Inability to Burp - You are not alone

Below is something I recently posted to my Facebook account. I know LinkedIn is not for things like I am usually going to post here. But I am opening my personal life up in hopes that it will help spread awareness and get noticed for much needed research and support. Again this is a personal thing for me and opening up a lot of my life here, but I feel time to try and spread a message. And when you read the below..it is a strange but real message.

I am doing this as a LinkedIn article, as a post wouldn't allow enough text.

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This is going to be an interesting post, to say the least. I have put off writing this up, but I decided I should to try to take the "letting people know/advocacy" route.

As some of you know back in May I got the hiccups...and they didn't go away. I had them for about 4 weeks straight. Started off as a bit of a funny WTH, but turned into absolute torture. They were the hardest hitting hiccups I ever had. The only thing that could get rid of them for a short time and letting me sleep was throwing up. I finally ended up getting a Dr. who prescribed me some drugs that go rid of them..but the drugs were pretty hard (knocked me out basically) and I had to be on them for about 3 weeks. During the this I couldn't work that well and ended up taking some time off before changing to do contract work. To be blunt..took a lot out of me. Strange and draining.

https://laryngopedia.com/inability-to-burp/

I still have some lingering things going on and trying to figure things out. Thus the advocacy/spreading info part of this post. I cannot say for 100% certainty (especially since no Dr. can also figure out what the issue was) but I think this was part of the cause...I don't burp. Yes, you read that right. I don't burp, belch...whatever you want to call it. Never have. I never honestly thought anything of it, as I thought it was just something weird about me. But after the hiccup incident I have searched everything that could possibly cause it. And that led me to find out that not burping is actually a medical condition, just not one that many know about (including Dr.'s). Basically the upper esophageal sphincter doesn't relax and cannot release air. Not much is known on what effects this has on health because again not many know about it or research is incredibly limited.

There are a few Dr.'s that are known to help but less than a handful. There is one main Dr. in Chicago who treats people..incredible results he is having. But not cheap and not on most people's insurance (including mine). He has helped many people, though, but getting them to burp and then removing a lot of symptoms is causes (see below). I hope I can get out to him one day or other Dr.'s start to learn by what he is doing and more research is done to help people like me.

There is a community on Reddit called noburp where others had the same realization I did when they found out others didn't burp and had issues like them..."Wow, I thought it was just me".

Right not thankfully I do not hiccup. I am always scared they will come back, though. I still have other symptoms of not burping. It still causes me problems at times, and is just a hard thing to manage. What I am trying to do is spread info that this exists out there and hopefully will get some research done as it is bad on some people out there.

If you also suffer from this, please message me as I can talk, give you some support and tell you what I have learned.

https://laryngopedia.com/inability-to-burp/