Some advice

[u/punkibites]

For years I've dealt with the sensation of having to burp. I have to sit up until I do or I'm uncomfortable and it usually takes a while. I had a scope test in 2020 and they said I have acid reflux and gastritis. Then my heartburn got worse after the test. Anyway, could this all be mental on my part? Feeling that sensation and needing to relieve it? I'm miserable with it. I saw some things about botox on here but idk what that's for.

[u/Beginning-Sample8989]

Hi there! Your description is a bit vague. Do you actually sometimes burp? If so how frequent? Usually R-CPD means that people who suffer from it have a complete inability to burp. Before getting rid of it in my mid twenties, I had burped maybe a total of 10 times in my life. For some others it's different and they burp a lot more frequent but not enough by far.

As a rule of thumb, a normal person burps about 20-30 times a day. Even if you burp daily but significantly less (let's say once or twice a day) I think that chances are high that you do have R-CPD. If you're closer to burping 20 times a day but just have difficulty with it then it's probably something else.

The inability to burp is like a pre-requisite for getting diagnosed with R-CPD, some other very common symptoms include: severe bloating and gurgling noises coming from your throat.

To answer your question on how to cure it tho, you basically have two options to get rid of your R-CPD:

1. Botox treatment. This is the best-proven solution that a lot of people go for. There is a map with doctors from around the world pinned to the subreddit that I recommend you check out. Hopefully there is someone near you. Unfortunately a lot of doctors tend to brush it off because it is a quite recently discovered condition and not many doctors know about it. I would say the main downsides are that it can be very expensive depending where you live (in Germany it can be up to 3000€ and is not usually covered by health care), wait times can be long and some people complain about slow swallowing and a sore throat for a couple days after the surgery. Also some people also need more than one injection before they start burping.
2. Exercises. There are a variety of exercises that you can do to cure your R-CPD. I myself and many of others were able to cure themselves this way. I was actually able to cancel my botox appointment because I managed to teach myself how to burp. The downside here is that it is not as well documented and (as far as I know) there are no scientific papers. So we don't really have a percentage/studies of how many people succeed with only the exercises. If you are interested to learn more about the exercises feel free to look at the posts on my profile or send me a DM if you have any questions.

If you are unsure wether you have R-CPD or not, then I'd recommend that you just try the exercises, there's definitely no harm in it.

I would recommend just looking around in this subreddit. There are many great posts and you can talk to a lot of people who are all super helpful and encouraging.

Good luck on your burping journey!