Exercise to Strengthen Esophageal Sphincter and Eliminate Gastric Reflux (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Exercise to Strengthen Esophageal Sphincter and Eliminate Gastric Reflux (2022)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

33 pointsBluestein31 comments

I used to get acid reflux, it was really noticeable while trying to sleep, but that changed after I drank some water (by accident) from inside a cave of a small island near Vanuatu. This led to the worst throat infection I've ever had, after treating it with antibiotics, I stopped having acid reflux altogether. It's been 5 years now without any acid reflux. However, I've now been diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE).

Honestly I wonder how much of acid reflux is connected to the gut bacteria.

Did you perhaps have H. Pylori and your antibiotics eliminated it?

I was also diagnosed with EoE recently - my understanding is that it also causes symptoms that feel like reflux, but aren’t. Very occasionally I might actually have a bit of reflux (evidenced by a bit of regurgitation), but the burning sensation that I used to attribute to reflux I now attribute to EoE instead.

Seems worse when I’ve recently been eating my trigger foods (mostly dairy). Sucks not being able to eat cheese :(

I suspect thats the case, but EoE became a thing for me within months of that ordeal so I suspect there is a connection. My EoE symptoms are difficulty swallowing and esophageal spasms. I have access to oral budesonide which does stop it however it elevates my heart rate.

> Honestly I wonder how much of acid reflux is connected to the gut bacteria.

There's almost literaly an unexplored world in our gut, related to the most unexpected things.-

When it comes to our mental and physical health, gut bacteria is our second soul.

Great way to put it, really.-

What is the first?

Where's the first would also be an interesting question:)

(And, "who's on second" ...)

I am diagnosed with EoE as a result of celiac disease. I've had a lot of success with Dupixent as a treatment--just wanted to put that out for HN should anyone be looking for new options.

For anyone having trouble swallowing, I'd highly recommend trying to find a doctor who will help you with self dilation therapy (ESDT). I had my throat dilated 4x with an OR procedure, it only lasted about a month before starting to close back up, and I was miserable until going back to have it done again.

I bought a Maloney dilator on eBay (48 French diameter, which is 16mm), tried to do it myself after watching a YouTube video, and couldn't get it down more than about 6 inches, which didn't help. My regular GI doctor said he couldn't help me: he works for a for-profit hospital, and they make around $11K every time they do this 15-minute procedure, so of course they aren't anxious to help. He referred me to a U of L GI doctor who also said he doesn't do ESDT but referred me to another U of L GI doctor who did help patients learn this.

It's been a game changer for me. It was taking up to 90 minutes for me to eat a regular meal because I had to chew everything so long to avoid choking, I lost a bunch of weight because eating was so challenging, had to warm food up 2-3 times while eating, etc. It was awful.

Now I slide this 25" rubber thing down my throat every morning. It takes maybe 15 seconds, wash it when done, and I have no more eating or swallowing problems. There are several videos on YouTube if you want to see people actually doing it. The hardest part is finding a doctor who will guide you through doing it. First they will do a dilation (sometimes they call it dilitation) with a scope, while you're under, to take some pictures, dilate your throat wider than the device you're going to use yourself (my Dr dilated me to 20mm, my device is 16mm), then bring you back in and show you how to use your device (doctor does it to you while awake), then ask you to do it to yourself right after they do it.

It sounds awful to some people, but compared to going into the hospital every 6 months for a 15-minute procedure that actually takes 3-4 hours by the time you get through all the prep / recovery, and only lasts a few weeks before problems start recurring, ESDT is a fantastic alternative. My doctor did recommend I take a PPI, but I've read a few bad things about them, never started them, and don't feel like they are necessary for me. He also advised to do the procedure every week, but for me, it's easier to do it every day rather than struggle with it sometimes if I wait too long.

Poking around, there's a subreddit[0] with users who seem to report varied results, and some discussion there of another study on swallowing in the bridge position[1]. Interesting stuff, thanks OP!

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/karrfalt/

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9550520/

found this article on reddit last year and have been trying this freqently. There are a lot of other exercises ( including some yoga ones) on youtube.

Nothing seems to have made any difference for me so far, unfortunately .

I also had upper endoscopy, barium swallow and other tests but none of those found anything at all. PPIs and such don't do anything. I've tried other 'home remdies' like apple cider vinegar, drinking alkaline water, not eating ( or eating ) certain types of food. no help :/.

I am otherwise healthy with 'normal' bmi and workout almost everday and stay active.

Did you try cutting out 'enriched' flour? That seems to be a major trigger of heartburn for me and I do a lot better without it.

Genuinely curious, what is it usually "enriched" with?

Vitamin B1,2,3,6,12, Iron, Zinc Oxide, A, Folic Acid, D3 etc, but I don't know if it's a function of what they add, remove or simply other ingredients that usually accompany enriched flour, like preservatives.

Raw or whole foods are a few orders of magnitude more gentle on my stomach than foods that are engineered to be shelf stable for months at room temp in the pantry.

> preservatives.

A whole other chapter of filth, those.-

We are, mostly, unwittingly poisoning ourselves for the purposes of keeping a given food-industrial supply chain going.-

Thought you were going to say "kettle" of filth there for a second

Which also works, I guess

intresting. we mainly eat rice but i do eat bread once a week. I will try to cut it out .

So sorry. It must be really flummoxing. Could it be some sort of (mis) "trained" muscle reflex or action, where the involved sphicter has gone rogue, somehow, leading to badly cordinated physiological response?

You can contact me here https://davidt.co.uk for more information but I went through similar issues for 8 years. Taking Betaine HCL and digestive enzymes before each meal has not only completely eradicated all digestive problems but also massively helped my mindset as a result. Essentially some people have chronically low stomach acid and stimulating more with Betaine HCL helps increase the amount of acid, the acidity of the acid and as a result actually closes the LES. When there's enough acid and acidity, the LES closes. If there's not enough it stays loose. This is why PPIs are awful in the long run. It seems like it solves it in the short term but wears off after a while. It also causes all sorts of issues further down the line like IBS and malabsorption of vitamins etc.

Hopefully the results get replicated with a meaningfully sized cohort.

If that happens then it provides an incentive for the creation of alternative exercises or devices to provide a similar effect.

Indeed. The posture advised in the article is far from comfortable.-

I saw this before. It was posted to Nih.gov too ? Aren't Articles on NIH required peer reviewed and verified?

I don't know what you mean by verified, but it is published by Springer Nature in their publication "Cureus", which is generally considered to be peer reviewed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cureus

But no scientific method. Only one person Sample Set , and no detail description of the exercise? This is how science work these days?

I started having this problem, I quit coffee altogether and haven't had a single incident since.

Pretty amazing, this can help a loooot of people!

I was half expecting something NFSW here.

Why

Problems at entrance, also at exit.

Because enough of the poster's brain is devoted to thinking about NSFW stuff that it has become one of the main contexts he uses while interpreting new information

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