Living and dealing with CVS

Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) is an uncommon, unexplained disorder that is characterized by recurrent, prolonged episodes of severe nausea, vomiting and prostration with no apparent perceived cause.  It is a devastating and unbearable disease that takes so much from the lives of patients and those who care about them. Vomiting occurs at frequent intervals (5-10 times per hours at the peak) for hours to 10 days (1-4 days most commonly). The episodes tend to be similar to each other in symptoms and duration, and are self-limited. The patient is generally well between episodes. There are a number of theories currently being researched, including those potentially linking the pathology of CVS to migraines, mitochondrial dysfunction, CRF response, and/or anxiety. More research is needed.

 

As for the patients, it has been reported that observing your diet on a trial and error basis could help in curbing the frequency of the syndrome. This could be achieved by controlling or avoiding the intake of some food additives e.g. MSG, food that could cause allergic or induce migraine, e.g. seafood or chocolate/caffeine and observing the effect if there is any improvement. The uptake of certain supplements such Coenzyme Q10 and L-carnitine has also been proven to improve CVS patients’ health by reducing the episodes of vomiting that they suffer. I myself had just started to jump into the bandwagon of this diet control plus the combined uptake of 50mg of Coenzyme Q10 and 800mg of L-carnitine daily. So far, it works like charm and I couldn’t be happier. I recommend any CVS patient out there to do the same.

 

I hope this post in some ways manage to help readers out there particularly those with CVS to understand better about ways to curb the disease. All we need to do is to believe that there is still hope for us to fight this disease on our own, even though its underlying causes are not yet fully understood as its discovery is relatively new and the ongoing research is still at its primordial stage. Remember, if there’s a will, there’s a way.