What Causes Morning Sickness? Answer: It's Not Necessarily Pregnancy

June 29, 2008

Below are some snippets from a much longer blog post. URL at end.

Re-posted here with permission. Any thoughts on this would be

appreciated.

Alobar

What Causes Morning Sickness? Answer: It's Not Necessarily Pregnancy

Once gluten was identified as a culprit and removed from the diet,

things got much better for The Wife. She still had fairly strong

menstrual symptoms, weird burps, moments of light-headed dizziness and

panic. . . but hey, don't all women? I say this only partly in jest.

Now that we had improved life immensely for the better with the

celiac, the minor slings and arrows she had always suffered must be

taken in stride.

A couple of years later, though, things again started getting weird.

More uncontrolled and seemingly uncontrollable burping. Inconsistent

bowel activity. Most troubling, the dizziness and panic attacks.

Folks, if you haven't seen someone endure a physical panic attack,

don't give me that " oh, it's just in her head " crap. It is not. Yes,

some psychological conditions do manifest attacks of that sort, but

she didn't have those conditions. At this point she went through a

series of pills, mostly SSRIs, designed to make the attacks less

severe. They work, but only a little and only for a while.

So here The Wife had evidence that her raging hormones had produced a

condition not dissimilar to pregnancy, probably the one condition that

would drive anyone out of every drug test ever conceived. There are

very, very few drugs available for pregnant and even nursing women

simply because the risks to the fetuses and nursing babies are

considered too great, the potential consequences far too dire.

I here theorize that morning sickness is caused by hormonal

fluctuations that interrupt the normal production of digestive

enzymes, allowing raw sugars passage to the intestines where

intestinal flora ferment them into gases. Pressure from these gases

causes symptomatic violent burping, vomiting and uncontrollable bowel

movements. Furthermore, some gases absorbed into the bloodstream

interrupt the flow of oxygen to the tissues, causing tingling in the

muscles, racing heart, and dizziness also sometimes associated with

pregnancy.

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