Hiatal Hernia Symptoms: The Hidden Influence

Hiatal Hernia symptoms: The hidden influence 

In this video, Dr. Vikki Petersen discusses hiatal hernia symptoms. Often misdiagnosed, a hiatal hernia occurs when part of the stomach pushes through the diaphragm. Although hiatal hernia is traditionally believed to be symptomatic only 9% of the time, Dr. Petersen highlights a range of symptoms beyond heartburn and acid reflux, including constipation, chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, panic attacks, and trouble sleeping. She shares patient stories to illustrate the impact of hiatal hernia and advocates for awareness and proper diagnosis.

Is your health being affected by a hidden influence? Is there something your doctor is missing? You could have hiatal hernia symptoms, and not know the condition.

Video Transcript

I want to talk to you today about something that we see in a tremendous number of our patients. It is completely misdiagnosed by traditional medicine, and that’s very unfortunate. It’s called hiatal hernia.

A bit of anatomy

A hiatus is just a hole. A hernia is something that’s protruding up through a hole. So, your mouth is connected to your stomach via a tube called the esophagus. The stomach is lower, down in your abdomen, and basically the idea is that the stomach is below a sheet of muscle called diaphragm. Your diaphragm moves every time you breathe: it bows down, and then bows up when you exhale. It never stops moving because you never stop breathing.

A conspicuous absence of clinical diagnosis

Now, hiatal hernia is known to the medical profession, but they feel that it is only symptomatic, causing symptoms about 9% of the time. That means that 91% of the time, people have no symptoms… This is what physicians believe.

Furthermore they believe the symptoms associated with it have all to do with reflux, because the stomach is in spasm and pushing up through this hole in the diaphragm. Hence heartburn, acid reflux, some burning in the chest or the throat, all those related symptoms.

That’s fine, and those symptoms are accurate, and we do see those with hiatal hernia… but check out the rest of the symptoms. We also see are constipation, (that’s the end of the ones associated with digestion), chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety attacks or panic attacks, a feeling of anxiety, trouble sleeping, chest pain, chest pressure.

Those are not classically digestive-related, of course. So why would you think your panic attack is being caused by your stomach being in spasm and pushing on your diaphragm? You wouldn’t. Nor does your doctor apparently, according to research…

… Hiding a nationwide condition

This is just a hole in our medical system. But what’s not a hole, and what’s very recognized, is that once you’re over the age of fifty or sixty, 60% of the population has hiatal hernia. It’s just that in the same breath they say they don’t have symptoms.

Now, I can tell you we see 22-year-olds that have hiatal hernia, so it’s certainly not relegated to being over 50. And it can be absolutely debilitating.

We [Root Cause Medical Clinic] had a woman in her 30s come in… She had this feeling of “something stuck in her throat”. If you’ve ever swallowed something and it’s gotten stuck in your throat, you know how uncomfortable that can be. It ended up being a hiatal hernia. She went to every doctor in the world.

A young man just came in recently who just went to specialist after specialist after specialist. I haven’t seen too many patients in 30 years who have been that tenacious, but he had his heart checked every which way he could, because he had chest pain and shortness of breath. What else are you gonna think of, other than your heart and your lungs? They finally told him “there are no more tests that we can do two and three times. We’ve already done it two and three times. We cannot find out what’s wrong with you”. He came to us, and within 10 days he was better because we diagnosed hiatal hernia.

Hiatal hernia symptoms: needless suffering

I’d like you to share this video with your friends and people you know who have these symptoms, if not yourself, and really spread the word that this is a very fixable problem when you know how. I bring this up because so many people are suffering needlessly, I want it to stop.

Here at Root Cause Medical Clinic, we’re a team of doctors. We have internal medicine, functional nutrition, chiropractic, and physical therapy. And it’s interesting that hiatal hernia is best treated… Well, to handle all its facets really takes that whole team because the digestive aspect of it (the stomach being in spasm) is often a food sensitivity or some sort of infection.

There’s a structural aspect to it having to do with the muscle integrity and nerve integrity, so it really takes the team traditionally doing everything that they’re best at to handle this problem. Sometimes it can be exclusively nervous system, sometimes it can be exclusively diet, but it tends to be a combination.

I wanted to share this information on hiatal hernia symptoms. I’m working on a book about Hiatal Hernia Syndrome that will be available on our site and on Amazon very soon.

I’ve also spoken about this in some blog posts here, you can visit our blog and get more information. Please, if you find this valuable, share it with others because I really want to help those suffering.

I was recently talking to someone who… She did it all on herself. She just kept looking and looking and searching. She’s been suffering for thirty years and finally found has an answer…. It’s way too long, it’s way too long. So let’s help everybody now. If you have any questions for me, definitely send them in. I’d love to hear from you.

List of common hiatal hernia symptoms:

• Anxiety
• Shortness of breath
• Panic attacks
• Chest pressure or pain
• Constipation
• Bloating or pain in your abdomen
• Acid reflux or heartburn
• Trouble sleeping

A significant percentage of Americans suffer from hiatal hernia and just don’t know it. Traditional medicine says it rarely causes symptoms, but that’s because the symptoms it DOES cause, doctors never look for.

Root Cause Medical Clinic in Clearwater

Is your health not where you want it to be? Are you confused about what to do? We can help. Contact us at (727) 335-0400.

If you are not local, you can still receive help. Our Clearwater medical clinic treats patients from across the country and internationally.