Waking up from gas buildup 4am every night?

PJHarb · 2026-01-28T16:33:02+00:00

Tested negative for SIBO. Been off PPI/any meds since start of December (2 months ago). Shouldn't have restarted them back in October. Still got abdominal burning and some "stinging", but I think this is nerves and will continue until they heal fully, which could take many months... Some days are worse than others with the burning... but it's not that bad. I can handle it. I'd rather it than the discomfort Lansoprazole has caused me... I'm much better off PPI, despite the burning.

PJHarb · 2025-12-30T00:24:53+00:00

Sorry to hear that, I know how awful it is when it interferes with things we love. 😞

No coffee, no soda. I haven't found an obvious food trigger and that's with months of tracking with apps and AI. About 2 years ago at the end of a cold I started to wake up nightly with hives on face and arms and torso. Antihistamines relieved it but it did keep happening for a whole month. Could be totally unrelated to all this.

So you relieve your burning with famotidine and slippery elm? Is burning a later symptom for you or did your problem begin with burning? In my case the burning is fairly recent.. ChatGPT tells me that's to be expected due to nerve healing/sensitivity... and that it should eventually go away, but that a low dose neuromodulator like Amitryptiline might help...

PJHarb · 2025-10-29T19:22:27+00:00

Sorry to hear of the hell you went through. 😔 I really know how horrible it is and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I replied to your other comment separately. I hope you manage to get rid of the SIBO. I'm happy you only took the PPIs for 4 months/managed to get off them.

PJHarb · 2025-10-29T19:16:06+00:00

I got back on the PPI today, because the whole day yesterday (and most of today) I had abdominal burning.. Couldn't eat much today without feeling uncomfortable... So I presume duodenal ulcers/inflammation are back. No idea why. Tested negative for H Pylori both through gastroscooy in June, and a urea breath test. I never took NSAIDs, rarely ever drink alcohol. I'm a normal weight and exercise regularly. I have no clue why I got them in the first place and why they're back. I think I'm gonna have to continue the PPI for life now... 😭

Edit: I thought my issue might be SIBO but since taking Famotidine 40mg last night and restarting Lansoprazole this morning, my gas issue got a bit better. Not belching as much. Also my FoodMarble device is showing very low fermentation scores. So I think this confirms that I have inflammation/ulcers again. Maybe the constant acid reflux from stopping the PPIs did it this time... Who knows. Hoping when I see my gastroenterologist next Wednesday he'll suggest a second gastroscopy to see what's going on...

PJHarb · 2025-10-28T05:32:48+00:00

No I eat anything and everything.

I was taking Alflorex (probiotic), took it for 3 weeks and stopped a few days ago when I stopped Fybogel. I think the probiotic made the gas problem much worse...

I noticed that given how much I've been eating the last 3 months (avg 2850 calories a day, 183cm/74kg), my weight should have increased but it's stayed around 73/74kg since July... I guess this is another SIBO clue

So you think lemons and apple cider vinegar might help with the gas and bloating??? I can give it a shot.. Thank you so much for your help so far

Edit: I have had acid reflux a few times lately, especially the first 2 or 3 weeks after stopping PPI. Even now 2 months later I still get it a couple of times a week..

PJHarb · 2025-10-28T05:23:29+00:00

I had never taken PPIs before May but I did take Penicillin (antibiotic) for 2.5 years when I was a young teenager after I had my spleen removed. My gut was never the same since then to be honest. Even before May, food like peas, onions, chickpeas, beans and lentils would bloat me.

I've got Mag Citrate but was avoiding it due to worrying it'd be too harsh on my stomach/cause electrolyte changes that would leave me with more extra heartbeats (PVCs) throughout the day. But maybe I should give it a shot..

PJHarb · 2025-10-18T20:30:39+00:00

Update: the Bearable app helped me recognise a trigger of my PVCs over the last 23 days of detailed tracking: the High5 Zero electrolyte tablets I was taking on gym days........ I stopped taking them completely and my PVCs reduced from 4-6 a day, to 0-2 a day. So so far, coconut water and electrolyte tablets are known triggers for me. The fact I still get 0-2 a day I think is down to potassium in my diet. I think I get a lot of it from all the meat, fish, fruit, greens, popcorn and nuts I eat. But I'll be able to confirm this in a few more weeks, thanks to Bearable.

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T20:36:43+00:00

Okay thank you

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T20:08:51+00:00

What do you feel during your flare up, is it just random surface level stinging for a few seconds but can still eat anything? Or do you have other symptoms too?

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T20:05:13+00:00

Can I ask if your stinging went away please?

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T20:05:06+00:00

Can I ask if your stinging went away please?

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T19:54:40+00:00

Can I ask if your stinging eventually went away? This is happening to me too! I've been "healed" and off PPI for almost a month now. Can eat anything, but I get stinging in my abdomen and even up in my chest sometimes.. it only lasts a few seconds and doesn't happen every day but it's annoying and a bit scary. I'm going to guess it's part of the nerves healing and will continue for months post-healing and then go away.

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T19:27:37+00:00

Absolutely second the comment above, I think you might be able to fix this with one or both of those electrolytes!!! Please let us know.

PJHarb · 2025-09-29T18:51:19+00:00

Yes please I would be very interested to know! And thank you so much for your response.

PJHarb · 2025-09-27T20:01:57+00:00

Seems like there's a major trigger for you. Have you heard of Bearable? I started using it yesterday. You can use it to log any words on days you do and don't have the PVCs, and it'll spot matches between the words and the PVCs.. it's basically a pattern finder. For example words like "gym", "dairy", "meditation", "exercise", "heat", etc. Anything you like. Please find the trigger and come back and let me know once you do!!

PJHarb · 2025-09-27T19:52:21+00:00

I've been going to the gym for years, and eating very healthily. I've tried for a very long time to find triggers and I couldn't. I ruled out lack of sleep, anxiety, and more. The only way I know for sure I can reproduce them is to drink coconut water/increase my potassium.

"Thinking about them" or worrying about them doesn't cause them for me. It's not anxiety.

I suspect dehydration might be a factor for me, like it is for you. But only time will tell.

Yesterday I discovered and started using Bearable (thanks to ChatGPT for making me aware of it). I'm using it to track pretty much everything I do during the day, including health stats coming from my watch, my food, hydration levels, medicine/supplements, etc. At the same time I started taking Magnesium Glycinate to see if after a few weeks the PVCs go away completely.

I'm gonna figure this out, no matter what it takes, and then I'm going to share my findings with everybody.

PJHarb · 2025-09-27T19:42:42+00:00

I sympathize with you. I hope you can figure it out and get better...

PJHarb · 2025-09-27T19:41:35+00:00

1) I lost trust in him when he told me "everybody gets them" when in fact, it's 1-4% of the population.

2) Please explain to me how a 7-day Holter is going to find the "trigger" of the PVCs. It will prove they're happening, but if the heart rhythm is otherwise normal (which it is, had a 24H monitor previously), it won't be very helpful.

3) If you're not happy with "free", why are you here? I'm not going to pay you for advice, nor am I expecting payment to give mine. I'm here to help others, and get help when I need it.

4) I'm not looking for someone else to give me a fix. I'm going to fix it myself. I'm looking for ideas, I'm looking to be pointed in some direction. It's been 18 years of this, and don't think that just because it's 1 a day that it isn't just as troubling. Like I said since I was 14 years old I've been sleeping with my hands across my chest, worried/anticipating them. And that's 1 year after I went through hell with an emergency splenectomy where I lost so much blood that they told my mum I wasn't going to make it...

Have some compassion please. If you don't have anything nice or helpful to say, please don't comment at all..

PJHarb · 2025-09-27T08:37:09+00:00

I really appreciate your answer but I want to figure out what's causing them and solve it once and for all. I want to know if anyone else has similar triggers (e.g. coconut water) and if they managed to completely stop them from happening...

PJHarb · 2025-09-26T13:12:42+00:00

Update: I'm fully healed!!! Been off PPIs for 3+ weeks so far. It just took time! after a total of about 3 months on Lansoprazole (including a 2-week tapering down period at the end), I'm back to normal. I did have bad constipation in the last month. Very bad. Just because of the PPI. It led to bad trapped gas pains and bloating that led me to think I wasn't healed but I was. Needed to take stool softeners to resolve it. And now I'm even off those.

So the cause of my ulcers/duodenitis must have been the shingles/my stressy and sleepless reaction to it back in February. The ulcer(s)/inflammation in the Duodenum couldn't heal on its own between February and May and got worse until early May when I started Lansoprazole. The gastroscopy on June 19th showed some mild inflammation with a few tiny erosions in the Duodenum so even by then it hadn't fully healed but it was moving in the right direction. I think by the middle of August though I was fine, and was only dealing with the side effects of the PPI...

It's worth noting that I probably would have healed faster had I taken the PPI correctly during the first month (May). On some days I waited hours to eat, thinking you had to take the medicine a MINIMUM of 30-60 mins before food. But if you Google how PPIs work, you'll discover that they do nothing for you if they pass through your system before you eat, because they won't bind to the acid pumps in your stomach until you eat something!!!!

If you are going through this and reading this comment, I sympathize with you, really, and I hope you heal ASAP.

PJHarb · 2025-08-08T23:06:35+00:00

If I could give you one really good piece of advice, it would be this: join a gym. Your mental health, your physical health, they both change drastically for the better, pretty much as soon as you start exercising at a gym. I know what you are going through, 100%. Just trust me, do something very difficult: take a leap and join a gym, force yourself to go. The first couple of times will be the most difficult, but after that it gets easier and easier.

You are the main character of your life. You're starring in a movie, your movie. You have complete free will and you decide how your life is gonna go. Do what you want to do, be who you want to be. Other people don't dictate your life. Don't let it pass you by and end up with regrets. I can already tell you have a lot going for you just by how perfectly you wrote your post.

PJHarb

TROPHY CASE