Chest Spasms, Left Side

Hi everyone,

I've been watching the site for a while now. I have a problem and need help. I am beginning to get worried, and traditional medicine does not pay attention to my struggle.

I am 22 and male. In January of this year, I began having dizzy spells and general out-of-body feelings. I thought I was going crazy. It was very frightening. Thanks to a friend of mine who is a doctor, I got through it on the antivertigo drug Meclizine. I think the problem was caused by stress and depression, but they said I had an inner ear infection. I healed from that.

Around March I started having bizarre chest spasms, right below the ribcage on the center-left side of the chest. Coupled with chronic heartburn, I went to the doctors and was given an EKG. Normal. I was put on Prevacid for acid reflux. It helped, but the spasms continued. not painful but bizarre. Sometimes I still got heartburn and had to supplement my prescription with tums or alka seltzer. This went on for three or four months.

I made a decision in August to wean myself off the meds I was being given. I consulted the internet to find out the acidity of various foods, and focused my diet towards alkaline foods and was slowly able to abandon the acid reflux medication. I would start every day by taking 5 capsules full of ground ginger root, and began to ate a heavily reduced calorie diet, began walking every day at lunch, and eating mainly fruits and vegetables. I abandoned all alcoholic beverages (they had featured prominently in my life before that) and caffeine.

I have improved greatly, but I still get odd, painless chest spasms at least once a day. I have had subsequent EKG's and have been assured it is not my heart. I have recently reintroduced caffeine, for a morning coffee, and have gone out for drinks the last two weekends. It's nice to be back to relatively normal again.

Please suggest a reasonable course of action I can take to eliminate these annoying and scary spasms for good. They are mentally unnerving and despite assurances to the contrary, I sometimes become convinced they are somehow related to my heart, and it creates more undue stress and worry and doctor visits.

Thank you all in advance.