S
Seeking Sunrise
Guest
I see I've been posting a little bit too much these days, so I apologize if you see my name a few too many times and start to wonder why. I just have LPR on the mind these days, my "classic" LPR symptoms (all 15 of them) having appeared suddenly, side by side in their well-known side by side dance, less than 2 months ago.
Right away, the diagnosis of reflux stank to me. It was so wrong on so many levels, and it drove me to the pits of despair to think, with my limited knowledge of anatomy, how such a thing was possible. Why is it that in the last 20 years, LPR was used to explain every single refractory unexplainable throat symptom? Then, as it was increasingly proven that LPR diagnosis and treatment was unreliable in double blind studies, using at times healthy patients, and at other times placebos rather than ppis, it became clear that the "LPR" experts weren't really experts at all.
A few points come to mind: the last few years of studies have shown that ppis don't help with LPR throat related symptoms. But if you happen to be someone for whom they did work, it's a bit like someone telling me that "full moons don't give you insomnia or cause people to act weird." I happen to feel like an insomniac during a full moon, no matter what the studies say. So I acknowledge there are those who have apparently by experience felt that ppis have helped them.
But here are a couple things more I want to show you all, because I'm really convinced that LPR is, at most, an aggravating factor in more serious throat problems. For instance, chronic chough that persisted for 20 years, and was relieved by elavil. Yes, it was a small pill that brought about the solution to a 20 year problem for some people. That's the power nerves have on the throat. I think we have to take nerves a lot more seriously when looking at our condition. I know a lot of doctors in the ENT business believe in LPR. Guess what, doctors used to bleed out sick patients for hundreRAB of years. Doctors mortally wounded James I of England, by accident. Michael Jackson was a rich guy, but his doctor accidentally killed him. That's a doctor. Personally, two years ago my doctor put my cast on incorrectly, and I had to have surgery a month later. That's doctors for ya!
So now that we've explained why doctors accept the idea of LPR as reflux in all unexplainable situations, I want to present two more important medical articles written in recent years, and then I'll try to stop filling these boarRAB with my viewpoint, and just let people think for themselves for a while..
There is an article from October 2008 (recent) called Larygopharyngeal Reflux: concepts and controversies. It basically calls into question all the sure fire ways of diagnosing LPR, and even hints that doctors are sort of baulking (finally) at the overdiagnosis of it.
More importantly, is this one in a very important medical source, which happened to come out after I got my own case of "LPR". October 28, 2010, it appeared, and I think you all need to read it very closely and start entertaining other possibilities besides reflux to explain your throat problems. It's called "Back to the Diagnosis of Silent GERD." by David A. Johnson MD.
Think about it. The potential to make money from "LPR" is huge. We throw ourselves at surgery like moths to a flame, and how many get relief. You don't see many on these message boarRAB, and the three I found, all had long-term accompanying GERD issues, which seem to have preceeded any throat issues. Also, remeraber that the throat symptoms of LPR are a pretty big list. Isn't it weird that the list of possible LPR symptoms is so big? And why do the symptoms variate if its really reflux "injuries"? Shouldn't the symptoms be consistent then? Variating symptoms make more sense if it's related to a nervous system problem, though...
So I'm just saying, we are the ones suffering. We can feel this in our throats. We need to think more critically about what's going on. The ENT doctors normally peer in the throat and say "that's strep, take this." And the job's done. They get their money. If it's a complex problem, and one with poorly understood mechanisms..... Not as fun to work with such patients. So I think we all have to be our own advocates, and listen to our own bodies, and when our bodies say "the ppis aren't quite solving this, are they?" We need to listen to that, and revise where we think the problem is coming from.
Of course, I could be wrong. I could also be right. Listen to your own body, your own common sense, and don't let the good doctors bleed you too badly. Maybe they should use snakes like they did back in the 1800s to treat us...
Right away, the diagnosis of reflux stank to me. It was so wrong on so many levels, and it drove me to the pits of despair to think, with my limited knowledge of anatomy, how such a thing was possible. Why is it that in the last 20 years, LPR was used to explain every single refractory unexplainable throat symptom? Then, as it was increasingly proven that LPR diagnosis and treatment was unreliable in double blind studies, using at times healthy patients, and at other times placebos rather than ppis, it became clear that the "LPR" experts weren't really experts at all.
A few points come to mind: the last few years of studies have shown that ppis don't help with LPR throat related symptoms. But if you happen to be someone for whom they did work, it's a bit like someone telling me that "full moons don't give you insomnia or cause people to act weird." I happen to feel like an insomniac during a full moon, no matter what the studies say. So I acknowledge there are those who have apparently by experience felt that ppis have helped them.
But here are a couple things more I want to show you all, because I'm really convinced that LPR is, at most, an aggravating factor in more serious throat problems. For instance, chronic chough that persisted for 20 years, and was relieved by elavil. Yes, it was a small pill that brought about the solution to a 20 year problem for some people. That's the power nerves have on the throat. I think we have to take nerves a lot more seriously when looking at our condition. I know a lot of doctors in the ENT business believe in LPR. Guess what, doctors used to bleed out sick patients for hundreRAB of years. Doctors mortally wounded James I of England, by accident. Michael Jackson was a rich guy, but his doctor accidentally killed him. That's a doctor. Personally, two years ago my doctor put my cast on incorrectly, and I had to have surgery a month later. That's doctors for ya!
So now that we've explained why doctors accept the idea of LPR as reflux in all unexplainable situations, I want to present two more important medical articles written in recent years, and then I'll try to stop filling these boarRAB with my viewpoint, and just let people think for themselves for a while..
There is an article from October 2008 (recent) called Larygopharyngeal Reflux: concepts and controversies. It basically calls into question all the sure fire ways of diagnosing LPR, and even hints that doctors are sort of baulking (finally) at the overdiagnosis of it.
More importantly, is this one in a very important medical source, which happened to come out after I got my own case of "LPR". October 28, 2010, it appeared, and I think you all need to read it very closely and start entertaining other possibilities besides reflux to explain your throat problems. It's called "Back to the Diagnosis of Silent GERD." by David A. Johnson MD.
Think about it. The potential to make money from "LPR" is huge. We throw ourselves at surgery like moths to a flame, and how many get relief. You don't see many on these message boarRAB, and the three I found, all had long-term accompanying GERD issues, which seem to have preceeded any throat issues. Also, remeraber that the throat symptoms of LPR are a pretty big list. Isn't it weird that the list of possible LPR symptoms is so big? And why do the symptoms variate if its really reflux "injuries"? Shouldn't the symptoms be consistent then? Variating symptoms make more sense if it's related to a nervous system problem, though...
So I'm just saying, we are the ones suffering. We can feel this in our throats. We need to think more critically about what's going on. The ENT doctors normally peer in the throat and say "that's strep, take this." And the job's done. They get their money. If it's a complex problem, and one with poorly understood mechanisms..... Not as fun to work with such patients. So I think we all have to be our own advocates, and listen to our own bodies, and when our bodies say "the ppis aren't quite solving this, are they?" We need to listen to that, and revise where we think the problem is coming from.
Of course, I could be wrong. I could also be right. Listen to your own body, your own common sense, and don't let the good doctors bleed you too badly. Maybe they should use snakes like they did back in the 1800s to treat us...