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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

I have GERD and the only reason I found out was my dentist told me. It was because my teeth became so sensitive a room temperature banana was too cold. Lots of pain and still. It's from coughing due to acid reflux and acid splash up onto my teeth. It can also get into my lungs and over time damage them too by causing scarring.

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I had bad undiagnosed allergies for years that made me vomit for hours a day every day (amount many other things).

Cost the 4 rearmost teeth on the top side not including the wisdom teeth which were prob gonna need to go anyways.

They got eaten away because doctors were negligent and now every time I move and get a new dentist they treat me like I treat my mouth like shit.... Nah, I just had most of them damaged by literally thousands of liters of stomach acid, bile, and black stuff which was apparently blood from somewhere they can't see scarring on now... thanks doc.

Anyways I guess that my way of saying I sympathize.

What were you allergic too?

Oh boy, "the list"... Here goes a simplified version:

Beef chicken and pork (other meats untested, manual exposure testing required) ALL nightshades (potato's tomatoes peppers etc) the Entire Carrot/Celery/Parsley family (it's big) Lettuces (ridiculous, it's just water!) Rice Oats All berries All tree pollens including that contaminating food.... (This is the real kicker, as it hurt worst when ingested) And some uncommon stuff is honestly always forget even existed and then get freaked out when I realized I missed it on the list

Thankfully they all went away, supposedly due to age related changes to body chemistry.

HN won't let me edit or delete the first time I replied and I don't like how its formatted. Though I just tested and am adding this sentence as an edit, strange site behavior... Sorry for repost folks but need to:

Oh boy, "the list"... Here goes a simplified version:

Beef chicken and pork (other meats untested, manual exposure testing required)

ALL nightshades (potato's tomatoes peppers etc)

the Entire Carrot/Celery/Parsley family (it's big)

Lettuces (ridiculous, it's just water!)

Rice (and related)

Oats (and related)

All berries

All tree pollens including that contaminating food.... (This is the real kicker, as it hurt worst when ingested)

And some uncommon stuff is honestly always forget even existed and then get freaked out when I realized I missed it on the list

Thankfully they all went away, supposedly due to age related changes to body chemistry.

My reflux seems to have gone now that I'm on CPAP for my Apnea. No idea if that would apply to anyone else but I still thought it was worth sharing.

Same here, the CPAP did wonders for treating apnea, and I also stopped snoring, to my fiancee's joy. About the reflux, the CPAP seems to have helped, although I already reduced it by a lot by anticipating dinner so that I would go to bed long after digestion was complete.

My wife couldn't sleep through my snoring after we had our first child. Her hormone changes gave her trouble sleeping and the extra tiredness, from a baby, meant my snoring got worse. She demanded that I go to a doctor to sort it out. I thought there was nothing they could do. Turns out a CPAP stopped my snoring. It's amazing what an impact treating the apnea has had. My mind is clear, my memory is back and I can focus like I did in university. Truly life changing.

It makes sense because the oral cavity (no pun intended) is under positive pressure with CPAP. Not everyone has sleep apnea and not everyone can tolerate CPAP, so it's not a universal solution to GERD. My GERD would be solvable during hiatal hernia surgery.

Did you have no idea at all, as in, you never felt heartburn in the evening? I wonder if eating the last meal at eg 4PM wouldn’t improve this considerably.

As someone else who has some serious GERD, no, you don’t really notice. It’s like boiling a frog (unless you get an acute version). You just suddenly realize: hey, I seem to be having heartburn all the time, I don’t remember it being like this… maybe I should go to the doc? And then you’re fine for a few days and put it off.

And no, eating at different times won’t magically make your sphincter to your stomach close any tighter.

> eating at different times won’t magically make your sphincter to your stomach close any tighter

Stomach acid is also produced as reaction to food intake and other signals. Less acid => less reflux?

BTW probiotics have been found potentially effective by this systematic review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7019778/

This is probably not as simple as blaming the dysfunctional sphincter.

IMO early time restricted feeding shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly, it‘s potentially a fix for a number of systemic and gastric/enteric issues. The evidence is still weak but promising. The most important part here is „early“ - intermittent fasting usually has an eating window in the afternoon and maybe right until bed time. According to some (weak) studies, moving the eating window to the morning and early afternoon has vastly different effects.

> Less acid => less reflux?

Weirdly, I've also heard from people in that situation that more acid => less reflux because the sphincter only closes in high-pH environments. So one of the things prescribed can be hydrochloric acid supplements. Some people swear by them.

Symptoms of chronic acid reflux, laryngopharyngeal reflux and heartburn can also be caused by hypochlorhydria (low stomach acid), in which case taking hydrochloric acid will obviously also reduce the symptoms in that case.

Yep, chugging some lemon juice can be instant pain, but makes it go away in seconds. Apples also work amazingly.

I've started drinking shrub drinks (berries plus vinegar) they're not super acidic but it's just a funny coincidence after seeing your comment.

You're 100% right, I got the doctor rush to prescribe treatment on this when I was 24. Was never enough

Finally instilled some healthy habits by 32, namely no excessively large meals and no eating big meals ~3 hours before bed and it magically disappeared.

I just had my first bout in a while yesterday - 2 smalls pizza is still 2 pizzas folks!

There are exercises you can do that help with acid reflux - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9550520/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9106553/

Also alginate based products create a raft that block the acid from physically coming up.

The early time restricted feeding stuff is very interesting, and new to me - but I did learn a lot about it reading this guys blog -https://caloriesproper.com/etrf-2022/

Thanks for sharing the exercises! What seems to have helped me was losing weight (not easy at all, but has many additional benefits). There are some additional exercises (look for "hiatal hernia exercises" on YouTube), which are very simple and sometimes can get you instant relief. It's surprising so few people know about them. The comments section under those videos is often full of messages along the lines of "I've been suffering for years, this video changed my life." It's really helpful to know you can do something about it that does not involve taking PPIs every single day.

One other hugely useful change has been drinking alkaline water - it immediately stops the burning in the back of my throat, and is useful even if your issues are pepsin based and not just acid reflux. It should be good for dental/esophageal health as well.

I'll check out the hiatal hernia exercises, thanks!

Other possible solutions: d-limone In one unpublished trial, subjects took one gram of d-limonene every other day for 20 days, on an empty stomach (that is, half an hour before eating or an hour afterward). A third of them experienced relief from their heartburn after a single capsule, and within two weeks 90 percent had relief. After a single course of treatment, relief lasted for up to six months.

Licorice The natural solution for ulcers, deglycyrrhizinated licorice root (DGL), can also be an effective acid reflux treatment. The suggested dose of DGL is two tablets, chewed about 20 minutes before meals, three times a day, or it can be taken shortly before bedtime if you suffer mostly from nighttime acid reflux. Use only chewable DGL—it must be mixed with saliva in order to be effective.

IQORO - It's like a pacifier put behind lips and pull.

inspiratory muscle training

Throat Band https://blog.fauquierent.net/2014/05/cricoid-pressure-may-mi... https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/reviews/DEN130046.p...

and then the standard advice of inclining your bed / sleep on your left side.

> This is probably not as simple as blaming the dysfunctional sphincter.

In my case, that is exactly what it is (a hernia). Other people may have different reasons for it.

No I mean I had heartburn sometimes but who hasn't but really I didn't think it was unusually bad. Of all my symptoms the one that should have stood out was coughing. Acid splashes up and gets into your airway and you cough. There may not even be any heartburn feeling. I had that for years even as a teenager. I thought I was smart because I figured out as a teen an antacid would make my weird cough go away but I had never heard of GERD what teen has? This was well before the Internet age.

My issue is I can stop eating at 5pm or even 4pm but at night if I roll over on my stomach it pushes on it and I vomit up digest food. There's nothing like sitting bolt upright from that feeling as you aspirate into your lungs at 3am! Even lying on my side doesn't help I can feel acid pour into my throat.

PPI meds like Prevacid make me feel bad just an all around blah feeling. they are not supposed to be taken long term and I've read ppi medications may damage kidneys. I think similar to high blood pressure medicine it has some effect on kidneys and can even cause coughing due to it.

One weird quirk though is at my worst if I got sick with the flu my acid reflux went away.

So for now watch my diet, eat somewhat sensibly (almost impossible since everything is a trigger), and try not to eat too late.

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