In the reflux world, the biggest, I mean the hugest trigger for reflux is fatty foods.  I really can’t reiterate that enough.  If you eat a lot of fatty foods, I can guarantee that cutting it out will also lessen your reflux significantly.  Literally anytime I get reflux of any sort, it’s because I’m consuming something with a high fat content.  And it sucks really bad too, because I think a little bit of fat can really improve not only the taste of a meal but it can make you feel better mentally as well.

Fat can really sneak up on you.  Just last week I was eating a delicious home cooked tomato free pizza (gluten free, of course) and I noticed some familiar reflux symptoms come up.  I was thinking to myself:  how is this possible?  I’ve eaten this same pizza before with virtually no symptoms!  But then I realized:  oh crap, it’s the cheese.  This time around I bought an off brand of cheese that was a mixture, and peering at the fat content of said cheese left me in horror.  Yep, there’s the catalyst right there.  These acid reflux symptoms I’m experiencing right now are because of my love of cheese.

So what can you do?  You find substitutes.  For cheese, stick to the very low fat cheeses (and keep cheese to a minimum anyway as it’s generally very fatty).  Feta, goat cheese are OK in moderation.  If you’re going to cook food on a skillet, use some extra virgin olive oil and only use enough to decently coat the skillet.  When cooking your food, cook it for just a little while longer than you normally would to try and get that extra little bit of fat out.  Try to stick with the lean meats (chicken and fish are my primary meats) and if you must have red meat, cook it well.

A low fat life can suck, but keeping the reflux under control makes it worth it.  If it helps, pick out a day of the month where you will allow yourself to pig out on fatty foods.  This will help you from going crazy.  Give yourself permission to pig out on this day (and this day only), but every other day in that month you must follow a strict low fat diet.  Pretty soon you’ll learn to live life without the fatty foods, and it actually isn’t that bad at all.  And the reflux you get on that day of pigging out will reinforce in your mind how important it truly is that you’re following your new diet!

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• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Garlic
• Fried foods (fatty foods)
• Spicy foods

From that list, the ones that give me the most problems are onions, excessive garlic, and fried foods of any kind.  Tomatoes I can generally tolerate a small amount of.  Fried foods of any kind will almost certainly cause some kind of reflux to occur, and if it happens to be a very fatty fried dish then it’s over.  The following items also appear to cause reflux or other gastrointestinal upset in me:

• Foods containing gluten
• Legumes (peanuts, cashews)
• Dairy products (milk, butter, some cheeses)

Since cutting out foods that contain gluten, I’ve noticed my acid reflux and overall gastrointestinal issues to subside drastically.  I have a gluten intolerance.  I’ve essentially had to relearn to cook entirely since discovering this.. but I’m happier that I know now what’s caused me issues for a couple of years.  Peanuts and other legumes in that family are difficult to digest in general — not just legumes, but any of the nuts as well.  The goal here is foods that are relatively easy to digest in the grand scheme, and foods that don’t relax your lower esophageal sphincter.  Milk is an absolute no go for me.  Certain low fat cheeses appear to be OK in small quantities, but the higher fat ones have to be avoided like the plague.

Overall, I try to restrict the cheese intake to once a week tops.  Any more than that and my acid reflux goes into overdrive.

I know what you’re thinking… wow that sucks.  What on earth can I eat?  Gluten intolerance, avoiding fatty foods, careful with the dairy and garlic.. really appears to limit things down.  Luckily, there are a million websites out there catering to diets of this kind.  You just have to get creative.  I eat chicken and rice a lot, experimenting with different spices and flavors.  Beans, potatoes, carrots, apples, peaches (which some list as a reflux food, but not for me) all of these are OK for me to eat.  Even certain peppers seem to be OK as well.  I generally eat higher protein, lower carb as carbs tend to take longer for me to digest and leave me feeling much “fuller”.
Once you buy some gluten free flour mix you can pretty much make anything that you can imagine — just last night I was eating some delicious home made burritos and the recipe was simple as hell.  I won’t go into detail on exactly what the ingredients were, but I will say that it was delicious.

We’ve all just become so accustomed to the way that we eat, and it can be hard to break out of that routine.  Ifyou’re used to really salty fried foods, cooking healthy foods will be a change and you won’t like it at first. But you stick to it for at least a month and I guarantee you won’t go back.  You’ll feel 100x better, not to mention your reflux will subside if you follow your diet well.  Your goal here is to record the foods that you eat (when you eat them, how fast you ate them, how large the meal was).  You’re looking for a pattern here.  Do this for a month and you should have no problem finding your trigger foods, then you can spend time looking for substitutes.  Does milk give you acid reflux?  Maybe you could try soy milk, or some other kind of milk.  If wheat/grains tend to give you reflux, maybe try going gluten free for a bit to see if that clears things up.  I have a theory that our bodies just aren’t used to the kind of conditions we are throwing them in, the kind of diets that we partake in.. and when we spend so long trapped in these kinds of diets, we tend to develop intolerances of certain foods because of it.  It’s at that time that you need to dial back and stick to the foods that you know you can handle, so your body can heal and re-adapt.

Changing your diet to cure your acid reflux is essential, ALONG with herbal and other home remedies.  Attack this thing from all different angles, and I guarantee that you will succeed.

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After losing hope for the traditional route of treatment, I decided to investigate alternative therapies.  Specifically, I was interested in home remedies:  things that you can buy at the health food store down the street.  I find most everything that I recommend here at the supplement store that’s about 10 minutes away from my house, and I’m now a regular customer there.

Some of these remedies work better than others.  The things that have consistently given me good results are the following:  DGL, digestive enzymes, apple cider vinegar and calcium citrate.

• DGL stands for deglycyrrhizinated licorice;  it’s a form of licorice root with the glycyrrhizin (a sugar which tends to increase blood pressure) removed.  Licorice has a wonderful effect of soothing the walls of your stomach and esophagus (and throat if you have silent reflux).  It promotes issue healing and protects the lining from acid damage.  Whenever I’m feeling acid discomfort, I chew on a few of these and the pain tends to go away quickly.
• Digestive enzymes are a collection of enzymes that you find in the human body that aid in digestion.  These are 100% natural, you take them before a meal and they work to digest your food faster.  If your food digests faster then there is less chance of a reflux event occurring, and so I generally recommend taking these.
• Apple cider vinegar seems counterproductive but oddly enough, it does actually work.  You simply drink 8oz of water with about a tablespoon of the vinegar (with a little honey to improve taste and texture) and boom.. tends to lessen your reflux right away.  There are various theories as to why this works, I won’t delve into them here for the sake of space (and time!).  It helps in digestion and moves the food along through your system faster.
• Calcium citrate is a calcium supplement that you find often in health food stores.  It generally comes paired with magnesium and vitamin D to aid in absorption; I usually see it referred to as  ”Cal-Mag supplement”.  There has been a recent discovery that calcium may help your lower esophageal sphincter valve (LES for short) to close properly.  Since I’ve started taking these I’ve noticed overall that I have less reflux taking place and I no longer get the “acid taste” in my mouth.

Along with these basic home remedies, it’s a good idea to address your diet.  What you eat (despite what some in the medical community believe) does in fact have an effect on the amount of acid secreted in your stomach.  Try to avoid high fat foods, those are a huge trigger.  But enough on that, we’ll talk more about specific foods next week.

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After speaking with my doctor, he comforted me in telling me that nausea is something that will happen from time to time with acid reflux. Usually when you experience any form of bloating or fullness, nausea may appear (sometimes even due to mental triggers). Fortunately nausea does not seem to happen often, especially if I avoid certain foods. I actually found out that 95% of the nausea I experienced was from a food group that I have eliminated entirely from my diet, and it’s not just me that’s affected by it, a lot of people have problems with it.

The food group I’m talking about here is any food that contains “gluten”. Yes, turns out I have a gluten intolerance. I actually blame gluten for a lot of my digestive issues — after removing gluten entirely from my diet, EVERYTHING has improved. The funny thing was: historically I’ve never had any problems with gluten. Granted, as a child I did not enjoy whole wheat very much. It always left me feeling funny, but I could eat other breads just fine. It wasn’t until about 1 year ago that I discovered gluten is a problem. Gluten also seems to be a bad trigger for my acid reflux as well, as it just seems to cause some major gastrointestinal distress.

Back on topic, nausea is all mental. Often times it can be caused by anxiety. Gluten happened to trigger my nausea, and my general anxiety probably amplified it to a level that was difficult to manage. If you get nausea, I recommend you first of all take a deep breath and relax. Then, reach for your spice cabinet and make yourself some ginger tea. I steep some ginger root in hot water (not quite boiling) and add a bit of honey and boom, nausea disappears completely. Highly recommend it for those sporadic cases of nausea that seem to pop up every once in a while.

If you’re nausea is appearing frequently, you need to pay a visit to the doctor. You may very well discover you have an intolerance of some type (lactose, gluten). Or it could be something potentially much more serious. Either way, don’t risk it. Go in and get checked out.

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Out of all of these silent acid reflux symptoms I think the worst is the voice harshness. It has affected my life the most. It was almost to the point where I would avoid social contact, because of the strain it put on my voice and comments like “What’s wrong with your voice?”.

The funny thing is, you tell someone about your condition and you aren’t taken seriously. Everyone has their acid reflux (silent or not) remedy that they say works like a charm: “Dude, drink soda water. Clears my problems right away” or the coveted “Chew gum, that works for me”. What they fail to understand is, I want to get rid of my silent acid reflux COMPLETELY. I don’t want to have to rely on having Tums, gum, or whatever in my pocket whenever I eat food. Seems that this might be a condition you’re stuck with for life or at the very least a long time, until you find out what the source of your reflux might be.

Fortunately, I’ve done research into my condition and eliminated the foods that are often touted as the major reflux triggers: peppermint, onions, tomatoes. Those three absolutely seem to trigger an episode for me. Eliminating those foods hasn’t completely rid the silent reflux from me, but it’s definitely improved things for the better. Spacing out my meals (4-5 small to medium meals a day) also works well in making sure that my digestive system can keep up. The goal is: make sure that food is digesting in your system as quickly as possible. If it sits and rots in your stomach, reflux will be bad. Certain foods take a long time to digest, the biggest culprit is fatty foods.

Eliminating the foods above has made my silent reflux more manageable. Hasn’t cured it completely, but it’s definitely improved.

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But things have changed.  The condition has gotten worse.  Six months ago I went to the doctor looking to get rid of acid reflux altogether.  We discussed options and I went on a course of Prilosec, a popular acid reducer that’s in a family of drugs called PPIs (proton pump inhibitor).  

At first, this little wonder drug worked great.  I could eat whatever I wanted, and the acid wouldn’t bother me at all.  I didn’t get that bloated feeling, didn’t feel the burn in my throat, things were working great.  About 2 months into the treatment it just up and stopped working.  Right when I had thought that I had gotten rid of reflux for good it comes back with a vengeance and a host of new symptoms.  The doc changed me from Prilosec to Prevacid and that worked for about another month before going belly up once again.

So it was right around this time that I started to despair.  How on earth do I get rid of my reflux for good and why aren’t any of these drugs working on me?  Was I cursed?  Am I stuck with my acid reflux for all eternity?  Or is there a solution that I haven’t discovered yet?

This blog is my journey into the world of reflux and in discovering exactly what it is that triggers this disease.  I intend on finding out what it is that I can do to get rid of my acid reflux symptoms, and I plan on sharing all of my findings right here.  I hope that this blog is useful for someone.

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