Expert: Tonja Wells - 11/24/2004

Question
Dear Expert Dr:

For more than a month now i have had trouble breathing, I find my self really gasping for air sometimes. My throat or esophagus feels very tight, which makes breathing difficult. When i breath i make wierd noises, like vibration noises everytime I inhale and exhale (espechially when i take a deep breath). I wake up at night regularly, and sometimes stay up feeling uncomfortable for hours. I sometimes feel a burning feeling in my throat, which i think is source of my problem. But at the same time i burp constantly (like all the time), even when i don't have anything in my stomach. I sometimes think the problem is my stomach and not my throat, or maybe my stomach is releasing some sort of gas/acid that inflammes my throat.

I really have trouble breathing directly after i eat. Directly after i burp, i sometimes cant speak, i try to speak but my vocal cords just don't make any noises, this happens a lot. i have to wait till i finish burping, clear my throat, take a deep breath, and then try to speak.

It gets worse than this: i feel that my chest is closed up: i CANT cough even when i try. Sometimes i feel there is something in my throat, so i try to caugh it out but i just cant a caugh out. this really bothers me for hours, i keep trying to caugh but my throat wont let me.

At night it affects my sleeping habits, i find myself able to only sleep on my right side. if i try to sleep on my back or my left side, i either cant breath or make those really uncomfortable vibration noises, my throat feels closed. This makes me wake up at night regularly. If i try to take a long breath, i make vibration noises in my throat.

i have been to several doctors in the last month in Egypt and China but they were not able to explain it. but one doctor said i have a disease called "GERD", acid reflux disease. he said there is acid that gets released from my stomach and gets trapped in my throat, and then my throat gets inflamed. He said it was not serious and gave me medicine but it has not worked at all.

Ive been suffering from this for over a month now and Im really running low on hope. I havent been able to find a doctor to really understand my problem since i now live in china. Hopefully you can provide some sort of answers.

Yours Truely
Haytham Fahmi  

Answer
Although I am not a doctor and do not diagnose it does sound like GERD.

I would look at doing the following
Aloe vera juice before each meal
Proactazyme before each meal
Food Enzymes after each meal
S.O.D.  - follow directons
Gastro Health Formula - follow directions for 3 months.
Mineral Chi tonic - to help spark enzyme production.  
I see this often and have seen this reverse the issues.

Get on your blood type diet 100% benefical foods for 2 weeks.
Do you have a lot of stress?  If so you will want to address this as well.

You can find all these items at my web site at
www.herbalhealthsolutions.4the.net
Hope this helps.