Help with Ineffective Esophageal Motility

Mine is called dysphagia, for me it's a little bit of everything, I have seasonal allergies, I am a mouth breather and I am missing a couple of big chewing teeth. The combination of all of that causes me to choke and even aspirate at times. My GERD like symptoms almost disappeared after I gave up mammalian meat I have had Alpha Gal off and on for over 35 years. This time though the Alpha Gal was mimicking GERD and now thankfully other than the dysphagia things are much better. I also now take a peppermint oil capsule at meal time and it seems to help the throat relax. Not sure if you can relate to any of that but its' awful to have and I feel your pain!

Thank you. I’m working so hard to find food that doesn’t cause the feeling of something stuck in my throat and pain in chest. Frustrated that the doctors say I just have to live with it.

Considering contacting a GI doctor who is dual qualified in Naturopathic Medicine. Maybe helpful for folks with a myriad of GI issues.
Still Looking for Help.

I get esophageal spasms which hyoscyamine helps. It's a tiny pill that dissolves under your tongue. Did the doctor discuss if having your esophagus stretched would help? It's similar to having an endoscopy with a larger tube

Thank you for the info. Apparently my esophagus doesn’t need to be stretched. No structure. Muscle contractions in the esophagus are too weak or poorly coordinated to move food efficiently from the throat to the stomach.

You could try lemon ice at the end of a meal that helped my mother in law

Hi @bla1958
I am trying to navigate systemic problems that include some of what you are bringing up, so I am not sure I know much. I am trying to understand what possibilities are as far as what can be wrong and what could help. Something beyond what we know, right?

I did find something recent that sorta walks through how non cardiac chest pain is addressed. I notice the authors are from Mayo Clinic. It looks like PPIs are the first go-to but maybe not the only one. Have your doctors recommended anything else to try?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11523089/
@kirbylogan maybe this could help you on your quest as well. 😀

Thank you. Will read the article.

I totally agree! Thankfully I found an excellent gastroenterologist. I had severe Dysphagia, and in the last 12 months have had 6 EGDs w/Dilations & biopsies, which resulted in the diagnosis of Lymphocytic Esophagitis. I've been on Pantoprazole & Hyoscyamine for a year to no real avail, however I was was started on Fluticas HFA AER 220MCG oral corticosteroid 3 months ago that started helping reduce the stuck food & resulting vomiting that was occurring with every meal, and swallowing of all pills. It was really horrible. The last year I've cut out all caffeine (by instruction), and haven't been able to eat any meats, raw veggies, salads, pasta unless cooked to death. Had gotten to the point I couldn't eat mushed up scrambled eggs nor mashed small curd cottage cheese, etc. With the Fluticas, I'm not having food stick & throw up very often now, whereas it was every meal every day. Miserable! Eliminating the caffeine and most dairy has really reduced my inflammation considerably and I'm able to take fewer pain meds for severe orthopedic issues. LE is considered a chronic, long term disease, so I don't expect to "get over" it, but I'm certainly grateful that my gastro put me on the inhaler. It has changed my life. I still have to be careful about the temperature of water & hit tea, lukewarm and not extra cold or hot as I like them. My gastro is a conservative physician, and I appreciate that. That's why he didn't resort to Fluticas (or the alternative Budesonide, which he said was "really nasty"...his words!). He never tried to overstretch my esophagus during the EGDs, and has been as frustrated as me that he wasn't able to get it more open during each of the 6 procedures without causing tearing & bleeding. Please find a GOOD gastroenterologist that you trust (I found mine after asking close friends who they saw, and got several really good recommendations from their experiences, so I trusted him going in, and he's proven time & time again that he's really good). Make sure you find out if they are trained and experienced in esophageal & motility disorders. Two things that have changed my life in the last 15 months is the severe Dysphagia and the resulting dietary changes I've had to make. I've had to give up most of my favorite foods (like Jimmy John's sandwiches, pizza, etc.), all spicey foods, etc. Being a lifelong lover of all foods & ethnicities, it's a major life change to be sure. But over time you learn to adjust. It's just not worth attempting to swallow foods that I know will stick & come back up. At first I relied on ice cream, cream of chicken soup, and chocolate pudding cups. Obviously not a healthy diet, and didn't help with weight loss either. Now I just have to be very careful... example, I recently tried Madras lentils that had smashed and whole beans...I could eat the smashed parts, but not the beans because of their skins. So now I'm trying to learn how to de-skin beans so I can eat them as protein substitutes for the red meats, pork, chicken, etc. that won't go down. I'm sorry this is so long, but I want to give you what I hope are helpful ideas in how to manage your symptoms. Please, seek help from a good gastroenterologist! It makes all the difference. No doctor should ever tell you that you just have to "live with it". To me, that's insanely arrogant and borders on malpractice. I had all the manometry & barium tests in 2020 when I first started experiencing issues, but with Omeprazole they mostly subsides until last Fall. If you haven't yet had an EGD (different from an upper endoscopy), please get one as soon as you can (again, from a well-trained knowledgeable gastro), and see what it shows. Sounds you will need the dilation as well with it...and ask them to do biopsies at the time. That way you'll know definitively if something serious is going on. It could be Eosinophilic Esophagitis, or like me, the much rarer Lymphocytic Esophagitis. Scientific research thinks it may be a subset of EoE, but aren't sure. It's also considered an autoimmune disease. I've had the autoimmune disease Pulmonary Sarcoidosis since 1996, but there's no research yet that the two are related. Both are rare. LE is present in 0.01% of the population, so unless you have a knowledgeable gastroenterologist, they may not know about it. I know I keep harping about finding a good gastro, but it is unbelievably important to be treated by someone who knows about rare diseases and how to treat them. I wish you all the best in finding a good doc, getting the appropriate tests, and figuring out the root cause of your problems. It's hell, believe me! I don't want anyone suffering what I have for so long. I'm grateful that I don't have a life-threatening disease like cancer, etc., but it's no fun managing these diseases either. They are life-altering. My prayers are with you.