Some of this I describe may not be very pleasant, so I wouldn’t read it while eating.
I was diagnosed with GERD some 33 years ago. I’m 54 now. Never heard of it called silent reflux before. But 20% of GERD sufferers don’t experience heartburn. That is true of me too; it’s just something I don’t experience. And I sleep great too. After refluxing 1-2 times a month on average during meals for nearly all of that time, and on medication (prevacid 30 mg capsules), my reflux went into remission a little over a year ago.
During my time of suffering, there were probably only perhaps 20 different months (just guessing) I may never have refluxed any. And perhaps 1 or 2 weeks a year, I really had a very bad time of reflux, where just about every meal was causing me problems. I remember some days, I would reflux a quart or two and it was violent, sometimes lasting hours. It seems like my stomach was never going to empty. This was usually when I was experimenting and went off the meds completely for a few weeks. Other times, it was over quick, I would lose the whole meal instantly.
Now I would like to know what happened after suffering through it all of those years why it decides to go away after having it for 30 years plus. I’m going to guess what I did last year, may not be related to why it went away, but I’ll tell it, anyway, FWIW.
Both of my elderly parents were down health-wise, and I had to be the full-time health care taker of them 5 days and nights a week for several months. Even longer period than that, I had to stay with them quite a bit before I could come back home.
Two things were different, and I started doing them about the same time. I started eating their foods and drinks. And I also decided since Walmart has the generic form of Prevacid in 15 mg capsules, I would try using those instead of my usual 30 mg dosage that were prescription I had been on for those 30+ years.
As far as my diet that was different, the foods were actually not as healthy as I had been eating, but the drinks were different. I started drinking tea, with no sugar, but the sugar substitute packets. I would generally add with lemon juice too. I didn’t think anything of it.
Anyway, wasn’t paying too much attention, until about two months later, I started realizing, I only had one very light reflux during that time, maybe two, don’t recall exactly. But another month passes, and no reflux. Then another month goes by, and no reflux. Before I know it, the year passes, and I can only recall maybe three very light reflux episodes. I kept thinking either the tea or lemon, or both may have helped, as well as possibly reducing the medication dosages in half. It’s hard to know if it did, or the thing just went into remission on its own.
For this year, I wanted to keep an accurate data sheet of exactly how many times I’m going to reflux that I’m going to mark on my calendar. Thus far, it’s still at zero. I think I went the last nine months of last year, with one very, light episode of reflux sometime before Thanksgiving. There are occasions, where I will experience a little bit of hiccupping, but I stop eating for about a half a minute and it goes away. Nothing really discomforting. I still take the 15 mg dosage, but for right now, it’s only 3 days in a row, and four days off a week. I started doing that about three weeks ago, and still doing great. I don’t think it has completely left; I’m kind of leery of changing things up much more when I’m doing so good now, but will continue to proceed with caution. In another few months, I’m thinking about dropping all medicine for it and seeing how it goes, but staying with the occasional tea and lemon juice.
What’s crazy about reflux, is what foods and drinks the doctors tell you that you should avoid. Everybody has seen the list. Basically, there was hardly anything you could eat. There were times during my most violent episodes, I would even reflux water, but that was kind of when I was already in my reflux state. Others tell me, they think I should have taken a test to see if my body wasn’t making enough acid, instead of taking these acid blockers. It seems like everybody says to avoid jalapeno peppers (I eat a lot of those every day), lemons, oranges, and other acidy foods, along with tea and milk which was also supposed to make it worse. But with me there really wasn’t a specific food or drink that matters, although I’m kind of leery of eating certain BBQ foods, and their sauces.
Sometimes I wonder if my doctor misdiagnosed me, but he seemed very thorough. The diagnosis I got was GERD. I had the barium test, x-rays, scope down my throat, and it was supposed to show I had a hiatal hernia, and esophagitis. I had my throat stretched once some 25 year ago.
There’s yet another operation out nowadays that goes in and repairs the flap that is supposed to be better than other methods in the past, and this is supposed to fix a high number of acid reflux sufferers. I understand great results have come about from it all.
I just hope my luck continues. I came out of it without any erosion to my teeth or throat that I’m aware of. Wish all of you the best of luck too, on whatever the hell works.
