Weird feeling in throat, chest, and stomach.

[MVance2727]

Okay, so let me start at the beginning. When I was 16yrs old I drank an energy drink with extra caffeine. I bought a new video game and wanted to sit up all night to play it. Well I felt the bad burning sensation through my body and my heart was racing, I had an ambulance called and when they arrive they took my vitals and said I was having a caffeine rush. They didn't take me in and told be that my heart rate was in a normal range and to get rest. Well the next day I felt very sick and was having chest pains. I was taken to the doctor and had lab work done. They said I had H. Pylori, which is  a type of bacteria infection in the stomach. The chest pains we're from gas, but I thought I was dying. Some of the medication I took cause my heart to beat fast, which also freaked me out. After two weeks of antibiotics and being able to eating normal again, I developed bad anxiety problems and had panic attacks on a regular basis. Anything that made me uncomfortable would trigger one. I have also developed bad sinus problems and I deal with sinus issues all year long, from a stuffy nose, to swollen tonsils, drainage, and vertigo from fluid on the ears. Well now I'm 23 and I have had other issues along the way. I have been getting pressure in my chest for about 3 years now and doctors say it's nothing but gas and pressure from food and that I'm overreacting. I also get this thump feeling or like a quick heart beat in my throat and it scares me. It only happens a couple of times in a month. Sometimes it happens more than once in a day and sometimes I go months without it happening. I can feel when it is going to happen in my throat. I also ended up getting this strange feeling in my elbows, feet, chest, and stomach. It's not pain but it's an uncomfortable feeling and it makes me tighten up my muscles or move around to make it go away. Most of these symptoms are at night when I go to bed. Here recently I have started to get this gurgling feeling in my chest. It's in the lower left/center of my chest and I only feel it at night and it comes and goes. Usually I feel it when I inhale/exhale or when my heart is beating harder than usual. Does anyone know if I'm developing a certain disease? Or is my anxiety severe? I've been to the doctor over everything except the gurgling feeling. EKG comes back good every time. Blood tests are always good. Oxygen is good. One doctor said I had peripheral neuropathy and gave me neurontins, but those didnt help with the symptoms. I can exercise fine and I can go through my daily activities without complications, but when it's bed time and I go to lay down, I end up with all of these bizarre symptoms. I do worry a lot and have a lot of stress on me. Having anxiety and these strange symptoms don't mix well. I just want to see if anyone knows what this is because I'm tire of going to the doctor and being put on a loop. None of them take it serious and won't dig deep into the problem to help. I feel lost. I hope someone has some answers.

[Paxiled]

Of course we can't accurately diagnose you from a distance even if we are medical professionals, and none of us on here are.  All we can offer are things for you to look into.  To me, as a long-time anxiety sufferer, you have developed a pretty good case of chronic anxiety that is making you oversensitive to looking at every thing that feels a little off and focusing all your energy on it.  That turns little things into big things, and since you've been doing this a long time, it's been building for a long time.  You don't mention anything about therapy with a psychologist who specializes in anxiety treatment, though you may have done this and didn't mention it, but it's what I would recommend.  I'd also say it does sound like the doctoring you've had might -- and I say might -- have contributed to you getting this problem.  The mere presence of h pylori isn't a sign of disease.  We all have it. If our immunes systems and digestive systems are functioning properly, the bacteria moves in and out of our body and doesn't take up residence in sufficient quantities to cause harm.  When it does, it's usually in the form of inflammation of the lining of the digestive tract and ulcers.  Short of harm you don't need antibiotics for this, but nobody here can say if you needed this treatment or not.  What can be said is that some people react very badly to antibiotics and lose so much of their beneficial organisms, which antibiotics kill along with the harmful ones, that the immune system goes badly awry.  This affects digestion adversely, as these organisms are essential to proper digestion, and also mental health in some cases, as these beneficial organisms are also essential to a properly functioning brain.  Because in this description you say the anxiety started after the experience you had at 16 and after the antibiotics, you may be one of those people.  Any of us can be, it's just hard to know, because my generation, the baby boomers, were a generation given antibiotics constantly for everything, even things we didn't have, from a very young age, and probably not coincidentally we suffered an epidemic of mental disorders and digestive disorders that our parents never had.  This has continued ever since.  Recently, the medical establishment has finally recognized what natural medicine has been yelling about for decades and called for drastically reduced use of antibiotics.  Some gastroenterologists have gone as far as transplanting fecal matter from healthy individuals into sick people with pretty good results, though not yet for mental illness (but it's coming).  The best most of us can do is bombard our systems after using antibiotics with the available probiotics we can buy as supplements from the refrigerated section of the best health foods store in your area.  For digestive problems such as yours, for example, bifido-bacteria can be very beneficial.  A lot of what you're describing sounds like digestive problems, including your original problem, and these can usually be solved with much less invasive medications, such as aloe vera juice and DGL (a form of licorice) and peppermint oil caps and many other plants people have been using successfully forever for these problems, and by changing your diet and exercise program and relaxing your system with exercise and meditation.  If I were you, I'd try a combination of these modalities and focus hard on anxiety therapy and see if you can't get your mind back to working in a more relaxed way again.  You're still very young and therefore resilient and flexible, so I think you can fix this.  Good luck.  Oh, and by the way, your regular doc can't actually diagnose peripheral neuropathy, and nothing you say is bothering you sounds like it.  Neurontin is often used as a relaxant like benzos are, but peripheral neuropathy is diagnosed by a neurologist, not a regular doc.  It's most common in diabetics when they get older, and you're neither a diabetic nor old.  It can also be caused by pinched nerves or by overdoses of B6, but you don't probably have those at your age either.  Doesn't mean you don't have it, but I doubt it.  I've been tested for it, and I know what the tests are like, and you haven't had them.  Peace.

[Paxiled]

Oh, I should have added, allergies are an immune system disorder -- your immune system is attacking things that aren't in fact bad for you.  Antibiotics cause that too, but so do lots of other things, such as exposure to parents who smoke, as mine did.