Suffering from anxiety, IBS, dyspepsia and Globus sensation- please help!

Hi superstar83

Im really sorry to hear things have been really tough for you over a number of years. Functional digestive problems like dysphagia, aerphagia, non-cardiac chest pain, non-ulcerative dyspepsia and excessive belching can really impact on a persons quality of life ! Unfortnately, it is not unsual for people with functional digective prroblems to also suffer from non/extra colonic symptoms like fatigue and poor interrupted sleep. These presenting problems are what we treat at The Gut Centre, www.thegutcentre.com. We are psychologists and who specialise in functional digestive problems like the ones you described and there is considerable clinical studies that support the efficacy of these treatments. These treaments have been published in the majority of highly regarded Gastroeneterology Journals. The psychological therapies work through what is called the Brain -Gut Axis, i..e the emotional part of the brain is connected to the gut through the nervous system. Although there is not evidence that stress/anxiety is the cause of these symptoms, it does unfortunately contrinute to the sensitivity and psychological distress. the therapies have been shown to help reduce the symptoms and distress. It is not general psychotherapy that we do, it is specif therapy focusing on GI problems. Please feel free to have a look at our website or simply do a search on Google scholar under Psychological therapies for IBS and other functional digestive problems. You could also ask your gastroenterologist about it.

Hope this provides you with some information that may be helpful. Good luck !!

Warm Regards

Jim

Sometimes it is helpful to look at the lesser-known ways of therapy. For example, hypnotherapy is classified as a 'complementary medicine'. From my own experience, I can tell you that I have downloaded 400 types of medical research on varying issues, and have dealt with many more in my own practice.  So here are my thoughts on Hypnotherapy to help you.

I have been fully involved with IBS/IBD off and on since 2005 as a clinical hypnotherapist and Counsellor. If you wish to read the whole story with up to date links you can do that here: https://www.bbbenefits.com.au/health-issues-list/irritable-bowel-syndrome/  

If you just want a short overview there is a recent Randomised clinical trial: the efficacy of gut-directed hypnotherapy showing the results that – Durable effects of gut-directed hypnotherapy are similar to those of the low FODMAP diet for the relief of gastrointestinal symptoms. Hypnotherapy has superior efficacy to the diet on psychological indices. No additive effects were observed.

The ABC did a video that shows a client that in 5 sessions showed an improvement of 80%. In the video, Simone Peters said, “So we found, actually, that after six weeks of treatment, 72 percent of participants had improved with regard to their global gut symptoms following hypnotherapy.” And, "It's equally as beneficial as the low-FODMAP diet (*note - You are able to download a simple sheet showing the FODMAP diet, i.e. what foods irritate the gut, and which don’t). So, the low-FODMAP diet is now considered the gold standard with regard to dietary therapy for irritable bowel syndrome. And we can show, in fact, that hypnotherapy is just as beneficial as the low-FODMAP diet.  She added, “But I think that the real key thing is that people actually don't need to change their diets when they do the hypnosis.”

There are you.tube video’s that do a good job of showing you what happens to the gut in IBS so you understand what you are going through.

If you want to see any of the above, there are links for you to see these on my website that I have shown above.

As always, check the therapist (whether hypnotherapist or gastroenterologist), that they have the knowledge and skills in this area to help you.