From really bad gastroparesis to almost no symptoms - success story

Hi guys

Three years ago I made a post here about being finally diagnosed with gastroparesis after years of not being taken seriously and didn’t get any help for 5 years. The gastric emptying study showed that 90% of the omelet was left in my stomach after 120 minutes, which is quite severe gp. Because I didn’t get any help I lost so much weight that my BMI was 14.2 at my lowest.

After my diagnosis, I switched to another specialist (the first one was horrible), and she prescribed Constella, or Linzess (linaclotide) 290 mcg. Thanks to this medication, I was able to eat normally. I no longer felt like I had to fast because of my slow digestion, and I didn’t get any vomiting attacks or sulphur burps.

After about 6 months with this medicine, I decided to introduce foods that I was too scared to eat. Today, three years later, I can eat salads several days in a row, I can eat raw vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, cucumbers, carrots and even raw cabbage! I eat kimchi a lot and other starchy foods and vegetables with lots of fiber. I eat nuts and seeds too without any problems. There are a few things I still can’t eat; corn, popcorn and seitan. I can’t eat too much raw cabbage but a little bit is fine.

I can’t say for certain whether my relief from gastroparesis symptoms is due to the medication or if I’ve gone into remission, but I thought I’d share this story anyway. Here are some things that helped me:

  • As I mentioned before, Constella/Linzess (Linaclotide) 290 mcg. You will get diarrhea everyday but I think of it as switching from GP to IBS-D, which I think is much better.
  • Coca-Cola Zero (or regular) helps A LOT when I get sulphur burps. I drink at least two 50cl bottles as fast as possible as soon as I get the burps. This has been one of the best “medications” I’ve tried (and I’ve tried all of them)
  • If you feel like you can and your symptoms are improving, try to introduce solid foods and fibrous foods slowly. I believe this helped my stomach get used to digesting and since the GP diet was invented in the 60’s (IIRC), I believe it is a bit dated. I am no gastroenterologist but for me, avoiding foods made my stomach even more sensitive.

I’ve been almost completely free from gastroparesis for three years now :)

Unfortunately, I’m currently dealing with other issues, due to being severely underweight for so many years, which affected my hormones. I gained 30 kg in only a couple of months without changing my diet and I believe it’s because of years of being underweight and fasting (which resulted in normal BMI and now I’ve lost some weight again since starting another medication for a particular hormone). I just mention this as a warning for everyone here, being underweight can cause soo much problems. This might sound obvious but I never thought it would affect me this much. So please be careful and try to gain weight.

Thank you for reading all of this! I hope this post can help someone :)