I Cannot Burp

Inspired by another thread, “What bodily quirks/mutations/oddities do you have?”, I figured that I would start my own thread about a strange problem I have always had: I cannot belch. I am a 28 year old, otherwise healthy, physically-fit male, yet I have never been able to belch in my life. . . well – my mother claims she was able to successfully burp me as an infant, and I’ll just have to take her word for it.

In any event, I am not alone in this regard. Here is a link to an article abstract at PubMed.com : Dysfunction of the belch reflex. A cause of incapacitating chest pain - PubMed

The author of the article calls the problem, “Dysfunction of the Belch Reflex.”

A google search of “dysfunction of the belch reflex” or “I cannot burp” or phrases of this nature turn up plenty of results, which describe exactly the condition that I have.

If I eat too fast, or drink any carbonated beverage, I experience a severe pressure in my upper chest. If I try to push the air out, by flexing certain muscles that I can only imagine would result in a burp in a normal person, I instead produce these strange gurgling noises. This is described in the above abstract. These noises can be extremely loud, and they are quite unusual sounding. After a “gurgle,” I feel relief for a few moments – that is, until the air returns to its previous position, and again places pressure in my upper chest.

So, when I join friends for a beer, I am out of completely out of commission if I have more than one. I become so bloated and uncomfortable that it is unbearable.

My first memories of this being a problem for me go back to when I was a young child. I remember having a very severe stomach flu and vomiting all night. For many months thereafter, I would constantly feel, what I interpreted as, the urge to vomit, and, having no frame of reference, I would conclude that I caught the stomach flu again. I would have my mother follow me to the bathroom, where I would stand over the toilet and wait for something to happen. All I would do is produce these gurgles. After a few of them, my mother would tell me that my stomach was just upset and I should just lay down, while telling my father that I had a bad case of hypochondria.

Of course, I know now that what was really going on was that I had to burp, but had mistaken this feeling for nausea, given that that stomach flu experience was so fresh in my mind.

What can I do to relieve this intense upper chest pressure? The quickest, most effective relief comes if I stick my fingers down my throat and manually stimulate my gag reflex. If I do this, I will unleash violent, thunderous burps. After a few goes at this, I will feel completely fine. Yet, this simply is not practical in most situations. For one, it sounds like I am vomiting, and it can be excruciatingly loud. I did this once on a camping trip; I walked away from the campsite and ‘pulled the trigger.’ When I returned, my friends asked me if I had heard “the dying animal.” When I informed them that, it was, indeed, I who was “the dying animal,” they refused to believe it. I had to chug a beer just for the sake of reproducing the noise to demonstrate I was actually capable of emitting such unnatural sounds.

Additionally, I have been kicked out of bars for doing this in their bathrooms. Security assumes that I have been over-served, and am vomiting due to drunkenness.

Of course, the most common reason why I would feel this pressure is if I had just gotten done eating, and ate too fast. If I am in a restaurant, ‘pulling the trigger’ is obviously not a viable solution. First, the process will naturally cause me to throw up my dinner, throwing away the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Second, my sickening retching will be heard throughout the entire establishment, causing a commotion guaranteed to be bad for business.

Alternatively, I can lay down either on my back, or on my right side. Interestingly, if I lay on my left side, I will continue to feel this pressure, and the gurgling will ensue. Yet, unless I am lying down for an extended period of time, as soon as I sit or stand back up, the pressure returns.

When I tell people about this problem, I usually encounter the following series of responses: 1) disbelief; 2) the question, “well, didn’t your mom burp you as a child”; 3) the person will ask me if I currently need to burp; 4) I will respond in the affirmative; 5) the person will insist on pounding me on my back to induce a burp. This never works. Then 6) they will ask why I do not just “swallow air,” to induce a burp. First of all, this suggestion has always puzzled me. I have no clue what it means to “swallow air.” I breathe many times a day, and this is about as close as I can get to this concept. That said, the more important point is that I already have an abundance of air in me that I am trying to expel, so adding to this reservoir of unwanted air certainly cannot help. But, believe me, I have done everything I can to “swallow air” just to be sure, to no avail.

Have I ever brought this up to a doctor? Yes, I have, but only to my primary care doctors over the years, who respond in a very similar way as I have laid out above. The problem is not taken seriously. I have never been to a gastroenterologist about it. I probably should see one, and see what he or she says. However, it seems that many people, who have written about this problem of theirs online, have found nothing that works, even after seeing a gastroenterologist.

To be clear, I do not have acid reflux disease or anything like that. There are no other symptoms. The only problem is that I cannot push air out of my stomach during digestion, except if I manually stimulate my gag reflex, or wait for the air to pass through the other end, which it will eventually do if I lay down.

Does anybody else have this problem? Has anybody known anybody who has this problem? And, I can only hope, has anybody figured out any way to overcome it?

Do not steal Mr. Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting Drinks!

I have the opposite problem: it is very difficult for me to burp while lying down.

Enjoy your farts then!

I can’t burp either. I’ve always been utterly amazed that burping seems to be under voluntary control for most people - as in, they can swallow air on purpose and easily burp it back out. For me, that’s about as likely as being able to levitate. On rare occasion, I’ll involuntarily burp - but it is quite unusual.

I won’t touch carbonated beverages/beer because they make me ill - I feel uncomfortably bloated after a few sips.

Yes, I’m the same (28-year-old male, too, as it happens) - think my younger brother is, too. Good to know that other people have the same issue, but unfortunately I don’t know the cure. It sounds like I don’t have it as bad as you, as I can comfortably drink almost as many fizzy drinks as I want, but I certainly prefer non-fizzy beers.

Makes sense to me. The feeling of needing to burp (and the ability to, for most of us) stems from the fact that the gaseous stomach content is lighter than the rest, so gravity forces it upwards, putting pressure on where esophagus connects to the stomach. By lying on your back, this pressure is redirected to the front part of your stomach. When lying on your left side, the pressure instead is against the right side of the stomach, and if you check a schematic for a human stomach, you’ll see that the top right is exactly where the esophagus connects.

That your induced burps are otherworldy in their extent also seems reasonable to me: normal burps just entail opening the way and letting the overpressure deal with itself. Vomiting, on the other hand, means that the muscles surrounding the stomach contract violently, actively expelling the stomach contents. This puts much more force on the gasses, causing them to leave your stomach at a much higher speed, and thus with greater noise.

Sofis–

That analysis is right-on.

The question is, what can be done about it? Is there anybody out there who has had this problem, but who has figured out some sort of position and/or technique that will initiate the belch reflex, aside from jamming one’s fingers down their throat?

On rare occasions, when I lean back and stretch in a chair, I might burp a tiny bit. I cannot replicate this at will, and it is always unexpected. I have experimented with all sorts of positions to try to reproduce this effect, but to no avail. When it happens, it happens. I basically react to it in the same way that a dog might to his own fart: “wait – what just happened?”

Well, I have no specific knowledge on the subject, but have you tried putting pressure against your stomach? Either with your hands, or if that’s not sufficient, by putting your weight on it by leaning it against a table or similar. Keep in mind that the stomach is further up than what many people think of as their stomach; it’s behind the lowest part of the rib cage, a bit left of centre. If you do the leaning thing, be careful and make sure to not break any ribs or anything.

I should probably mention that I have no medical expertise of any type and everything I write is basically a collection of guesses. :slight_smile:

As a parrot owner, we are admonished that birds cannot burp, because of their complicated upper digestive system. Giving them carbonated beverages is a definite no-no.

I have this problem, though not as severe. I can burp, but it’s difficult. It’s related to my scleroderma. It also causes me acid reflux problems. Some people with scleroderma get the opposite thing – uncontrollable burping – but for me, I couldn’t seem to get the pressure released. Esophageal and stomach problems are very well associated with scleroderma.

I had to quit drinking soda and beer for quite awhile, as the pressure would make me vomit instead of burping. Gross. Eventually, after being on immunosuppressants for awhile, I gradually had to sort of re-learn how to do it. Even now, I have to make a concerted effort to expel gas in my stomach.

If you’ve always had it, this probably isn’t the reason for you, of course, but it is a medical reason that can cause it.

Same issue here, not just with me but with many in my family- see i am physically unable to burp. - Gastroenterology - MedHelp

you are not alone…

First "helpful’ medical info is pretty far down, essentailly, “Yes it exists, no we don’t know what causes it, no it doesn’t seem to be serious”

Hope this helps

I can burp, but not voluntarily. I have to drink something carbonated to do so. It sucks.

I have similar symptoms, but never got the gurgles (just the chest tightness with eventual relief) until I developed acid reflux in my mid 20’s. I burp a few tiny burps each year and treat them as great triumphs. I can drink a “normal” amount of beer, but shotgunning one on a full stomach was always a recipe for discomfort. As a kid, classmates always gave me that “swallowing air” horseshit and my reaction was the same as the OP’s. WTF are you talking about?
I’ve only vomited a handful of times since childhood, and all but one of these were due to drinking waaaay too much. The only other time was when I had the norovirus and it really shocked me. It came out like a firehose, yet I didn’t retch or even feel my throat move at all. I just opened my mouth and and out it flew. I imagine that’s what burpers get to experience their whole lives :frowning:

I’m similar but not as bad. I have the same symptoms. I will eventually burp but I can’t do it on purpose and its one of those things that the more I think about it, the more it won’t happen. In other words, if I’m in pain and need to burp, I can’t. I have to just wait and try to forget about it, and if I can get sufficiently distracted I can relax and burp. I wish I could be taught how to do it.

I cannot burp either. I’m 24 yr old female and I haven’t been able to burp since I was a baby. I have the croaking thing/sound in place of burping. I too am able to force it out by putting a finger down my throat which releases a LOUD violent burp. And your story of your friends calling the sounds a “dying animal” really made me laugh. The first time my boyfriend heard me do this, he couldn’t believe that sound could come from me. This loud violent burp thing also happens sometimes when I think I’m going to throw up from drinking too much. I always feel way better afterwards but I rarely do it because its so loud and just embarrassing. The symptoms are worst when I’m really full or when I’m drinking… chugging a beer is probably the worst thing I could do.

As far as solutions, its my observation that this dysfunction is not really well-known or documented in the medical world at all.

You know it would be pretty easy to find an email address for at least one of the authors of that paper. They might be willing and able to point you to further information resources.

I never could. My mom says I couldn’t as a baby; I’d get very uncomfortable and then spit up.

I try very hard not to swallow extra air. I drink liquids through a straw. I can only drink soda in a glass and stir it up to decarbonate it some. I have to be careful not to eat right before I go to bed or I wake up with heatburn. I’ve done the finger thing too, in the farthest corner of the house with a blanket around my head to muffle the noise.

I don’t see any solutions either. I think they should study it in combination with acid reflux. I was always reading about how acid reflux is caused by a defective stomach valve which should only open to admit food to the stomach. No! It opens to let air escape up too! And if you can’t burp it just goes back down again. And up again and so on.

Many premature babies have problems with reflux, and there’s an operation which fixes that - a fundoplication. Afterwards, though, the child can’t burp. What prevents reflux also prevents burping. I had a friend whose little girl had the operation before she was a year old, and when she was about four, she regained the ability to burp, surprising us all.

I cannot burp on command. Occasionally one will slip out of its own but it’s pretty rare. I have no issues consuming carbonated beverages.

Unfortunately for those around me 99.99% of my gaseous emissions come from the “other end.”