Likely related to getting vaccinated which OK2 has now shown it to have temporal side effects.
Likely related to getting vaccinated which OK2 has now shown it to have temporal side effects.
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I'll answer here first and then I'll go check the PM.Originally Posted by BCR
Funny, because when I saw this thread was bumped, I was sure it was a troll trying to bother me with it, not you with the same problem!
Okay, so I'll summarize my situation, and then I'll give you my opinon about yours.
First off, you can disregard a lot of the 29 pages here, as my "LPR" was not reflux-related at all. I went sent down a stupid path by incompetent ENT doctors.
Here's the problem:
LPR is a syndrome, not a disease. Therefore, it's just a collection of symptoms, and the causes can be all over the place. Unfortunately, it is poorly understood by a lot of ENTs (especially older ones), and it's erroneously assumed in all cases to be from reflux.
While reflux is indeed the actual culprit in a lot of LPR cases, it's also NOT the culprit in a number of others -- including mine.
The smart doctor would ask the patient questions regarding reflux history -- both their personal history and family history. With lacking reflux history, while so-called "silent reflux" could still be the culprit, it becomes much less likely at that point.
I was always a little skeptical about my "silent reflux" diagnosis because I had just about zero reflux in my life, nor did anyone in my immediate family. At the time, I could drink a tall glass of OJ, lie down to sleep, and have zero feelings of reflux. So how could I be experiencing a sudden "lump in the throat" feeling from reflux which apparently never existed?
I was given a pre-printed paper handed out to all LPR-type patients, telling me to get on a PPI like Nexium, sleep somewhat upright, cut out caffeine, and a bunch of other reflux-related advice.
The problem? Given that it wasn't actually reflux-related LPR, this advice was harmful (with the exception of sleeping more upright, which is always good if you are feeling difficulty breathing or a lump-like sensation in your throat when you lie flat).
It turned out I have a very bad reaction to PPIs, which caused crippling, intense anxiety and depression for me. This wasn't known in 2018, and the doctors dismissed my suggestion that the PPI had caused it. In the early 2020s, medical studies started showing up which confirmed what I suspected -- that some patients experience horrible anxiety/depression from PPIs, including ones like me who never previously had an anxiety/depression issue.
The advice to quit caffeine? Also bad. As I've mentioned before, metabolizing caffeine can be slow, medium, or fast, depending upon your genetics. If you are a fast caffeine metabolizer, caffeine is BENEFICIAL for you in several ways, where you're getting a lot of upsides from it with none of the downsides. If you're a slow metabolizer, caffeine can cause all kinds of issues, including insomnia, jitters, irritability, anxiety, and reflux, among other things. Medium metabolizers will be in the middle of these two extremes. It's easy to tell if you're a fast metabolizer. If you can consume caffeine and go right to sleep, you are a fast metabolizer. If both parents are fast metabolizers, you are 100% to be one as well.
Indeed, I'm a fast metabolizer of caffeine. When I asked my parents and siblings about the effect of caffeine on them, they were too (thus supporting the research I read). All of us can consume unlimited caffeine and go right to bed with no problems.
Quitting caffeine cold turkey when you've been used to it for decades isn't a good idea. That combined with the PPI-induced anxiety/depression brought on a new issue -- anhedonia, where you lose the ability to feel any kind of pleasure. You cannot feel any positive emotions. You can't enjoy good food or music. You can't feel love, even for your own children. You can't feel excitement when your favorite sports team wins, or when you do well at gambling. As I described it at the time, "I could win the WSOP Main Event today, and I'd have no positive feelings or excitement about it. I'd know I should, but I wouldn't feel it."
I also had a huge problem sleeping, because my throat would give me a choking sensation whenever I'd lie down, even if I propped myself up. If I were reclined at all, I would start to feel this and have to keep jumping back up. It was torture.
So what was my problem in the first place, and how did I solve it?
The first clue came when my girlfriend brought me a dry mouth rinse, and said, "I know you mentioned your throat feels dry, maybe this will help."
Shockingly, it did more than help. It solved the choking issue. I used the rinse figuring it would be inconsequential, but I fell asleep immediately. I asked myself, "Wait, did the rinse solve this?" Indeed it did.
It turned out that most of my LPR was dry throat, perhaps with the sensation worsened by some irritation by an unknown cause.
I went to a center at USC which mainly deals with vocal issues (as I had those as well -- I could no longer talk more than 20 minutes without pain), and they used a new machine which could look all the way down my throat without causing any gagging, due to going through my nasal passage, which they numb. This was new technology, as previously it had to be done in an awful procedure where a nurse holds your tounge while you gag uncontrollably as a doctor looks through a device down your throat. Yes, it's as bad as you'd imagine. The tech only existed at major, high-budget centers like USC, so that's why I made the trek.
The doctor verified that I did not appear to have reflux-related damage, but rather a mild-looking irritation of unknown origin. By then I had already identified the PPI as part of the problem, and had quit them.
After hundreds of hours of internet research, I came up with my own solution to the psychological issues. I had already "solved" the LPR, in that I got used to the lump feeling, and the rinse allowed me to go to sleep and talk for longer periods of time without pain.
I brought back the caffeine. The first time I took it (but forgot I took it), I felt a feeling of elation 5 minutes later -- the first positive feeling I had in almost 2 months. But it faded, and then subsequent ingestion of caffeine wasn't doing the same for me, though I continued it.
But I started using Xanax every 4-5 days at low dose to make my brain "remember" what it was like to feel normal. It started working. One night I was walking my dog at 2am, and watching Steven Crowder, and he made a joke which made me laugh. It was the first laughter I had in 2 1/2 months. This was a huge breakthrough. It was a sign the anhedonia was breaking. A few minutes later, one of Crowder's co-hosts made another funny remark, and I laughed again. For the first time since this began, I felt real hope.
Sure enough, within a few days, the anhedonia completely vanished, the depression completely vanished, and the anxiety lessened by about 70%. It was a long slog to get rid of the remaining anxiety, and I only got to about the 85% mark. I figured the other 15% was permanent psychological damage, but I accepted it. That remains today. I'm not all better, and I never will be, but I'm better enough to live normally.
Not long after, I quit the Xanax doses. I still take caffeine every day in pill form. I got my life back without getting on any kind of long term medication. I did this by researching my own condition tirelessly, and not just accepting what I was told. The dumb ENTs wanted me off caffeine and on PPIs. A psychiatrist wanted to start me on long-term meds like Lexapro (which has the unfortunate side effect of not being able to get it up). All of this was wrong.
So that's my story. Earlier this year I had a recurrence of it for the first time since 2018, but it was a lighter version. It ruined my Hawaii trip, which I cancelled and replaced with Arizona. I was able to push it out eventually, and took my trip in the summer with no issue.
Anyway, if you cut through all of the rambling posts I made during this time, the above was the actual situation. I cut out a lot of the middle of the story, including my attempt to take Gaviscon, because it's unimportant.
So where does that leave you? I'll post that next.
Regarding your situation...
It does sound like you have reflux-related LPR. The only thing that makes me wonder is that usually it takes weeks to go away (the lump feeling), because the throat doesn't heal that fast, and the PPI are just preventing new damage from occurring, not assisting with healing the old.
It's possible you caught it early enough to stop it, or maybe you're just a fast healer.
The dental related issues do raise the likelihood that it is reflux-related LPR. FYI, you'll never feel sick from it. There is no illness associated with any of this -- only discomfort.
Throat cancer is one of the most common worries people have when they first feel LPR. That's what I thought, and that's what most people think. It just feels like what you'd picture the early stages of throat cancer to feel like, but in reality there are additional symptoms which you probably don't have. For example, if you don't have difficulty swallowing, don't have ear pain, don't have a sore throat, and don't have a lump or mass in your neck area, then it's probably not throat cancer. I had none of those things, so I quickly dismissed cancer before I even entered the doctor's office.
The best Gaviscon is actually from the UK. It's in liquid format. You can buy it online, but it takes a little bit of time to get to you. Taste isn't that bda.
The best course of action for LPR depends upon the root cause. For me, a simple dry mouth rinse was best, but nobody suggested that (except my girlfriend). For you, the PPIs make sense, because of your past reflux history. Apparently you aren't in the percentage of the population to get anxiety from them (as high as 20%, according to one study) or you'd know it already.
You know how I said in the last post that I didn't have reflux? Well, I do now. It's not a horrible case of it, but it's enough to where I sometimes feel the burn coming up my esophagus, and sure enough, I'm starting to feel a lump in my throat now more than before, and this time it might really be reflux related.
So maybe I'll buy that Gaviscon again. I can't do the PPI again because they literally ruin my life. At the moment I just take 2 Tums before I go to sleep, and that moderates the issue.
Yeah, I don’t doubt I still have issues internally. I generally do heal quickly in terms of day 2 of an antibiotic I’m fine and it seems pointless to finish, but that’s why this one didn’t make sense. I was on a 10 day course of levaquin which is pretty strong. My doctor went straight to it when I told him I had already had it for like a month.
But like I said, I never felt a thing when I was late 20s and standard reflux occurred. It was straight to feeling like a heart attack and I recall the films from the gastro showing ulcers throughout the esophagus, but for whatever reason, I don’t feel them. I’m sure I have similar now. For it to be acid spilling over and creating crackles that are confused for pneumonia on the base of my right lung, I’d guess I have a mess in there that it’s going to take a few months to fully heal.
One other thing I forgot to mention in addition to drinking a too of coffee, I had taken more Tylenol and ibuprofen in the last 6 months than ever before. I have neck issues and it had been bothering me. I know too much can cause regular reflux issues, so I imagine this is the same.
But the noticeable things like my voice and the dental issues remedied almost immediately within a few days. So I think it will probably take awhile to heal the internal damage, I feel relatively certain I’m not causing more. It was a good run for almost 25 years from the first episode to this one. But after 50, even though I don’t smoke anymore and I’m not overweight, which is why I got away from using the PPIs, other things can still get you. I go to the dentist this Friday and have a feeling this brief period of time may have caused me some issues that are going to have me getting some work done more significant than I ever have had to in the past.
I have always said as bad as getting sick in my 20s with a weird cancer were, I thought it probably added 15 years to the backend of life as it made me quit smoking and other bad habits. So a good scare can be useful every couple decades to keep you on point and modifying bad habits. Most people, including myself, need a little scare to change shit. I think most people I know who quit smoking or got sober after years of problem drinking did so after some type of scare. Feels like all my friends parents smoked up until 60ish and then they ended up in the ER with bronchitis or something and that was it. You’re fortunate to get a wake up call that’s not the worst case scenario.
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