I'm very impressed you know about dysautonomia when half of my docs don't. Yes...it's hard to know if the dysautonomia is causing my symptoms and there's no test to determine if it is. So far...all tests for inflamation have been normal and no bloody diarrhea. My GI doc has recommended a sigmoidcopey (sp) as an alternative to the colonoscopy. Not as accurate but better than nothing.I don't know if you can distinguish if the GI symptoms are from the dysautonomia vs from IBS as a separate disease.If your blood tests for inflammation and IBD markers are normal and you don't have bloody diarrhea I wouldn't worry too much about it.Since IBS treatments mostly focus on symptoms they should work whether the symptoms are from dysautonomia or IBS, I would think. Imodium will work either way, laxatives work either way, antispasmodics, etc...http://www.dinet.org/symptoms.htm seems to indicate a lot of people with dysautonomia have GI symptoms, so hard to know if you have to have IBS on top of that to have GI symptoms.
Not to scare you as im sure you can handle it but I had a sigmoidoscopy without any sedatives and it was pretty rough! Although i did get to watch it on the tv screen which was pretty cool. I wouldn't trust a IBS blood test, i think examining the intestinal lining is necessary. How about the capsule endoscopy, where you just swallow the pill camera?My GI thinks I should be able to handle the sigmoidoscopy so it's a good compromise. I really like him because he gets how dysautonomia might play a part in my symptoms and he also understands how sick I might get if we try to do a colonoscopy.
LOL...you're not scaring me...I appreciate any information I can get. Was the sigmoidoscopy very painful? Also...I was under the impression the procedure only takes a few minutes?I've been hearing about the capsule endoscopy but when I asked my GI about it he said it isn't an option. I'm not sure if he doesn't have access to it or if he doesn't think it's a useful diagnostic tool. Does the capsule endoscopy also involve a prep?Not to scare you as im sure you can handle it but I had a sigmoidoscopy without any sedatives and it was pretty rough! Although i did get to watch it on the tv screen which was pretty cool. I wouldn't trust a IBS blood test, i think examining the intestinal lining is necessary. How about the capsule endoscopy, where you just swallow the pill camera?