041 - My Body, My Battleground
Why I'm convinced all doctors are frauds — unless I'm friends with their son
How It Started
I can remember a certain type of kid from my youth, the kids I might classify today—with the benefit of advanced vocabulary—as eructation enthusiasts: gas-powered little devils who seemed to derive a perverse pleasure from their burps, who could miraculously and dutifully belch on command, and who would compete to compose the lunchroom’s most grandiloquent gastrointestinal symphony.
I was not one of those kids. On the contrary, I hardly ever belched, and when one did happen to escape my esophagus, it was hard-fought but well-earned from a satisfying swig of an exceptionally fizzy soda.
So imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning in October 2018 with a bad case of the burps. Despite feeling like a modern-day Gregor Samsa—transformed overnight into a hideous, belching monster—I tried to keep my hypochondria at bay and chalked it up to indigestion, seeking a remedy in over-the-counter antacids. Tums begat Alka-Seltzer. Alka-Seltzer begat Gaviscon. Gaviscon begat Pepcid AC.
Nevertheless, they persisted, and my focus on them only magnified. In my careful self-analysis I noticed mysterious patterns starting to emerge: the burps would begin like clockwork each morning in the exact moment I went from a supine position to sitting upright in bed, and they tended to grow more frequent when I returned to lying down in bed at night. They would amplify as I got hungrier, subside during my meals, and pick up again a few hours into digestion. They seemed to be at their worst when I was on a plane—something to do with the changing air pressure, I reasoned?—but they could also get especially bad on the softball field as I shuffled around first base between pitches.
There were days when I would count myself burping hundreds of times, and other days when I'd count myself lucky for getting away with a dozen or so. To make my strange predicament even stranger, I noticed I rarely burped when I was talking with others, or when I was performing on-stage or in front of the camera (HQ Trivia; not Chaturbate).
After several months of unsuccessful self-treatment, I visited my friend's dad—a respected GI in Westchester used to treat members of the New York Giants and Rangers in the 90s—for a professional assessment. In hearing me describe my case and share my field notes, the doc found my situation particularly puzzling for the symptoms I wasn't exhibiting: heartburn, difficulty swallowing, nausea, loss of appetite, cramping, vomiting, fever, bloody stool…
It was just... burps.
He recommended I try Imodium and prescribed omeprazole. When that didn't take, I tried a different friend's dad/respected GI affiliated with Weill Cornell in Manhattan, who tested my stomach for the presence of Helicobacter pylori—a bacteria that mostly occurs in children (as if I wasn’t feeling infantilized enough by my own parents). When the test came back negative, he prescribed a stronger dose of omeprazole in combination with something called FDgard, which also proved ineffective.
I was running out of patience—and board-certified friends’ dads.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2021, and the burps moved with me. But something about SoCal’s golden aura and the idea of making a fresh start had me feeling hopeful about solving my medical mystery. The first LA MD to look under my hood was a well-reviewed GI specialist based in Santa Monica who told me what I was experiencing was likely supragastric belching, a result of swallowing too much air.
Swallowing too much air? Did he seriously mean to suggest that my ceaseless, years-long suffering was simply due to my being a recklessly gulping buffoon? What kind of mouth-breathing troglodyte did he mistake me for? Was this an anti-NY hate crime?
I maintained my cool and let him demonstrate diaphragmatic breathing exercises, which I would later find to be helpful in stymying my burping bouts—though not in addressing their cause. He prescribed a muscle relaxer to address the latest plot twist in my gut-grappling saga: my burps were now occasionally triggering concomitant hiccup attacks—a second stomach spasm, sharing the mic in a frightening duet set on ruining my life. On my way out, he also advised me to avoid straws.
People spend over decade in training for this?
Next stop was Cedars-Sinai, where after a consultation with a general physician I was granted access to their GI Motility Program for an esophageal manometry test (aka having a tube stuck up my nose and down to my stomach) and a 24-hour pH-impedance test (aka having another tube jammed through my nostrils and down my throat where it stayed for twenty-four hours)—all in service of determining if I had dysphagia or GERD.
I did not.
A few months later I was back at Cedars for a gastric emptying study that involved my swallowing—and eventually shitting out—a radioactive tracking device to test for gastroparesis. I had gone nuclear, yet the results were negative. The jury was still out on what the hell was wrong with me, and after a sequestration now thrice as long as the O.J. trial, they were starting to get pissy.
All I wanted was a diagnosis. If I could just get someone in a white coat to look me in the eye and say, "I see what's the matter," then it would only stand to reason what followed next would be, "I know how to fix it." But each disappointing appointment chipped further away at my faith in the medical establishment, and I began increasingly relying on my neuroses to play doctor.
Using their degrees from Google University and The Reddit Clinic to cross-check every conceivable query about my condition, they clung to the notion that some obscure solution for my peculiar problem might be waiting for me in the web's darkest corners, and relished every commiserating message board comment uncovered along the way. Ultimately, their tireless late-night sleuthing convinced me I was dealing with a hiatal hernia.
Back in New York for a spell, I revisited my original doc in Westchester and shared the findings from my “personal team of obsessive specialists.” He authorized an endoscopy and sent me to New York-Presbyterian, however when I arrived at the hospital, I was told my California insurance wouldn't cover the New York procedure, and was presented with an out-of-pocket payment of $13,700.
Returning to Cali, I booked the endoscopy at a place in an Anaheim strip mall.
That was a fun Tuesday.
Got some pretty sweet new wallet photos out of the deal, but wouldn’t you know: results inconclusive.
How It Shifted
As the calendar flipped to 2023, I had just about given up. I was five years into this journey and all the fancy doctors with their fancy pedigrees and fancy Persian names had failed me. I was ready to resign myself to my apparent fate: living as a literal gasbag for the rest of my life.
But then I got a tip about something called integrative medicine practiced by people calling themselves functional doctors and naturopathic physicians. Was this woo woo west coast wellness to the rescue? Could my prayers be answered with HERBS and EXTRACTS and OX BILE???
Long story short, nope. Two different herbalists pumped me full of Fullscript’s finest enzymes and supplements meant to reset the gut microbiome. I completed a two-week detox cleanse. I tried a six-week elimination diet. I submitted to stool samples, blood work, and something called a Heidelberg test—meant to analyze the stomach’s production of Hydrochloric acid—administered by a Digestion & Nutrition Consultant who claimed to be one of only three people in North America qualified in its use.
There was a glimmer of hope when the test showed “spontaneous neutralizations” which indicated… something or other, but I was still burping.
Grasping at straws (despite my prior doctor’s warning against them), I met virtually with a hypnotherapist who made the connection that the onset of my burps coincided with a particularly stressful period in my life: the whiplash of unexpectedly becoming famous from HQ Trivia, the overwhelming anxiety of the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and the culminating grief over our co-founder’s sudden, tragic death.
She posited that the belching was my body’s way of expressing unprocessed trauma from that chaotic time—that my inability to fully swallow its impact had left me with a kind of psychic indigestion. She led me through a guided visualization over Zoom, and gave me a mantra to repeat morning and night. At my wit’s end, with nothing to lose and nowhere else to turn, I gave it a shot.
As I learned to harness the power of my attention, I noticed some marked improvements. Mind over matter, they say, and the focused repetition of my mantra combined with the vivid recall of my visualizations had managed to arrest my eruptions—though not completely.
On the morning of my 40th birthday last December, I was jolted awake by a vicious barrage of burps out of the blue. I’d been steadfast with my naturopathic supplements—on a regimen that had grown to some sixteen pills, three times a day— and I’d remained consistent with my hypnotherapy exercises. Yet here I was, up at 3 a.m., relitigating the same damn problem that had been haunting me for six years. Furious, I shot up out of bed and ripped into myself. I was too old for this shit. I had HAD IT UP HERE, and I really let me have it—channeling Bob Newhart in his famous MADtv cameo, screaming at whatever dyspeptic demon that had possessed my enteric nervous system to STOP IT.
Something hit me in that moment of utter frustration. This problem of mine had seemingly arisen out of nowhere, from within, but for six years I had been seeking a cure from without. The call was coming from inside the house, yet I was waiting for someone outside to answer it.
I had picked up a spicy nugget of wisdom from my guy Michael A. Singer, whose books and lectures I had been mainlining since my return from the Hoffman Process: internal problems require internal solutions. Singer might have been addressing his philosophy to the metaphysical problems of anxiety, worry, and malaise, but I wondered if it could be applied to a physical issue like my unexplained burping?
How It’s Going
Sufficiently shaken up and oddly invigorated after that pre-dawn, scare-myself-straight session, I settled back to sleep. Getting up out of bed several hours later, I was met with a deafening silence. My usual morning belly burble was noticeably absent. I decided to skip my pills that day; who needs polyphenols and probiotics when I had sheer will power? Anytime the slightest urge to purge came up, I locked in, concentrated on my third eye, told myself, “Do NOT fucking burp, you hear me?” and allowed the moment pass.
I went three weeks without so much as a single uncouth whisper—until Christmas Day, when I was hit with some kind of stomach flu that, I’ll be honest, violently set me back. But no matter, I had proved my point: I had healed myself. My inner fire had vanquished what no outer force could even fathom. My body may be a battleground, but my mind is General Sherman.
