What Exactly is Gastroparesis?

Posted by admin Filed in Common Diseases on Friday, June 19th 2009

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What causes Gastroparesis?

Gastroparesis has a few main causes. One of the main causes is diabetes, of both type 1 and also type 2. This is largely because uncontrolled glucose levels destroy the vagus nerve.The vagus nerve has the most responsibility of all your cranial nerves. This nerve that begins in the brain, goes on through your neck, through the thorax, and into the stomach. When high blood sugars destroy this function over time, it causes many problems with digestion and stomach emptying.

What you should also understand is that the vagus nerve is made of many fibers and tissues that does a lot for your body. Other than digestion, it controls many of your motor and sensory function. When blood vessels become seriously impaired from either type of diabetes, this stomach problem is a likely problem.

A lot of vomiting such as from bulimia, anorexia, cancer drugs, and severe acid reflux disease can greatly cause a disturbance within the digestive tract itself, and over time, causes what is known as a motility problem. What is motility? Motility is defined as a spontaneous movement of a muscle. And in this case, we are speaking of stomach muscles. When this factor within the body is disturbed within the nerves to our digestive tract, many problems will manifest themselves.

Symptoms of Gastroparesis

Acid reflux is a common problem with this medical condition.
Feeling full even several hours after eating.
Constipation since the stomach fails to process food or digest much of it.
Vomiting is another dominant symptom as well. Since the vagus nerve fails to tell the stomach to digest food for whatever medical reason, you’ll vomit food consumed from days before.

Diagnosing Gastroparesis

To diagnose this stomach problem, you may be given a meal that contains substances which are radioactive. Doctors will view your stomach after the meal several times to see how the meal is digesting or not. Other ways to diagnose the problem are by performing an endoscopy and also an ultrasound. Some doctors may have you swallow a special pill which is radioactive. The pill tracks what is going on inside the stomach and leaves the body in a couple days through stool. The doctor then reads the collected data of the stomach on a computer.

Treatments for Gastroparesis

It is often required to make changes to your diet in order to control this medical problem. You will have to eat foods that are easiest to digest, and avoid those foods that are harder on the stomach. Foods that have a lot of fat or fiber are not easy to digest for example, and you will probably have to avoid many of these foods. Medications can be given such as Reglan or Compazine. These help the stomach muscles move so that your stomach can empty properly.

Another radical treatment is through something called gastric electrical stimulation. This is surgical procedure where they place a device that is operated by a battery, and it sends the signals out through your body to help control the vomiting and nauseated feeling you have in severe cases. Sometimes there are people with this medical condition that will need a feeding tube in order to receive nourishment to the body. This is only done in the most severe of cases.

Jennifer Kirkman is author of several health webistes. Two of her main sites are http://www.diabetesandrelatedhealthissues.com and also http://www.dietplansandweightloss.com. She resides in Florida.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/diseases-and-conditions-articles/what-exactly-is-gastroparesis-979875.html

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