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Originally Posted by en bloc
I only found a brief mention detailing your stomach issues (gassy & gnawing) and this isn't typically the main complaints with autonomic GI problems. Maybe you mention other symptoms elsewhere, that I haven't read. But autonomic GI symptoms usually include early satiety (fullness), nausea, vomiting, pain/discomfort, delayed emptying, bloating, constipation, etc...all signs of dysmotility (which is the most common autonomic GI dysfunction).
Testing for this includes a gastric empty study, where you eat some scrambled mixed with contrast (you can't taste it), then lay on a table for a few hours while the nuclear imagining documents the movement of food. Results are based upon the percentage of food emptying the stomach within a set time frame (some tests are for 2 hours, some 3 hours).
Testing for autonomic dysfunction of sweating is the QSART (Quantitative Sudomotor Axon Reflex Testing) or Thermoregulatory Sweat Test (TST). Both are relatively easy, but they are typically only available at large academic facilities.
Hope this is helpful.
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Thanks en bloc. The neurophysiologist doctor who did my nerve conduction tests explained that they haven't got the QSART or TST in this big NHS teaching hospital because it is terribly expensive and he feels it is too subjective i.e people can falsify about their sensations and this can't be proven or disproven.
He said that they therefore decided that it wasn't sufficiently useful to them in this neuro sciences department - given huge budget constraints they are under. But my thermostat is completely up the wall so I know what I know about myself and have therefore pretty much self diagnosed this autonomic neuropathy as part of the whole autoimmune thing with me.
Re the stomach I think I should push for an endoscopy before asking for a gastric empty but my GP keeps saying that this isn't necessary because he thinks it's dyspepsia. Personally I think it's too constant to be Gastritis/ dyspepsia and I do believe that I have a hiatus hernia and this is causing me all the trouble. When I bend forward from sitting position something bulges just under my ribs and makes it impossible to breath. I've had this since I was a kid but it's worsened with age. But I would need an endoscopy to prove it and then there probably isn't much to be done about it even if I have one.