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Comment by sverige | Hacker News Reader

Not directly related to creating an "anti-inflammatory environment," but I've suffered from GERD for years and have tried all of the AMA's recommended cures. None of them worked, some even caused internal bleeding.

A few years ago I was told to try a little baking soda solution when the reflux came on strong. It worked very well, and is now my go-to solution when I wake up with tasty hydrochloric acid in my mouth while sleeping. (Yes, I could go on and on about diet, exercise, chiropractic cures for hiatal hernias, etc., but if you suffer, you'll find your own path, and if you don't, undoubtedly I've already disgusted you with too-graphic language.)

It's simple: counter the overactive stomach acid with a weak base. It works. Not sure I agree with the idea of making an entire diet out of it, though.

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"and have tried all of the AMA's recommended cures. None of them worked"

But sodium bicarbonate is a standard medical treatment for acid stomach or reflux. They even have it in pill form.

I guess the doctors I saw didn't know that. I heard about it from a fellow sufferer.

It’s literally alkaselzer I thought.

Yes, but alka seltzer also has aspirin in it and anhydrous citric acid.

Alka Seltzer Gold omits the aspirin.

AKA, Tums.

Don't make calcium supplements (ie Tums) a regular part of your diet:

https://nutritionfacts.org/2018/03/22/if-calcium-supplements...

Tums is calcium carbonate, not sodium bicarbonate.

The bicarb is what really matters

CaCO3 and NaHCO3 effect pH in similar ways, Calcium Carbonate is the stronger alkaline buffer though because it can pick up 2 H+ where as bicarb alread has an H+. Both can form bicarbonate ions depending on the pH.

lawr.ucdavis.edu/classes/ssc102/Section5.pdf

So is Tums safe since it isn't bicarbonate? I take it every day to counteract acidic foods.

The excess calcium can greatly increase your risk of kidney stones.

This is myth, Ca actually can reduce kidney stones while Na increases the probability they will develop. Ca could have negative cardiac effects above 1200mg per day though.

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/urologic-diseas...

I’m uncertain which is correct now. My own healthcare provider warned me of the correlation...

And it’s also listed as a(n) (albeit rare) side effect here.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000198.htm

Be careful, from my understanding if you keep doing that, your body cranks up the acid production in response. My wife's father died just before we started dating from esophageal cancer and he had gerd and ate lots of tums.

Zantac is what works for me, with maybe Prilosec every now and then if it gets bad. That and don't eat for 3-4 hours before bed.

I control my diet pretty well these days, so it only happens maybe three or four times a year.

Both Prilosec and Nexium caused internal bleeding in my case. Zantac was ineffective.

Have you tried “crazy” things like going low fat or easy to digest foods? I used to have to take nexium, but stopped after having my gallbladder removed and, more impactfully, going vegan. I used to have full on esophageal spasms. They led me to the ER twice out of the pain. In hindsight, dairy’s fat content (amongst other things) was really irritating my stomach.

Yes, foods with high amounts of fat are on the long list of things I avoid. I ate a vegan diet for over a year, but have added some meats and eggs back more recently. Dairy fat is irritating to me too.

Funny, high fat used to be on my list too, but on a keto diet my Gerd has disappeared almost completely.

Am I right to infer that taking 2g of baking soda in 250ml water (as done in this study) to fight my autoimmune issues might lead to me having a higher risk of esophageal cancer?

Just freakin' roll your own, sheesh. Bake your own bread, get some bicarb-soda from the natural side of life, ingest it regularly instead of a trucked-in consumer-ingredient.

Its not so hard. For a lot of us, its a huge duh that bicarb is good for you. I mean, a lot of us get it already.

Tums are not baking soda though so...

Paradoxically I found that drinking a glass of diluted (#) vinegar extinguishes the reflux for me. My rationalization is that a sudden punch of vinegar causes the esophagus to slam shut in response to increased acidity, as it is designed to do. By contrast a slower drip of stomach acid was not sufficiently strong to trigger the same reaction.

(#) I dilute it to the point where it's still strong but already drinkable.

Consider an alternative theory: the vinegar is a digestive aid (just like pineapple) and your root cause or part of it is, in fact, indigestion. I only suggest this because I found indigestion to be the one and only consistent cause to heartburn/reflux in myself. Seems like some foods don’t want to break down from normal stomach acid but will respond to other acids. So that’s my theory. But whether it’s accurate or not, it does work.

pineapple is a digestive aid due to an enzyme it contains which breaks down protein. it's pH is not entirely relevant, although acids also break down proteins.

Doubtful, at least for my case. Effect appears immediately and takes hold in under two minutes.

A common argument for vinegar is that the microbiome in your gut needs bacteria to feed on nutrients your body doesn't absorb easily (fiber) and that vinegar (usually apple cider vinegar) helps the bacteria in your gut digest this fiber (via fermentation).

Basically, vinegar makes your stomach bacteria happy, which makes your greater digestive tract happy in turn.

I don't know how true this is, but I do know greater amounts of research are being done on the microbiome as of late, and we're learning just how important it is for our overall health. So it wouldn't surprise me if this explanation is close to correct.

I do the same. I have found it enormously helpful.

Vinegar is a base not an acid. It will counter high acid.

For acid issues raw ginger is powerful.

Vinegar is literally an acid (acetic acid in particular). You can test this yourself at home by mixing it with baking soda.

Plain vinegar is while apple cider vinegar is a base. For some reason did not picture someone drinking plain vinegar.

Vinegar is made by first fermenting sugar into alcohol with yeast and then a bacteria converts the alcohol into acetic acid.

White vinegar is distilled so it contains to a certain level of purity only acetic acid and water.

Apple cider vinegar uses apples as the source material and isn't distilled so it contains some apple flavor.

Apple cider vinegar is just white vinegar with a little flavor.

It's also a favorite of health wonks. It don't mean the opposite of everything the crazies say is true, but you get a lot of people with virtually no information "teaching" each other about apple cider vinegar which leads to the silly idea that apple cider vinegar is a base.

Apple cider vinegar is made through the same fermentation process as regular vinegar, just using apples to create cider and then further fermenting it to create vinegar (hence "apple cider" vinegar). All vinegar is made through the fermentation of ethanol (and that ethanol is fermented from a variety of sources depending on which type of vinegar you are buying). Furthermore, the Wikipedia page[1] clearly says

> Acetic acid and malic acid give [apple cider] vinegar its sour taste.

Not to mention that bases don't taste sour (they taste bitter or soapy), and given that you can use apple cider vinegar (as with any other vinegar) to add sourness to food I'm a little confused why you'd think two types of vinegar have fundamentally different chemistry.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_cider_vinegar

Like lemon, apple cider vinegar is said to produce alkaline byproducts and lower your body pH after consumption, which might be true but doesn’t mean either is a base.

Isn’t the active ingredient in vinegar an acid, namely acetic acid?

You've apparently read too many homeopathic pamphlets.

Get pH paper and test them both. They're both acetic acid and low pH. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be vinegar.

If it was basic, it would be some acetate salt.

Been on this awful GERD ride myself for a few years. Found that CBD Oils have been able to not just treat but also prevent the symptoms.

If you aren’t trying them it might be a good time to start.

How do you take the CBD?

I've been vaping it for 3.5 months now, paid €30 for the vaporizer, and €30 for 10ml liquid with 100mg of CBD (quite low concentration, others might need more). 1-2 puffs per day are perfect for me (there seems to be an individual optimum dosage; I feel quite anxious after say 10 puffs), and I think the bottle will last 6 months in total. It's a godsend, seriously recommend it to anybody. I'm slowly getting sharper every month, to the point that difficult programming tasks and musical pieces don't bother me at all anymore. I can/could work 30% longer every day without feeling terrible at night, and my musical hearing has improved SO much. I also have my first healthy tan since age 18 or so, and way more freckles (lost those over the years) - people keep telling me how healthy I look.

Regarding GERD - I don't have it, but the reason why it helps might be that it suppresses acid production a bit. Or maybe because it's anti-inflammatory (GERD has been linked to increased cytokine production lately).

I consume edibles and oils.

It’s been a miracle for my GERD & anxiety. From what I’ve read it treats inflammation, reduces anxiety, and acts as a pain killer.

I used to pop Pepcid AC's like candy. Having nothing to do with my reflux I started doing IF with a low carb diet, and about a month in I realized I hadn't popped a single Pepcid. It's been over a year and I've had like 2 or 3 of them, when combinations of foods just provoke the reflux.

I can't say for sure, but I think both were important factors for me.

Btw, the IF I do is called 4:3, I think. Basically, 3 24-hr fasts a week. The rest of the days are regular. That's it. I don't really hold to it strictly anymore. I didn't do any full 24-hr periods in the last week, but it definitely trained me to eat a lot less, and that's what really helped the reflux.

Just passing this on, in case it helps you.

FTI: IF = Intermittent fasting

NFI FTI?

"For Their Information", i.e. I wasn't telling e40. (Yes, I am aware of the irony here).

FTI: FYI typo on QWERTY NFI: Not found on the internetz?

Also known as “no (expletive) idea”

> I've suffered from GERD for years and have tried all of the AMA's recommended cures.

AFAICT, there are no such things; GERD has standard treatments, none of which are cures.

> It's simple: counter the overactive stomach acid with a weak base.

Yes, but that's a standard GERD treatment: antacids. While sodium bicarbonate doesn't seem to be particularly commonly preferred, calcium carbonate and other antacids operate by exactly the mechanism you describe.

Yes, treatments not cures. Tums etc. have been ineffective.

Mine went away so long as I don't eat after 6pm.

For anyone wondering, it took about 2-3 weeks of no eating after 6 for the problem to disappear for me.

> chiropractic cures for hiatal hernias

This is the best solution to prevent the problem. Going to the chiropractor is impractical though because of how often you need to do it. Learn to do it yourself. Learn to identify when you need to. Literally saved my life.

Although the baking soda definitely helps when you get a mouthful (or sometimes lungful) of wretched hot stomach acid.

Also not eating at night.

> Learn to do it yourself.

I use a lot of stretches, my hot-tub, and the side of my pickup bed. The hot-tub has an extended vertical feature that is about 4 inches wide that I can stretch my back over while sliding down it, and it pops almost my entire spine back into place. I use the pickup similarly when traveling.

That probably feels pretty good but it's not how to treat a hiatal hernia. It's probably making it worse.

To treat a hiatal hernia stand with your back against a wall, bend over slightly, and relax your stomach muscles. Then with both your thumbs press in on your solar plexus like you are trying to touch your spine with your thumbs. Then slowly slide your thumbs down towards your navel. As you approach the navel push down to the left. Repeat two or three times.

You should feel immediate relief. Eventually you will be able to tell when you need to do it.

I always just downed a bottle of water which usually helps raise the ph level enough for me to feel better.

Have you ever tried just chewing gum when you have reflux? From what I can tell it causes you to continuously generate and swallow saliva which keeps the reflux down until you've digested.

I have a heital hernia and this works well for me (and got my wife through some tough episodes during pregancy).

What is your baking soda to water mix ratio? Or do you take it straight?

I use about a half teaspoon in a half cup (4 oz.) of water.

Your risk of esophageal cancer does not decrease with antacid use, in fact it often hides the problem, when you should get evaluated by a gastroenterologist.

Esophageal cancer is a mean beast.

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