2 years of nausea, upper stomach and headaches....looking for similarities in the causes!

Hi everyone, I have been a long time browser of any functional dyspepsia related forums I can find online and have found them to be a useful aid towards my journey in trying to get better. I feel I have gone as far as I can go with medical treatment after seeing various doctors and gastroenterologists. I have also had enough of the ‘natural treatments’ after no significant improvements from the items others rave about.

I do believe there must be some patterns between the causes of our issues, that could be of use in getting better, but which are difficult to see from individual to individual due to so many people with a whole range of symptoms being categorised by this label of ‘functional dyspepsia’. This in turn makes it hard to find patterns by reading through forums, and the information you need is often difficult to extract from paragraphs of text.

I thought it would therefore be good to start a thread with some structure to it thus removing this problem and helping the more recent suffers to easily find out what will be of assistance to their own issues. If you have been experiencing similar symptoms to that of myself, please share your own experience, but I would ask if you could maybe organise your posts under some headings similar to what I have tried to do below.

Background and Date of Problems Beginning

Male unwell since 10th June 2013 at age 22

After a tough final year of university working 6 days a week long hours, I went on a 5 week holiday traveling around Australia, before starting my career. I had previously been a very active individual who played a lot of sport, had a very healthy diet and rarely tended to get ill. On the last week of my holiday I had a day where I experienced fairly intense nausea for a couple of hours that then disappeared. Two days later after a night out clubbing for my birthday I woke up the next day slightly hungover but otherwise fine, however after having the first couple of bites of breakfast I was overwhelmed by extremely intense nausea making me feel on the verge of throwing up, which stayed with me continuously for about 3days. Ever since this day, over the past two years, I have not had a single day symptom free, although I am currently no where near as ill as I was for the first 8months.

Symptoms Over 2 Years

Over the last 2 years I have experienced all of the following at some point: daily nausea (varying severity), upper stomach pain, acidic stomach, pain in lower right side when exercising, dizziness, headaches bloating, and general ill feeling.

(These days I tend to have mild daily nausea and the occasional few days of general ill feeling or increased nausea)

Thoughts on Possible Causes

Stressful year prior to illness

Possible animosity over where I would be starting work and moving country

Infected Wisdom tooth

Infected insect bites from rainforest

Going long periods without food and having hunger pains on holiday

2nr bouts of seasickness on holiday

Frequent excessive alcohol consumption on holiday

Minor social anxiety

Medical Treatment

June 2013 – August 2013

Antibiotics for insect bite – cleared bite infection

Omeprazole – no effect

Blood tests – normal

Antibiotics for tooth – amoxicillin and metronidazole

Wisdom tooth out

High dose amoxicillin for infected wisdom tooth

August 2013 – January 2014

Urea breathe test – negative

Further blood tests – normal

Malaria test – negative

Further Omeprazole dose – some relief

Extended Omeprazole dose - very ill

Another 2days of Metronidazole in case of stomach infection from holiday

February 2014 – March 2014

Coeliac blood test – negative

Domperidone - no effect

Blood tests – normal

Stool test – normal

Ranitidine strong dose - acidity stopped

May 2014 – August 2014

Ultrasound – normal

Endoscopy - normal

Natural Treatment

Mastic Gum – worse

Wheatgrass – no effect

Potters Slippery Elm – helpful for a while then little effect

Liquorice – slightly helpful

CDSA test - slightly high candida

Multivitamin – appear worse off when not taken

Fish Oil – unknown effect

Acidophilus Probiotics – seemed worse initially but then became very helpful

Gluten free diet – no real effect

Magnesium tablets – no effect

Aloe Vera tablets (leaf not gel) – no effect

Aggravators

Caffeine

Alcohol(following day normally)

Salty food

High fat - high sugar foods

Restaurant food & home baking type food

Very sensitive to motion

Hunger & thirst

Lack of sleep

Anxiety

Alleviators

Salad

Veg

Exercise

Fish

Probiotics

Sleep

Vitamins

Ice cold food

Water

Advice & Questions

I think over the past 2 years the improvement I have experienced comes down to a combination of my body generally getting better over time, discovering the things that help manage my wellbeing and tackling sticking points rather than shying away for them. I know everyone is different but I feel the biggest help to me has been salad and exercise whilst using a good probiotic and taking a multivitamin. During my worst period exercise was very hard as I always felt like I was going to throw up and didn’t want to be in a public place but 9 times out of 10 I would feel much better afterwards as long as it wasn’t too intense. Salad is also of great help, I don’t know why but for some reason leafy salad is better than general vegetables, although veg and fruit are also provide some benefit.

I find there are lots of people contributing their stories on internet forums that when I read through, I think that is exactly what I am experiencing, but he one symptom I don’t tend to see is that I have noticed that I have now become very sensitive to motion sickness, not in the car but on the occasional train and what I consider pretty tame theme park rides (probably small boats too but I haven’t wanted to try since falling ill) all of which I never had any problem on before, does anyone else find this to be the case? 

0 likes, 19 replies