Insights into the now 50 year mystery of severe eating difficulty continue to unfold.
As benzos potentially damage any and every aspect of the CNS, the vagus nerve which links the CNS and the body, and controlling stomach motility, can often be damaged. People may have varying degees of gastroparesis, and bezoars can form as a result.
A bezoar is a mass of undigested food, held together by plant fibers (or in the case of animals, by hairs from animals eaten), that can create a blockage that slows the normal emptying of the stomach. They’re like the pellets passed by owls. And in many cultures, bezoars from animals were prized as magical charms. All so interesting, but what to do..
Definitive testing for this is not doable for me, but medical opinion says they’re a “distinct possibility,” given my symptoms. Why this wasn’t adequately investigated many years ago, is one of those good but unanswerable questions.
So the best home remedy seems to be Coke and cellulase enzyme. Instead of ingesting toxic chemicals in commercial Coke, I’m using orange juice and seltzer. The idea is acidity, carbonic acid and phosphoric acids dissolve the bezoar. pH of 2.6. And cellulase enzyme breaks down the fiber.
There are many other remedies for gut motility. (The usual pharma ones all have nasty side effect profiles, and I’ve had bad experiences with them).
I’m using;
Hingashtak (Ayurvedic herb combo of asafoetida, cumin, black pepper, etc)
Herbal bitters
Probiotics
You’d think high fiber would be good for gastroparesis, but not if there is a bezoar, where fiber would just add to the blockage. Fiber normally works by a sweeping action, which is actually not the ideal way to move food along through the GI tract. Having a healthy microbiome is the way. The microbes in proper balance take care of it. High fiber foods are actually very hard on anyone’s gut (beyond the scope of this post!)
So this is just one area that the whole benzo saga has me focusing on right now. A big one. A connection between benzos and the gut, which has taken a lot of investigation to tease out. Each of these lightbulb moments reveals more of the picture and brings more hope.
waves and windows 