealing with something that puts road-blocks in your way.

 

I have achalasia. It's sort of the opposite of GERD. The muscle between my stomach and my esophagus (the LES) doesn't relax properly. This means that swallowed food gets stuck in the esophagus. It causes distortion of the esophagus and destroys the muscles there, causing more swallowing problems. It causes pain similar to heartburn as the food sits there and ferments or breaks down in other ways. It causes regugitation, which is like vomiting but since it's not from the stomach it's apparently a different word. It causes aspiration (food/liquid in the lungs). And for me it also caused malnutrition and kidney stones.

 

I had a laproscopic heller myotomy about 10 years ago. This involved cutting the LES, then wrapping the stomach around it and pinning the stomach to the muscle (fundoplication) to keep it open. It's been pretty successful. If I eat too fast or don't chew enough, food will get caught and it can be very difficult to clear it. Often leading to regugitation.

 

In addition to this I have an undiagnosed digestive problem that sometimes leads to massive amounts of air coming up from my stomach. I know this usually happens a day or two before my cycle begins, but otherwise have no clue what causes it. It does happen on other days sometimes, but it happens with my cycle like clockwork. Because of the procedure I had, this air gets caught in the upper stomach pocket and causes immense pain. I get spasms and cramps radiating through my chest, to my back and up as high as my jaw. I can't burp because I don't have the muscles for it. So instead I literally vomit air. It's horribly painful and nothing helps except drinking water to keep the muscles moving and spasming less.

 

I firmly believe these two issues are pathologically related. I've seen too many hints from others' accounts of their achalasia issues to believe otherwise.

 

So where I'm left is that my achalasia symptoms have increased in the last week. I'm on day 14 of my whole30 right now. Considering I seldom have swallowing trouble, encountering it every other day all of the sudden is very disturbing. Not only that, but on the days I'm not having swallowing trouble, I'm having the digestive trouble. So every day it's something. It is disheartening and I feel like crap. I can't possibly eat my 3 square meals since I can't swallow them.

 

When I was very ill, before my procedure, I lived on dairy. It was the only thing that I could consistently get down and because it was high in fat it made me feel better. I'm not doing that now, but when I'm not feeling good I'm certainly thinking back on that time. Dairy is my comfort food.

 

I really thought clean eating would make the digestive part better. I don't know what I'm eating that's causing the distress so I don't know what to cut out to test it (or what to eat to test it).

 

So that's my rant. I guess I just didn't want to clutter up my food log with it but wanted to get it out. 

[jmcbn]

I'm sorry to hear you're having such a hard time. Unfortunately I'm unfamiliar with your condition and can offer no advice, only sympathy, and comment that in MANY cases people who come here with medical issues find that they get worse before they get better.

Hopefully this will be the case for you, but in the meantime is there anything you can do to make eating easier? Like sipping on bone broth, or trying blended soups? Sticking with easier to digest foods like mashed root veg or scrambled eggs? 

I'm useless to you I know, but just wanted you to know that somebody was listening & wishing you well...... 

[MeadowLily]

When you're not doing a Whole 30...are you affected by sugar, coffee and alcohol?

 

Here's a link, not the same but similar.

 

http://forum.whole9life.com/topic/11340-always-room-for-improvement-my-whole30-success-story/

[Zyriel]

I drank espresso daily, usually with heavy cream. Though on days I went in to work, or on weekends I would often have a vanilla latte. On Whole30 I am having a lot more tea, and I still have espresso sometimes but as bulletproof espresso.

 

I drink a pretty fair amount of alcohol. I'm a big cocktail fan and I live in an amazing city for cocktails. That's also probably where my highest sugar content comes from, the juices and such in the cocktails. But that's not really daily, it's more that when I go out, I'll have 2 or 3 in a row. And I go out once or twice a week.

 

I'm not a big sugar hound. I don't eat a ton of candy and treats. I don't drink soda. But I do consume some sugar in a fair amount of eats and drinks. I almost always look at the dessert menu when I eat out, which for a while there was almost daily, but I only order a dessert sometimes when it looks particularly good.

 

So my sugar and alcohol are waaay down, particularly since I'm not eating much fruit. But my caffeine intake is probably the same over all.

 

Thank you very much for the link. I did searches but didn't try that term. I'll read that thread too. Thing is, I wasn't having trouble with it before Whole30. :/

[MeadowLily]

Bulletproof coffee...what do you put in that?  Do you use MCT coconut oil?

[Zyriel]

I put clarified butter and coconut oil. I eyeball it and I do it with a long shot of espresso (watery espresso). Over my whole 15 days so far I've done that less and less though. I think I made some yesterday. Maybe twice last week. Daily the first week though.

 

I haven't bought MCT oil because I heard it didn't taste good; I just figure I'll stick with coconut oil since it does taste good.

[MeadowLily]

MCT oil doesn't really have much of a taste....but whenever I would use it,  caused stomach upset. Do you think coffee and coconut oil are upsetting your digestion?  I know that both of these items can really bother those with IBS.  

[Zyriel]

Coffee can aggravate it, but I drink coffee all the time and am fine too. It's just sometimes the caffeine will trigger spasms and things, tea could do it too. But I've gone months of drinking coffee daily without an issue other than the one day a month as well. I think it's a trigger, not a cause. 

 

Coconut was on my mind. It's hard to pinpoint a day that I haven't had it so far on my Whole30. Although I had curry today that had some coconut milk in it and I'm still doing fine. Coconut is the main thing I can think of that I've specifically upped ingesting, aside from eating more veggies over all. What's frustrating is that cutting it out and feeling fine won't prove anything. Although I guess if I then add it back in and consistently don't feel well that's something. I never knew coconut caused upset digestion for some people.

[MeadowLily]

Try it without coconut, coffee and tea.  It may be difficult at first.  Confront it head on.  Give it a whirl and see if you don't feel better.  I'm in your corner.  It took me so long to give up coffee.  At a certain point, I couldn't do coconut oil anymore.   I've used everything else and no longer have stomach upsets. 

 

When I tried to dial it in with MCT coconut oil, that was the tipping point.  I gave up the coconut products.  

[Zyriel]

Ugh, yet another of my former medical conditions visited me today. I think I had a minor lung collapse this morning. In my "good" lung no less. I'm still monitoring but it seems to be under control. To abate alarm, I have had many lung collapses and have gone in for them enough to know when I need to go and when I don't. This was a near one, I almost went. But I seem to be ok, the pressure is down.

 

Anyway, after I got over my own alarm at that I realized I was also having stomach issues. Air coming up, not feeling good. I even got the hiccups, really bad ones. That was fun.

 

So I reviewed my dinner contents, intent on showing it had no coconut. I'll be darned if it didn't have coconut in it. Coconut aminos. ::sigh:: I don't want it to be a coconut problem

[MeadowLily]

Ooooo, multi-crap.  I don't want you to have any more anythings.  Try to stay away from those coconut products and see if you can't get back up and running.

[Zyriel]

Thank you for pointing it out! I can't be sure, but signs seem to be pointing that way so I will cut it out the rest of my whole30. Being half way through that should do a fair job.

 

I guess I'll treat it like the other compounds and do a re-intro later?  ()

[Zyriel]

::sigh::

 

Trouble at breakfast, couldn't get it to go down and came up instead. I think I managed to get some of it down. About an hour later I ate my veggies and that went fine. But it definitely made M1 a 2 hour ordeal. I double checked and there was no coconut in my breakfast and none in my dinner. I'm going to chalk it up to poor chewing I guess. Yet another thing I need to pay closer attention to.

 

Cutting out coconut has been easier than I expected though. I think about it sometimes, but working around it hasn't been an issue so far.

[Zyriel]

Update. So I ate the exact same thing for lunch, chewing very diligently, and had no issues. So it's either a holdover from last night, or it was chewing to begin with. This gives me some ammo for re-intro days though. To be diligent about chewing so I'm not falsely thinking a food is causing issues. I feel like a cow though.