Just in case you didn't know, Honorable is officially Gastroparesis Awareness month, so a good time to call up about having and keeping a healthy gut — especially given that this condition is a fairly common tortuousness of diabetes.

In fact, this uncomfortable condition personal effects about one in five PWDs (masses with diabetes). In our case, it is a mannequin of diabetic neuropathy. We usually opine of neuropathy as impacting just the body's extremities, like the manpower and feet, but gastroparesis is similar spunk damage that takes place in your stomach. Yuck!

What the Intestine? Gastroparesis Explained

Diving into it (double-yuck), we learned that gastroparesis literally means "stomach paralysis" because the stomach has difficulty evacuation during digestion. Normally, digestion is assisted by the wandering nerve, which helps churn your solid food into lowly pieces, before it's mixed with enzymes and unpleasant in your stomach to break the food consume. But with gastroparesis, the vagus nerve is damaged, so the nutrient is slooowly churned and digestion takes utmost longer than information technology should.

Because food is absorbed Thomas More tardily and unpredictably, dosing insulin can become incredibly difficult. Citizenry with gastroparesis often feel hypoglycaemia right after a meal, because the food hasn't reached the digestive system yet, and then hyperglycemia later on because the food has entered the bloodstream after the insulin is mostly finished working. Folks with gastroparesis mightiness need to take their insulin after eating instead of ahead, and insulin mightiness likewise require to be presented much often or only when blood sugar starts to rise. You'll want to work with your endocrinologist as fortunate as an gastroenterologist (yup, they own specialists for this!) to figure KO'd the best times to take your insulin.

IT's sort of a catch-22 with gastroparesis: high blood glucose redress the nerves in the stomach which causes gastroparesis, on the other hand gastroparesis makes it more difficult to control your rakehell sugars. Argh!

The symptoms are all pretty gross and uncomfortable:

  • bloating
  • abdominal pain
  • sickness
  • feeling riddled later on conscionable a few bites of a repast (and non from Symlin)
  • weight loss
  • heartburn

Acquiring Hardened for Gastroparesis

If you're experiencing these symptoms, then you probably want to start get down decent examined by one of those gastroenterologists, doctors specializing in digestive disorders. There are actually umteen shipway to diagnosis gastroparesis, from drinking Oregon feeding barium, which allows your put u to be X-rayed, to using divergent types of scans to criterion the muscular activity of your stomach. (Sometimes they hide the barium in a beefsteak meal — atomic number 102 kidding!)

If you're hesitant about getting looked at by a restore, listen to this: if your food stays in your stomach for too long, a nasty ball of food titled a bezoar can starting building in your stomach. This can worsen your sickness and disgorgement and can sometimes flatbottomed develop into a downright blockage between the tolerate and the small intestine, requiring hospitalization. Yikes! There are treatments for bezoars that can break skyward the mass, but folks who are dosed oft have to digest through months of a liquid diet. So trust us: you DO non want to sit around and wait if you think you might receive gastroparesis!

At one time you have a concrete diagnosis, you can set out doing something nearly your upset potbelly. Like many other diabetes complications, there is no bring around, but there are ways to treat it. Minor cases can be stained with retributive dietary changes. Focusing on feeding low-fat foods and smaller meals gives the tummy less work to bash and eases the digestion process.

Avoid Fiber, Count Meds

Beware that some healthy nutrients can also cause a problem for mass with gastroparesis, care fiber. Fiber helps food move along in the intestines, but information technology has the opposite consequence in the stomach. Patients are often recommend to stick with low-fiber foods, like cooked fruits and vegetables, fish, chicken, yogurt, refined breads and grains. Smooth meals are also frequently recommended for people with gastroparesis, because it provides the necessary nutrients but the stand doesn't let to run quite and then hard.

More severe cases of gastroparesis might require medication. Two common drugs that help with digestion are Reglan and Ethril. Some of them help stimulate muscularity contraction in the abdomen. Reglan also helps with the related vomiting and nausea, merely it can causal agent looseness (another yuck!). Erythromycin is an antibacterial, and hold in mind that patients can develop a resistant bacteria from existence on an antibiotic for too long.

Eating with diabetes is for sure a challenge all on its own, and adding gastroparesis to the mix only if makes things harder. But we fundament't think of anything worsened than having a lump of undigested solid food lodgegd in our stomachs, and so please look a doctor if you think you power have gastroparesis.

Become a Gastroparesis Patient Advocate

To learn much and hear stories from unusual patients dealing with this stipulation, mark off out the many resources available from the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders (IFFGD) at their new site, AboutGastroparsesis.org.

Share on Pinterest

There you will find a whole community of patient advocates centralized on Digestive Health, who divvy up wisdom* online and third house in Washington for favorable legislation fair-and-square the way we do in advocating for diabetes. At the moment they are encouraging for support of a Legislative bill called The Functional Gastrointestinal and Move Disorders Research Enhancement Act  (HR 1187) that would fund research of functional GI and move disorders and ways to improve diagnosis and treatments. We love their useful coiffe of tips for advocates on "the language of Washington," for one matter. Wishing them success!

*If you've been living with gastroparesis and diabetes, we'd get it on to share some of your wisdom. Delight ping United States on Facebook.

–>