I have had stomach problems for the last couple of years. my doctor's tell me I IBS. However, lately I have had a dull ache under my left rib. I am not sure if this may be my pancreas or my stomach. I have considered an ulcer because I have symptoms like upset stomach. Has anyone else had this problem?

What are the causes and symptoms of indigestion?

We have already discussed digestion and how the digestive process works. But today we wanted to look at what indigestion is and also suggest that one of the best remedies for indigestion is to prevent it.

Normal digestion happens without you thinking about it. After you’ve eaten a meal your body gets on with digesting your food and providing itself with all of the energy and nutrients that it needs entirely unconsciously.

But sometimes the digestive process doesn’t work quite so well, and that is the time that you become aware of it. you become aware of it because you are suffering from the symptoms of indigestion, or what can also be called dyspepsia.

It’s basically an upset stomach. Sometimes it can be mistaken for a heart attack, but any competent medical professional can quickly tell the difference.

The symptoms of indigestion can range from mild upset through to severe pain and heartburn and nausea. Symptoms can also include bloating and excess gas.

Heartburn is in fact a misnomer, it has nothing to do with your heart and everything to do with your stomach.

Anyone suffering from indigestion in particular from heartburn knows that it can be extremely irritating and painful. Sometimes the causes of indigestion are simple, as are the remedies, and sometimes more complex.

One of the more common causes of indigestion is simply eating too fast. If you’re eating lunch and you’re late for an appointment and you gobble your lunch down too fast this can cause it.

Your diet can also cause indigestion, particularly when it is high in fatty or spicy foods. Other dietary causes can include too much alcohol, and smoking, anxiety and pregnancy are also common causes.

And then after that comes a wide range of medical conditions, many of which can have side effects of causing indigestion. a peptic ulcer, cancer, gastro-oesophageal disease and many many more can also cause this problem.

If you believe you are suffering from indigestion, or if you are concerned about your health for any reason, you should always consult your doctor first to explore the possibility of a serious underlying medical condition.

Often though it’s a simple matter of changing some eating habits, or what you eat.

The symptoms of heartburn can be quite unpleasant. For a range of reasons the acids in your stomach are forced back up through the oesophagus, and whilst the stomach is well protected from burning by acid the oesophagus is not so well protected and the burning sensation is what is called heartburn. it is actually the sensation of burning from the stomach acids in the oesophagus, and is called acid reflux.

There’s a range of remedies for indigestion, however in our view the best remedy for indigestion is to promote good digestion, but that’s for another day.

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Tagged with: causes of indigestion • digestion • good digestion • indigestion • remedies for indigestion • symptoms of indigestion

Filed under: Causes of Indigestion

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When you ask, “what causes sinus drainage,” you probably don’t realize that you have sinus drainage every day, even when you are perfectly healthy. your body produces up to one-half gallon of saliva and mucus each day in the lungs, nose, throat and sinuses. where do you think most of the drainage from the nose and sinuses go? you swallow several times a minute, so extrapolate that out for an entire day and you get a lot of drainage swallowed down the throat!

The answer to what causes sinus drainage is that normal everyday body functions cause it. you don’t notice it when you are healthy because swallowing and occasional nose blowing is just a part of your every day activities. What you do notice however is when that drainage causes a sore throat or is so thick that it is hard to swallow. in some cases, an abnormal drainage of the sinuses even causes an upset stomach.

Answers to What Causes Sinus Drainage of the Abnormal Variety

When you complain about sinus drainage, there could be a number of health conditions and environmental factors that can cause it. some answers to what causes sinus drainage includes extreme temperature changes, gastroesophageal reflux (GERD), exposure to allergens such as pollen or dust, and even colds and flu.

Because sinus drainage is normal, some of the conditions above answers what causes sinus drainage of the abnormal variety. when you develop a bacterial infection or even a viral infection like a cold, your normal sinus drainage areas become clogged or so gunked up with mucus discharge that the only thing coming out is thick, discolored and sometimes even foul-smelling.

Prevention of Sinus Drainage

As previously mentioned sinus drainage is a part of every day life and is considered normal if it is thin and watery, just like saliva. it is the illnesses and environmental factors like those listed above that are a part of what causes sinus drainage that is abnormal. therefore, in order to soothe the pain from this abnormal drainage, you have to treat the symptoms and sometimes even the causes.

A bad cold and flu are two in a long list of what causes sinus drainage and while these present viral infections that have to run its course, you can still treat the symptoms. Decongestants, a humidifier and even hot tea or soup are just a few of the things that can soothe the pain of drainage.

What causes sinus drainage due to allergies and environmental factors could be greatly aided by proper hydration. many times, you may not drink enough fluids to thin out your mucosal secretions which can cause abnormal sinus drainage. Just by getting plenty of fluids (barring the dehydrating alcohol and caffeine) you can greatly reduce the factor of what causes sinus drainage.

IOWA CITY (KWWL) – Researchers have for decades hypothesized that negative emotions lead to inflated reports of common physical symptoms, like headaches or an upset stomach. but a new University of Iowa study suggests that two negative emotions –- depression and anxiety –- influence symptom reporting in different ways.

Published in the latest issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study indicates that people who feel depressed report experiencing a higher number of past symptoms. People who feel anxious, by contrast, report more symptoms in the present moment.

Understanding how factors such as mood influence symptom reporting is important because physicians make diagnosis and treatment decisions based on the symptoms patients report, how intense they are, and how frequently they occurred, said study author Jerry Suls, a professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute in Washington, D.C.

Previous studies have linked inflated symptom reports to “negative affect,” a disposition also known as neuroticism. One-fifth of the population is believed to have this general tendency, which involves frequent feelings of anger, anxiety, fear, irritation or sadness. however, when the UI researchers examined the influence of temperament on symptom recall, they isolated each emotion rather than lumping them together.

“Our data suggest that a person who walks into a physician's office feeling sad will tend to recall experiencing more symptoms than they probably really did,” Suls said. “If a person comes into the physician's office feeling fearful, they're more likely to scan their body and read any sensations they're experiencing at that moment as something wrong. we believe this is because depression is associated with rumination and exaggerated recall of negative experiences, while anxiety is associated with vigilance for potentially negative things in the present time.”

Suls co-authored the study with Bryant Howren, a post-doctoral scholar in the UI Department of Psychology and the Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice (CRIISP) at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City.

In the first part of the study, 144 undergraduate students completed questionnaires to assess their level of “depressive affect,” and indicated which of 15 common physical symptoms they'd experienced in the past three weeks. Even after factoring out physical signs of depression, like appetite changes or sleep loss, researchers found that people who felt more depressed believed they had experienced more symptoms.

“Is it possible they actually did experience more symptoms? sure,” Suls said. “But all of these folks were nominally healthy. It's likely that each one experienced roughly the same number in terms of actual symptoms, but those who happened to be feeling blue thought they had experienced more.”

Another phase of the study examined current symptom reporting. A sample of 125 undergraduates were assigned to groups. to induce a specific mood, each group wrote in detail for 15 minutes about an experience that made them feel angry, anxious, depressed, happy or neutral. they then completed a checklist to indicate which of 24 symptoms (weakness/fatigue, cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal) they currently felt. Participants in the anxious mood category reported higher numbers of physical symptoms.

“People could say, ‘Well, you made them anxious –- isn't that going to produce a physiologic reaction, like a pounding heart or sweaty palms?'” Suls said. “But we observed a general increase in all current physical symptoms -– fatigue, for example, which isn't typically a consequence of feeling fearful or nervous.”

Researchers repeated the writing exercise with another group of 120 students -– only this time they asked participants to report both current and retrospective symptoms. on average, people in the anxious group reported five current symptoms, while those in the depressed and neutral groups only reported one or two. Reflecting on the past three weeks, the sad participants reported experiencing seven symptoms on average, while the other groups only recalled about three.

“Making people feel sad didn't influence what they reported feeling at the moment, but it was associated with reporting having had more symptoms in the recent past,” Suls said. “With anxiety, we saw exactly the opposite. they didn't report more symptoms over the past three weeks, but at the moment they reported more.”

Suls and Howren aren't encouraging health care providers to discount symptoms by virtue of the patient's mood. they do, however, encourage medical professionals to be aware that different emotions appear to play into how patients perceive their current and past symptoms.

“Ideally, a doctor would engage with the patient briefly to get a sense whether they're experiencing anxiety or sadness at the time of the visit,” Suls said. “In some cases, it may be worthwhile to ask a significant other what they've observed in terms of symptoms, or to ask the patient to keep a symptom diary to ensure accuracy.”

The age of participants was a limitation of the study, though the authors intentionally chose healthy college students to reduce confounds. other studies indicate that emotional instability (such as depressed or anxious moods) decreases around age 40, so older adults may be less subject to recall or encoding biases associated with physical symptoms. Suls and Howren will focus future symptom-reporting research on older or chronically ill adults.

The research was supported in part by a National Institute on Aging grant awarded to Suls and a post-doctoral fellowship from the VA awarded to Howren.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2011) — Researchers have for decades hypothesized that negative emotions lead to inflated reports of common physical symptoms, like headaches or an upset stomach. but a new University of Iowa study suggests that two negative emotions — depression and anxiety — influence symptom reporting in different ways.

Published in the latest issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study indicates that people who feel depressed report experiencing a higher number of past symptoms. People who feel anxious, by contrast, report more symptoms in the present moment.

Understanding how factors such as mood influence symptom reporting is important because physicians make diagnosis and treatment decisions based on the symptoms patients report, how intense they are, and how frequently they occurred, said study author Jerry Suls, a professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute in Washington, D.C.

Previous studies have linked inflated symptom reports to "negative affect," a disposition also known as neuroticism. One-fifth of the population is believed to have this general tendency, which involves frequent feelings of anger, anxiety, fear, irritation or sadness. however, when the UI researchers examined the influence of temperament on symptom recall, they isolated each emotion rather than lumping them together.

"our data suggest that a person who walks into a physician’s office feeling sad will tend to recall experiencing more symptoms than they probably really did," Suls said. "if a person comes into the physician’s office feeling fearful, they’re more likely to scan their body and read any sensations they’re experiencing at that moment as something wrong. We believe this is because depression is associated with rumination and exaggerated recall of negative experiences, while anxiety is associated with vigilance for potentially negative things in the present time."

Suls co-authored the study with Bryant Howren, a post-doctoral scholar in the UI Department of Psychology and the Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice (CRIISP) at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City.

In the first part of the study, 144 undergraduate students completed questionnaires to assess their level of "depressive affect," and indicated which of 15 common physical symptoms they’d experienced in the past three weeks. Even after factoring out physical signs of depression, like appetite changes or sleep loss, researchers found that people who felt more depressed believed they had experienced more symptoms.

"is it possible they actually did experience more symptoms? sure," Suls said. "but all of these folks were nominally healthy. It’s likely that each one experienced roughly the same number in terms of actual symptoms, but those who happened to be feeling blue thought they had experienced more."

Another phase of the study examined current symptom reporting. a sample of 125 undergraduates were assigned to groups. To induce a specific mood, each group wrote in detail for 15 minutes about an experience that made them feel angry, anxious, depressed, happy or neutral. They then completed a checklist to indicate which of 24 symptoms (weakness/fatigue, cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal) they currently felt. Participants in the anxious mood category reported higher numbers of physical symptoms.

"People could say, ‘Well, you made them anxious — isn’t that going to produce a physiologic reaction, like a pounding heart or sweaty palms?’" Suls said. "but we observed a general increase in all current physical symptoms — fatigue, for example, which isn’t typically a consequence of feeling fearful or nervous."

Researchers repeated the writing exercise with another group of 120 students — only this time they asked participants to report both current and retrospective symptoms. On average, people in the anxious group reported five current symptoms, while those in the depressed and neutral groups only reported one or two. Reflecting on the past three weeks, the sad participants reported experiencing seven symptoms on average, while the other groups only recalled about three.

"making people feel sad didn’t influence what they reported feeling at the moment, but it was associated with reporting having had more symptoms in the recent past," Suls said. "With anxiety, we saw exactly the opposite. They didn’t report more symptoms over the past three weeks, but at the moment they reported more."

Suls and Howren aren’t encouraging health care providers to discount symptoms by virtue of the patient’s mood. They do, however, encourage medical professionals to be aware that different emotions appear to play into how patients perceive their current and past symptoms.

"Ideally, a doctor would engage with the patient briefly to get a sense whether they’re experiencing anxiety or sadness at the time of the visit," Suls said. "In some cases, it may be worthwhile to ask a significant other what they’ve observed in terms of symptoms, or to ask the patient to keep a symptom diary to ensure accuracy."

The age of participants was a limitation of the study, though the authors intentionally chose healthy college students to reduce confounds. Other studies indicate that emotional instability (such as depressed or anxious moods) decreases around age 40, so older adults may be less subject to recall or encoding biases associated with physical symptoms. Suls and Howren will focus future symptom-reporting research on older or chronically ill adults.

The research was supported in part by a National Institute on Aging grant awarded to Suls and a post-doctoral fellowship from the VA awarded to Howren.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Iowa Health Care.

Journal Reference:

1. M. Bryant Howren, Jerry Suls. The symptom perception hypothesis revised: Depression and anxiety play different roles in concurrent and retrospective physical symptom reporting.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011; 100 (1): 182 DOI: 10.1037/a0021715

Note: if no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Hi, a loved one is suffering from these symptoms and I was hoping someone would be able to put them together to be able to tell us what's wrong with her:

– Apparent hyper-adrenalization: feelings of being anxious without a stimulus, rapid pulse (about 90-100 bpm), trembling

– History of thyroid problems although doctors were unable to determine if it was hyper or hypo-active thyroid since her symptoms overlap with both classifications but blood tests seem to suggest hypoactive thyroid.

– History: had something that had "flu-like" symptoms a couple weeks ago and still hasn't fully recovered. Blood tests showed elevated ALT and AST levels which made doctors suspect hepatitis.

– History: Recently has had some abdominal pain and a slightly upset stomach.

If anyone has any clue to how these symptoms fit together, I would be eternally grateful for your input, and for any suggestions towards treatment. thank you!

I've been having terrible stomach pain for three days now and I'm not sure if I should consult a doctor or not. I thought that maybe it was something I ate or drank, but it's not just an upset stomach and it doesn't seem to be the regular symptoms of food poisoning. the pain is all through my abdomen, and it's starting to cause pretty bad back pain. if anyone has any suggestions of what it might be or what I should do, they'd all be greatly appreciated.

Anxiety Attacks Versus Panic Attacks

There are some differences between anxietyand panic attacks. while books are writtenon this topic, this lesson will attempt tosummarize some basics here for a briefoverview.

An anxiety attack, sometimesreferred to as a panic attack, is anunforeseen periods or incidents where thereis a sudden fright or fear of intenseproportions. these attacks focus on fearsthat are most often not rational; however theperson with the disorder believes he or sheis in terrible danger or at extreme risk.Most often these anxiety attacks occur all ofa sudden; i.e. they are not planned nor dothey come with any type of warning mechanismbuilt in for advance action. Results are thatthe person suffering the attack will feelabout to faint or near death’s door.

People who suffer anxiety attacks report thefollowing symptoms, listed in no particularorder:

Discomfort or pain in the chest Vertigo orDizziness Upset stomach / Nausea Loss ofControl, Loss of Mental Stability StressCold or hot flashes Heart palpitations ornear heart attack Shallow breathing Shakes /Trembling

Anxiety disorder is characterized as havinganxiety feelings that are “always there / allinclusive,” make people want to isolatethemselves from society and hamper everydayactivities with others.

On the other hand, a panic attack does notcarry with it that “always there”association. in fact, panic episodesgenerally burst forth, peaking afterroughly10 minutes or so, then ending afterabout 25 minutes.

During a panic attack, 4 of the symptomslisted below (in no particular order)generally make an appearance:

Shallow breathing, even to the point ofsuffocation sensation…

Increased heart rates Tightness of chestShakes / Trembling / Sweating Chokingsensation Upset Stomach / Nausea VertigoSurreal feelings Loss of Control, especiallyof mental faculties Death coming on NumbingCold or hot flashes

The main difference between anxiety attacksand panic attacks is in the duration of theattack and how intense it is for the personwith the affliction. while anxiety attacksare less hi-stress, they tend to last longerthan the power-packed panic stressors.