shadow1
Registered User
- Nov 29, 2008
- 16,895
- 5,961
Hey buddy, sorry that's happening to you.
I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV, so don't consider what I'm about to post as medical advice. But as someone who suffered (past tense) from globus, let me tell you what worked for me.
My globus started on Christmas Day 2016. I did not have heartburn at that point, just the sensation of a lump in my throat. After five miserable months of my generalist doctor prescribing me things like Pepcid, Omeprazole/PPI, and even Claritin, I was finally sent to have my first endoscopy done. It turns out I had a yeast infection in my throat (oral thrush).
The medicine I was given (Nystatin swish) helped a lot, but I still had the lump in my throat (though to a lesser extent), and now I was having heartburn. And much worse, I was having constant belching issues, which felt like trapped air in my esophagus.
I live in Michigan and turned to the best place around, which is the University of Michigan hospital. There I underwent a series of tests, including a second endoscopy, hydrogen breath tests, and some bizarre test where I had to drink a chemical liquid, eat scrambled eggs, and then get scanned by a huge machine every 30 minutes for several hours. Additionally, they scheduled me for appointments with both a therapist and a speech therapist at UofM to try to rule out all possible causes.
We're in mid-2018 at this point, and after trying seemingly every medical - and lets face it, Youtube - solution possible, I had pretty much resigned myself to having a low quality of life. But fortunately I'm stubborn, and started throwing enough shit at the wall that eventually some of my fixes worked.
The first thing I did was take myself off of omeprazole. Obviously this caused a problem with heartburn, which I now had to counter with things like pepto bismol and antacids. However, this completely killed the awful, far worse belching/air trapped issue. I know millions of people take omeprazole every day, but in my body it was absolute poison. To this day, if I take just one pill, I will start having the previously described symptoms.
Secondly, I requested my doctor for more of the nystatin swish. It helped so much originally that I was convinced more would help, so I requested another prescription. Even though my second endoscopy didn't show oral thrush, this was really the silver bullet for my throat. Lump = gone.
The final thing I did was change my diet, at least for a while. I basically went on the Atkins diet, though I would call it the trashy version of the Atkins diet. I'd eat a lot of salads, but I'd still get fast food a lot - just no fries or soda. I'm 6', and using this Chicken McNugget filled diet, I went from 220 lbs -> 160 lbs in 9 months. For the record, I've put some of that weight back on, and am back to consuming soda, carbs, and happiness. But at the time, I was able to use this diet to help end the nightmare I was living in.
I've basically been cured since mid-2019. I still have occasional heartburn, but no lump*/air trapped belching. The asterisk to that is I absolutely cannot have a drop of beer, or globus feeling will appear in my throat immediately. Even some wines will irritate my throat. Fortunately, no issues at all with spirits.
I am sure you don't have the exact same symptoms I had, but yours sounds similar. I hope there is some value in sharing the abridged version of how I overcame them, and also to let you know there is light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe you can draw some correlations between your symptoms and mine, and maybe you can discuss some of the things that worked for me with your doctor. I wouldn't wish globus on my worst enemy.
