Hello, I have been listening to your podcasts on hiatal hernia, and had a couple of questions. In 2015/2016...I had a scare one night while laying down to sleep where my heart felt like it was jumping out of its chest. It stopped after a few minutes but scared me, so I pursued a doctor to check my heart and all was good. I chalked it up to maybe a panic attack. Ever since.... every month and only one time a month.... I'll have these excruciating pain attacks that always last 4-5 hours then they let up and I'm back to normal until the next months episode. I can count on these episodes every month like clockwork. I'm a male so it's not female related monthly occurrences. These attacks started by waking me up in the middle of the night, then started hitting me in the middle of my day sometimes. The attacks are definitely Gas related as I can feel the gas finally moving around and leaving my body at the end of the attack. The attack feels like sudden doom is on setting... then I'll get a very sharp gnawing pain directly under my rib cage sternum directly in the middle of my abdomen. It comes on strong for 10 minutes...let's up for 10 minutes... then comes back on again, and it does this every time for 4-5 hours. Again this only happens one day out of the month. I saw a GI doctor in 2019 who did an endoscopy and found that I have a hiatal hernia. He told me I can either make lifestyle changes or I can seek surgery. After looking up the surgery process, it scared me into making the lifestyle changes. I cut out all sugar, I watched

hi! I have heart palpitations and anxiety and shortness of breath I believe it’s due to a sliding hiatal hernia that they found in my endoscopy. How can I address this?