There are many roads to the destination/diagnosis of Gastroparesis or a motility disorder.
Gastroparesis is a condition in which your stomach cannot empty itself of food in a normal fashion. It is caused by damage to the vagus nerve, which regulates the digestive system. A damaged vagus nerve prevents the muscles in the stomach and intestine from functioning, preventing food from moving through the digestive system properly. Often, the cause of gastroparesis is unknown.
However, the causes of gastroparesis can include:
Uncontrolled diabetes
Gastric surgery with injury to the vagus nerve
Medications such as narcotics and some antidepressants
Parkinson’s disease
Multiple sclerosis
Rare conditions such as: Amyloidosis (deposits of protein fibers in tissues and organs) and scleroderma (a connective tissue disorder that affects the skin, blood vessels, skeletal muscles, and internal organs) From WebMD
See there are roads, paths, streams, brooks, tributaries within these disorders and they NEVER come alone!
If you are living this disease,in its severe form, it is fight to rise above the all of the symptoms accompanying your disease everyday every moment. There are many symptoms of gastroparesis, including:
Heartburn or GERD
Nausea
Vomiting undigested food
Feeling full quickly when eating
Abdominal bloating
Poor appetite and weight loss
Poor blood sugar control (again WebMD) but there is also the pain, wanting desperately to eat but knowing it will lead to pain!
On top of all of these battles there is the battle for healthcare (I have been very blessed-most of the time) not being told by an ER, Dr, or Hospital we are sorry there is nothing more we can do for you.
That is like telling a terminal cancer patient, we are sorry, we know you are hurting but just go home, starve, hurt, and die… Because you are just too complex!
But see that is the problem with all of these myriad of avenues to gastroparesis like there are to cancer? It should give the researchers more to work with and more information! We are really not that complicated! If it is diabetic gastroparesis then you are looking at it from this avenue and determining the link between the Vegus nerve and its stimulation with diabetes, right?
Then if we are mitochondrial based gastroparesis with full breakdown wouldn’t you look at cell regeneration of some sort? Now do not get me wrong, I am not a medical professional and these may be perfectly stupid questions but I do know it never hurt to ask!
I also know with all these labyrinth of roads to gastroparesis we should have triple of the amount effort on awareness, research, treatments, and funding.