Guest guest Posted June 18, 2012 Report Share Posted June 18, 2012 Hi Franca, When I was at my worst (before u had a myotomy), I tried acupuncture w/ herbal teas. I can trek you it definitely helped the symptoms, but it wasn't a cure all. I felt a little better, had less trouble with liquids, but at the end of the day, I still had trouble eating. It definitely helped me relax too! Insurance doesn't normally cover it so it can get expensive. But again, it did offer a little relief. Hope this helps! Leo > > Hi, I'm new to the group. Have been dealing with A for 10 years or so. I wanted to know if anybody has had any success with acupuncture or chinese medicine (herbs) as opposed to doing the western approach. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 19, 2012 Report Share Posted June 19, 2012 Hey, Franca! Welcome. I didn't manage to make it long enough to try acupuncture, but it was on the agenda. Prior to the " end " I'd tried a bunch of alternative therapies, so to speak. I'm with Leo here: each one helped *a little bit.* But then, so did doing nothing -- the nature of the beast seems to be periodic rather than slow steady progression. Bad periods followed by better periods, but always with that downward trend. Final episode last summer, completely and " suddenly " just shut everything down, and I ended up in emergency, followed by a five day stint in the cardiac ward. The problem with ANY of the alternatives is that one is NOT seeing what is happening to the esophagus: how much it is stretching, drooping and twisting. I lucked out, really: my primary symptom was regurging -- i.e., I couldn't keep it down long enough for it to stretch. But that pretty much resulted in starvation, screwed up electrolytes and dehydration, and those nearly killed me. Symptom relief is fine, but not very reliable till you get to the big guns: balloon dilation and Heller/Dor. You didn't say where on the continuum you are. .. . . Best wishes. in WV > > > > Hi, I'm new to the group. Have been dealing with A for 10 years or so. I wanted to know if anybody has had any success with acupuncture or chinese medicine (herbs) as opposed to doing the western approach. > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 20, 2012 Report Share Posted June 20, 2012 wrote: > > ... The problem with ANY of the alternatives is that one is NOT seeing > what is happening to the esophagus: how much it is stretching, > drooping and twisting. ... > I agree. It isn't that none of the alternative can provide any help it is that often with them there is no way to see what is happening. Not just why things may not be working as well as one hopes but also why things seem to get better. Sometimes, but I am not saying always, we learn to accommodate the problem and/or the esophagus dilates and can accommodate more food before we notice it is backed up. The result can be that things are getting worse while feeling like they are getting better. Good to check with the GI too from time to time if doing alternative treatments. That said, sometimes a GI is just going to let you continue, as is, if things don't seem bad and not do the checking that would suggest you may not want to wait for things to get bad. There just are not any guarantees with achalasia. Before I found out I had achalasia, and that was six years before I decided to have a myotomy without a dilatation first, I could have most of a meal still in my esophagus quite some time after I ate. If I had a cold and began to cough hard and repeatedly I would sometime start to regurgitate while coughing. The food would come up in order, last in first out. I am tall and my esophagus was not very dilated so food could just stack up for a while. I was doing well enough that no one knew I had a problem. I had learned to accommodate even though things were not good inside. Sometimes things would get bad enough that I would think about seeing a doctor and then they would get better again. That happened over and over but the bad was getting worse. I had it checked and found I had achalasia but didn't do anything about it until finally six years later it was bad enough that I didn't want to see how bad it could get. But I had a lot of good times in those years too. notan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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