Living with Hiatus hernia and vagus nerve problems for 30 years

Hi Richard!  Did you ever have any type of surgery for the hernia repair? The Vagus Nerve issue seems to go undiagnosed and cause a lot of problems for many people. Maybe we can stay connected and start a group that can find some answers and solutions to the problem. Julie in Vegas :-) 

Thank for sharing it's nice to know someone else has the same .

Hi, Richard. I have a hiatus hernia and convinced some of my symptoms are caused by pressure on the Vagas nerve. I found that drinking coffee causes bile reflux which creates gas as the bile mixes with my stomach acid. This increases the pressure in my stomach and presses on the Vagas nerve. When this happens I feel very ill and have to lie down. I find that half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda in a third of a glass of water kills the acid better tha all your antacids and my symptoms improve within an hour. Avoiding coffee including decaf and tea helps a lot. Also don't wear anything tight round your waist this can actually cause a hiatus hernia. I wear braces. Another helpful tip. Try drinking a pint of water and bouncing on a mini trampoline. This helps pull the stomach out of the diaphragm. Best of luck.

One part that people who have hiatal hernia and GERD rarely touch on is

Health anxiety

A condition people might not be aware it is there!!!!!!

It happened to me

Being a doctor myself i thought this will help .

I experienced a bit of chest tightness and bowel changes as well as epigastric pain and i think its to do with regurgitation and osphygitis and spasms

And with an episode of poo colour change i couldn't stop thinking cancer with the persistent symptoms that started to progress to stomach pain and right chest pain and exaggerated bowel symptoms ,weight loss , burning sleep problems

GPs are usually very helpful if you raise the issue but also they will think safety and risk assessment in the sense of other people safety at your work place and first think they may think time off and stress management and occupational health.

So understand how pain works in our bodies

If i pinch or needle stick you or burn you on the skin, your body will feel the accurate type of pain at the very precise point it happened .

The nerves that does that are called somatic nerves which are excessively supplying skin and much more developed and accurate than the nerves that supply of our internal organs , the latest called autonomic nervous system.

The inside organs are supplied by a big random nerve network that supply the larynx osphygus stomach heart liver and bowel bladder called Vagus nerve

And guess what it does not only carry pain signals to brain but also give other orders to organs as (tells the heart rate to speed up or down) ( bowel and bladder to be quite or feels needing emptying) depending on stress ,fight ,fright levels

A competitive athletic sacrificing productive giving pleasing personality known personality type A usually get gutted coz of much stress they carry inside

Hence the wide variety people describe symptoms of GERD and HH and IBS as all linked to stress and anxiety levels

So dont expect when you have HH that you would only get globus or chest pain or epigastric pain or heart burn palpitations, butterflies in stomach or spastic colon or palpitaions or weight loss

You can get some or any or all as all controlled by vagus

Richard Jones, I read some of your story. I too have sufferes from HH 8 years. I think my HH was small but however the painful it cause was terrible. Here is my symptoms:

1. feeling strangled and trembled (trembled=quick palpilation) inside epygastrum.

2. never can take full deep breathing (short breathing).

3. feeling a little regugirtate.

4. sometimes when I do hard work, my back chest was pain.

5. when my emotion is high, sometimes I feel burn (hot sensation) and cramp alongside my sternum.

If you have HH, I suggest you to do surgery to repair your HH. However, I think HH have impact to your health now, whether it's small impact or big impact to your health. Fixing HH can elevate your illness. If I were you, I will undergo surgery to fix HH. Ignoring to fix HH is just the same as letting ourself to live in hell along our lifetime.

I too is planning to undergo surgery now. Because I can't bear this painful anymore. I am just like a dead man alive now.

If you have chance or offered by a doctor to undergo surgery for repairing your HH, agree that and do the surgery to repair your HH. I know that the surgery have risks, but from some post in this forum I found that after surgery they can back to their normal live again. So surgery is worthy, isn't that ?

Richard,

I have many of the same symptoms for many years. My friend recently bought a pharmacy and told me about a product called incrediwear. He gave me a back brace and a body sleeve to try. OMG!!!!! This is the only thing that has ever given me any relief to this degree. I now wear this back brace everyday. But i wear it high to my mid back to cover the area of discomfort. It really has been a life saver. I would say you should try this product to see if it works for you. Let me know if you have any questions.

Todd

Much of what you said seems similar to my situation.  I'm older than you, was playing tennis regularly, healthy just 2 months ago.  One day I carried a wagon full of bottled water for just short of a mile behind me with my left hand.  It was cold, an hour later I had either a heart flutter or it was like an esophagus type girgle type thing, felt bad, 2 weeks later another of the same.  Then it transitioned to a feeling like I was being poked in the heart and that would stay there for hours.  I do have a hiatal hernia, now they are giving me a Nuclear heart test for my heart -yuk the radiation, because echocardiogram, ekg etc, show nothing.  I don't have reflux (had it before).  The sensation before of the "flutter" the last time, was like my 'trachea was being pressed down hard with an object and passed on to my heart to flutter.  My brother says he belches and gets heart flutters though not often.  I think it's the vagus nerve.  Now I'm having aches under my shoulder blades, especially my left side where I pulled the wagon most the way, but also on my right, and got my first professional massage yesterday because of the pain.  I also pulled muscles wrapping around to my chest, and those pains don't go away (2 months now) and confuse the issue of heart or hiatal hernia. I feel awful too much of the time. I want to find out it's not my heart, but wish I'd gone the gastro route first because it's less radiation.   One nuclear scan is the same 100 full mouth xrays.

Once again I would like to thank all of you for your replies sorry I haven't been around for some time but things sort of got on top of me I was unemployed for a while I think some depression took over for a while. I have a 40% disability for my arthritis and 20% for Tinnitus but I live in Germany and this means sweet FA. I still have to work full time to get by.

I'm now 55 years old and it's getting worse I had another gastroscopy last year I have one around every 3 years to keep a check on my hernia. Doctor told me no increase in size I explained to him this feeling of pressure I have had for years he said it might be something pressing on the vagus nerve he told me this nerve can cause all sorts of problems. Do you get a feeling of fullness after eating very little I can have hunger pains but have this pressure under left rib cage as I said I drive for a living and sitting for so long is now just about unbearable. I will give you some of my medical history to see if we have anything in common.

1982  Psoriasis

1985  Hiatus Hernia

1992  Psoriatic Arthritis

2008  Hospitalized after losing the feeling in right side of face now very sensitive to cold and drafts

2010  Shingles

I have been on omeprazole for 20 years now because of my Hernia I have only just learned that these can cause nerve damage when being taken over a long period of time.

I have had so many tests over the years but the most plausible answer I got was the Vagus Nerve as it can cause a multitude of problems.

I will leave it there for now and hope you have found some sort of answer yourselves

 

Hi all, I am really confused by my symptoms but have made some progress which I hope can help you all. Equally would appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

I have suffered from chronic indigestion for the past 24 years. I am 40. In the past I lived on Rennies and just got on with it. I would wake up at night with intense burning and sometimes had blood in the back of my throat. I was diagnosed two year's ago with Barrett's esophagus, which is very small 10cm. I started omeperazole then, and my symptoms minimised. However I was eating very little every day and dramatically lost 2 stone in a few months which was not a good look for me (skeletal !). I have a hiatus hernia since I was a baby, which is likely the cause.

I began eating more and training in the gym last November, I was determined to put weight on and look better. I was eating more food and lying down on a full stomach at night. I have mild sleep apnea due to horrible sinuses which makes me groggy but I was waking up feeling groggier like I had run a marathon. I was experiencing fluttering in the chest. I usually would experience it frequently, but this was non-stop, 25 flutters per minute and was really affecting my breathing. After a few hours of this I attended Accident and Emergency. They felt i have a 'Mobitz Type I' heart condition after running a multitude of tests and keeping me for a week. I saw 4 different cardiologists all whom had differing views.

After this, I began monitoring everything I was doing and everything I was eating to see if i could find the cause. I stopped all indigestion medication for months. I raised the bed head. I reduced food intake. I didn't eat or drink after 8pm. Some foods would cause heartburn on some days, and none on others. It was really confusing.

Eventually I began to realise that this problem is due to a lot of problems but the main one is that any food will cause GERD if it is soaked in stomach acid and present in your esophagus. This is made possible with the hernia by simply crouching forward or coughing or wearing tight clothing etc. You are squishing the mess back into the esophagus, causing the pain. I find it is exacerbated by chocolate and coffee, but it is so had to stop eating them... I have actually chewed chocolate and spat it out rather than swallowed.

I wonder if the esophagus rather than the stomach becomes bloated with food and liquid, and then presses on this 'Vagus' nerve, disrupting the electrical signalling to the heart. 

Now hopefully than helps people. Unfortunately I am having a bad problem since the hospital stay which attracted me to this thread. A burning sensation in my left upper rib radiating to the inside of my left bicep/inch past the armpit. This is most often coupled by a burning pain inside the left shoulder blade. It's sometimes as if the pain is connected between the shoulder blade and front left rib. I wonder if it is connected to the vagus nerve being pressed against or irritated in some way. Other than that I am totally stumped. I have considered costochondroitis, and food deficiency/ allergy, but my diet testing did not show anything.

If anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it.

omeprazole and tablets like nexium can trigger off vagally mediated AF; it seems the chemical interferes with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine which is the main neurotransmitter for the vagus nerve; can also be triggered off by compression in the neck ie vagus nerve neuropathy

Hi there . Try a chiropractor that does xrays . You may have a misalignment or spurs that are causing the hernia etc to really play up. Also try private specialist for internal exam of oesophagus xx

It is becoming increasingly obvious that many people are experiencing problems due to the inappropriate stimulation of the vagus nerve. My story is very similar to many in this thread. I’ve been having heart palpitations for well over 20 years. I believe I caused damage to my vagus nerve when I was weight lifting many years ago. I have always believed the vagus nerve to be the reason. Where my story becomes different is the fact that I developed what’s called “swallowing induced atrial tacharrythmia” or SIAT for short. This is apparently very rare but confirms how the vagus nerve can directly cause heart rhythm issues. It got the point where every time I swallowed, my heart rhythm was disrupted. 18 months ago I had an EP study and the doctor was amazed at how I could trigger the problem with each swallow. He had never seen this before. He was able to locate the focus and performed many ablations while I was awake (not fun). He asked me to swallow and moved in for the kill so to speak. He then went on to complete a full PVI to deal with the sign I was also getting. 

Sadly the palpations returned a few days ago. I also had what felt like a stomach bug which must have aggrevated the vagus nerve. I’m sure hoping it resolves again because I was really getting used to having no rhythm problems. 

I just wish the medical profession could coordinate all this information and develop a better treatment plan. If the vagus nerve is the problem, surely there must be someway to intervene and lessen it effects. 

I firmly believe that my weight lifting tore something inside which has affected my vagus nerve. I want to get an MRI to confirm this but what would they do anyway?

Sorry for the long post.