Hi my son is 18 years old and has been vomiting different times of the day for no reason for a year and half. Doctor said that my sons stomach was full and he only had a bowl of ice cream in 2 days. Doctors have had no idea so far until now when we finally after all this time get into the GI and first time just talking to my son and he said well you have a problem we were both like OMG finally. So the doctor said there is a blockage and not processing food. My son has been put on nexium, prilosec, and prozac to no prevail. SO I'm wondering if this sounds familiar to anybody. As a parent you can't wait to get answers.

Hello minlari, and welcome to NeuroTalk. I'm sorry to read about your son's problems, and I hope the information below might help you in some way.

It surprises me that the Gastro-enterologist didn't order a gastroscopy, seeing your son has such a long history of vomiting.

One condition which could cause this vomiting is narrowing of the esophagus. That's the food tobe that goes from the throat to the stomach. Narrowing of that tube is fairly common, and can cause this type of symptom.

Another one is a hiatus hernia. In that one, part of the stomach actually sits in the chest instead of under it, and because it's only a part of the stomach, the lower bit is half blocked off. So..... when a person eats, the top half of the stomach which sits within the chest cavity, gets full very quickly and once over full, can lead to vomiting.

These are only 2 suggestions that might be causing your son's problem. Look them both up on the internet and see if either of the symptoms suit your son, and then make another appointment to go back and see the Gastroenterologist, once you're armed with further questions to ask.

Welcome again, and I hope this has been of some assitance.

Minarli - my son has been doing the same thing for almost TWO years. I habe no ansers. They have done the scope into the stomach, prescribed medications, it goes away for a month or two and come back. He is at college right now and it has started up all over again. I have vowed to not stop until we can resolve this. With his boouts he ends up in the ER dehydrated. His episodes always occur in the am upon getting up. But yesterday, it happened at night.

It sounds like he may have a GI motility disorder, such as Gastroparesis (Delayed Gastric Emptying)...

Hi I posted this a few years ago and thought you may want to review.

You should be checked out by Your Dr. or ER, if the examination and test results are idiopathic (without cause) then consider Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy.

Also look up Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction: http://intmed.muhealth.org/gast/pati...ncteroddi.html

You may also be interested in reading this case study at:

http://www.painbustersclinic.com.au/...s/vomiting.htm

by Gary A Clark, myotherapist

"Cyclic vomiting syndrome may sometimes be caused by the 'belch button' - a little-known or undertood trigger point:

It all started when Janet, the lady in question, had to undergo surgery to have fibroids removed.

As she’d had abdominal surgery some years before the surgeon decided to re open the old scar down the linear alba, that is right down the middle of the abdomen.

The operation went well, even though the fibroid was rather large, as the surgeon said afterwards almost as big as a football; still all went well until the third day into recovery.

That is when the vomiting started, every thirty minutes, regardless of whether there was food in her stomach or not. Of course the first suspicion was that a piece of intestine was caught up on the wound closure, still x-rays showed nothing, neither did ultra sound, MRI, or any of the other tests they did, and still the vomiting continued round the clock.

Her husband Frank was so concerned that he spent all his spare time with her, so much so that the ward sister set up a camp stretcher for him so he could sleep in her room.

The doctor in charge called in specialists to solve this problem, and still the vomiting continued. Every morning a collection of five or six doctors would gather at the foot of her bed and discuss the case, then leave, without so much as even speaking to either the patient or her husband.

After this had been going on for several weeks, Frank collared the doctor who seemed to be in charge and said to him.

“ Correct me if I am wrong, but I gather that you believe that there is an obstruction to the intestine that doesn’t show up on the x-rays.” The doctor agreed that this was so.

“ Then why don’t you operate to correct it?” Frank asked.

“Oh we couldn’t do that,” the doctor said, “she is too weak and probably wouldn’t survive the operation.”

As Frank said to me much later, “That came as something of a shock, I realized that my wife was starving, and dehydrating and no one could help.”

“So what are you going to do” he asked the doctor, expecting some profound answer to the problem.

“We are waiting,” said the doctor, “sometimes nature fixes these things itself.”

As Frank said to me afterwards. “I was stunned, here we had a modern hospital with all the latest equipment, and six of the states top specialists, and they were waiting for nature to fix it!” “I can tell you, on that day my faith in the medical profession reached an all time low.”

After eight weeks of vomiting it did actually stop one day, so they discharged her as quickly as they could. And just as well too because 48 hours later it started again, but this time Janet stayed home at her own request. As she said, “Why go back they cant do anything for me, and my bed at home is much more comfortable than a hospital bed.”

After two more weeks of repeated vomiting, Frank came to me as a friend, with the problem, wanting to know if I knew of any treatment that just might help.

I remembered seeing a mention of “projectile vomiting” mentioned in the Travell & Simons Trigger Point manual, so I looked it up. (Its in volume one, chapter 49: abdominal muscles.) Travell calls it a “Belch Button” she says

“The Belch Button is a trigger point (TP) that is uncommon but may be of critical importance to the patient who has one. It is found on the left or right at or just below the angle of the 12th rib. When sufficiently active, this TP. Causes spontaneous belching and in severe cases projectile vomiting, which can be deeply embarrassing and a serious postoperative complication."

Could this be the cause of the problem, after all it is an abdominal trigger point and it’s the abdominal muscles that contract to cause vomiting. I decided to check it out and see.

I went to their house, Frank seated me in the living room while he went to get Janet. She arrived a few minutes later carrying her vomit bowl in front of her, (projectile vomiting gives you no warning, so you have to be always ready). As she approached a vomiting episode struck, and she turned her back on me presumably to avoid splashing me. I thought "well, this is it!."

I rose to my feet stepping up to her wrapped my left arm around her waist and pressed the first two knuckles of my right hand into her back just either side of the spine at about the 12th rib.

The results were dramatic, she stopped vomiting instantly, mid heave!!!

So we stood there with my knuckles in here back and an arm around her waist and waited for it to start again, after about a half a minute she turned her head to look at me, with tears in here eyes, she said “ I think it’s stopped”

That was seven years ago and it still hasn’t returned, I think maybe it really has gone for good.

It’s at times like these that I feel truly privileged to be able to help.

I sincerely hope this information may help someone else with a similar problem.

Gary

PS. Thinking back on this episode it sometimes amazes me that I could do in 3 seconds what the doctors puzzled over for weeks. Still to me the real heroes are Drs Travell & Simon. They worked for forty years researching muscular trigger points and then wrote the books so that people like me could use their knowledge to help others.

They are my heroes.

about the author: Gary A Clark is a myotherapist ..."

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I wanted to thank you for the information about the "Belch Button". It truly is real. I see a massage therapist weekly and I asked her if she knew anything about it and if she understood it. She does. So she has been working on me for the last two weeks and I haven't vomited once. She is only concerned because she doesn't know if doing it w/o me having a episode with in the last 24 hours means that it worked or if it just quit on its own. So we are going to skip that part of the treatment this week and see if the symptoms return.