A recent small scale study shows that people who have long term Functional Dyspepsia are more likely to have sleep disturbances or anxiety.

Functional Dyspepsia is essentially chronic indigestion. It usually involves bloating, belching, nausea & heartburn. Often Functional Dyspepsia is not an often diagnosis. Many doctors seem to prefer to link these symptoms to acid reflux. Functional Dyspepsia may have links to stomach motility issues & may actually be a milder form of Gastroparesis. This hasn’t been confirmed because often motility tests are not done on patients complaining of these symptoms. The reason is is called “Functional Dyspepsia” is because it is usually a diagnosis given to people after normal diagnostics show nothing wrong.The study had 131 Functional Dyspepsia patients fill out the following questionnaires:

  • Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD)
  • Short Form 12 Health Survey (SF-12)
  • Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)
  • Insomnia Severity Index (ISI)

In addition to the Functional Dyspepsia patients, they also had 50 healthy control subjects fill out the questionnaires as well.

The study found that those who had Functional Dyspepsia had higher HAD scores & those who had moderate to severe symptoms had higher PSQI & ISI scores. Another interesting tidbit is that women with Functional Dyspepsia were more likely to have sleep problems.

I personally use Iberogast to help combat the chronic indigestion I have.  Also sometimes use a small amount of baking soda & water to help lower acid levels.