driving me mad!

hi after just comming across this site i do hope someone can help me........im quiet worried about all the symptoms i have it started app 10 years ago wen i started getting chest pains to cut a long story short i drove my gp that mad he sent me to a heart specialist where i underwent a stress test and a heart scan......these all came bk normall and the consultant said he thought it was my posture and i am slightly overweight.......i lost some weight and felt fine for a while more recently i suffer what my gp keeps telling me is acid reflux but im not convinced this is wot it is as i have taken zantac gaviscon rennies amongst others all to no avail.....my symptoms r these i have pain in the chest usually wen i am relaxed....bloated feeling in my stomach my bowels vary from loose to normal stools there is never any blood,i get a feeling in my stomach like someone is twisting something inside me its usually then i have to go straight to the loo! it is worse around my period.....i also have a lump type feeling in my throat it does not affect my breathing or drinking or eating my gp was worried about this and last month i went and had a tube placed down my throat with a camera attached the results............nothing serious the consultant said he couldnt see anything and that it was probably a mental issue not a physical one but i still have the chest pain with stomach cramps and bloating any advice or information i wud be so gratefull x

thanxs dbab for ur quik response,i thing my gp is quiet sick of me so i am feeling he dosent have much patience with me........i have been told the lump feeling in my throat is due to anxiety but i feel no one is helping me with this.........im more concerned now with my other symptoms and just last night i started having feelings of a pulsating feeling in my left side it isent painful at all my bf tends to think its gas and its causing probs in our relationship (im paranoid something is wrong with my heart or arterys) yet wen i had the tests sone 8 yrs ago nothing showed up

There are a number of people here who get chest pains when their gas gets bad. It can even manifest itself in the shoulder blades and back. It could be from excess gas in your stomach or esophagus, or it could be radiating up from your intestines. If your heart tests came back clear, then I wouldn't worry about the heart, but rather treat the gas. Definitely try an anti-gas medicine--since you have such bad gas you may need more than the regular dosage if your doctor or chemist thinks that's safe to take.

Gas will definitely move on you and make you feel like you have a small bird in your intestines trying to fly its way out. You should never, ever eat anything that's sugar free; sugar alcohols are EVIL for people with IBS; 1 gram of that will make my intestines move around so much I think they are going to walk out of me and set up residence in the next postal code. And manufactuer's are tricky with it now; it's in EVERYTHING from sugar free gum and breathmints, to sugar-free cookies, low-sugar or no-sugar added ice cream and even in some low-sugar diet products (Slim Fast Optima). I don't know about outside the US, but in the US sugar alcohols are always listed on the Nutrition Facts table, right where regular sugar would be listed. There have been people on here that have dropped their sugar free products and have suddenly been free of IBS.

IBS is not caused by stress, but stress will definitely make it worse. You need to find something that will help relax you--meditation, yoga, Valium, something--so that you can feel some better. Because if you keep freaking out, you will cause yourself a panic attack, and then you really will have heart palpitations and shortness of breath, chest pains, etc. Practice some deep breathing when you feel your stress start to rise. You may even try and encourage your BF to do yoga or whatever with you. Tell him it will help you calm down and not feel so bad; that way he will feel like you are trying to do something about your condition and he will be helping too. That may ease some of the problems in your relationship. A lot of times men feel frustrated when "their woman" is sick and they can't do anything about it, so they get angry and, unfortunately, lash out at her sometimes. So if you make him feel like he's helping, hopefully he won't feel so helpless and angry.

And for your loose stools, try some calcium supplements. Lil will have to give you the link to Inape's post on how to pick a constipating calcium supplement since you probably don't have Caltrate 600 w/ Vitamin D in your country (probably named something else). You just have to get a brand without too much magnesium so that it will be mildly constipating, which should help form your loose stools. Calcium is also good about soothing inflammations in the intestines and healing damage caused by various stomach "bugs" and bad bacteria and excess stomach acids (bile).

You could also try taking some probiotics for a while and see if they help relieve your gas; gas seems to be a common symptom of bacteria overgrowth. There are a lot of posts on here that describe how probiotics work and why you need them.

thankyou all so much for ur replys it does make me feel better,i did have the lump tite feeling in my throat again at the weekend but i have pinpointed it to anxiety so i shall take ur advice and try some relaxation techniques as i found wen i relaxed the feeling in my throat eased..i shall def be making an appointment with my gp regards the chest pain i have read many articles about stress n how damaging it can be thanxs again for all ur support n i shall keep u all updated xxxxxxx

Hi toriax,
I would really recommend that you see your primary doctor and maybe ask to be referred to a cardiologist. Palpitations in itself may not be cause for alarm. PVC's are usually benign and although very scary and quite annoying does not mean that there is anything major going on. You do need to see your doc though to rule all of this out.
Take Care