9th May 2007
I have gastroparesis (GP), and I have definitely mentioned it as well as having the emptying test, which confirmed it.
Mine is "mild", but like purple, I get scared it will get worse.
There is no cure; but then, there is no cure for GERD either (no good 1 besides surgery), and that itself can lead to esophageal or throat cancers, albeit small chance.
Basically they keep you on PPIs to reduce the damage done by refluxing, and try you on a motility drug.
In the US, the ONLY legal motility drug for this is Reglan. I was anxious to try it, although I knew all about the many bad side effects, both scale and scope. I hoped I would be spared those and get mostly good out of it. But Reglan gave me tremors and major heart palpitations after 1 week on minimal dosage (sent me to ER after I stopped - and I am NOT a worry-wort who goes to the ER at every turn). I'm still struggling (minimally) with heart palps. I haven't bothered using Reglan since (but still have a whole bottle of it!).
The idea with motility drugs is that they, too, are maintenance drugs as are PPIs. You'd need them to keep it going, as GP supposedly doesn't go away. Motility drugs don't cure it, they just help it.
Although, apparently in rare cases, if you have a GP problem caused by some VIRUS infection, you should eventually lose the GP. But mostly, this isn't the case.
1 mention here: if you have GP, the recommendation is to go LOW fiber. That means meats are better than veggies, and you have to be careful about what veggies you have; high-fiber foods are bad because they are difficult to move as they do not break down. In bad cases these can ball up into a bolus that gets stuck in the stomach and causes more problems.
Hope this helps with some info. Feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can. I'm no expert - I've only known I have this for ~8 mos, and it's "mild", never mind I'm not a doctor! But as a hypochondriac I tend to read like crazy!
Mine is "mild", but like purple, I get scared it will get worse.
There is no cure; but then, there is no cure for GERD either (no good 1 besides surgery), and that itself can lead to esophageal or throat cancers, albeit small chance.
Basically they keep you on PPIs to reduce the damage done by refluxing, and try you on a motility drug.
In the US, the ONLY legal motility drug for this is Reglan. I was anxious to try it, although I knew all about the many bad side effects, both scale and scope. I hoped I would be spared those and get mostly good out of it. But Reglan gave me tremors and major heart palpitations after 1 week on minimal dosage (sent me to ER after I stopped - and I am NOT a worry-wort who goes to the ER at every turn). I'm still struggling (minimally) with heart palps. I haven't bothered using Reglan since (but still have a whole bottle of it!).
The idea with motility drugs is that they, too, are maintenance drugs as are PPIs. You'd need them to keep it going, as GP supposedly doesn't go away. Motility drugs don't cure it, they just help it.
Although, apparently in rare cases, if you have a GP problem caused by some VIRUS infection, you should eventually lose the GP. But mostly, this isn't the case.
1 mention here: if you have GP, the recommendation is to go LOW fiber. That means meats are better than veggies, and you have to be careful about what veggies you have; high-fiber foods are bad because they are difficult to move as they do not break down. In bad cases these can ball up into a bolus that gets stuck in the stomach and causes more problems.
Hope this helps with some info. Feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can. I'm no expert - I've only known I have this for ~8 mos, and it's "mild", never mind I'm not a doctor! But as a hypochondriac I tend to read like crazy!