> The resistance was provided by positioning my head below my stomach in a kneeling posture. This required food being swallowed to be pushed up an incline. I began eating part of each breakfast (oatmeal) and sometimes lunch (a sandwich) in the exercise position. I would kneel on a platform (which happened to be 6 ½” high), take a normal mouthful, chew it as needed, and prepare to swallow. I would then lay my forearms and the backs of my hands on the floor, rest my head on my hands, and complete the swallowing process. With a little practice, I was soon able to initiate and complete the swallowing process with my head resting on my hands on the floor. I did not attempt to determine what the optimal height of the platform might be or if, indeed, any was necessary.
Well what the heck, I've been working on handstands and my GERD went away. I also lost weight so I attributed it to that, but this might be part of it. "after beginning daily LES exercises, I noticed that I could bend over at the hip and pull weeds in my garden without acid running into the back of my throat" - At the start of training headstands I'd have reflux so I had to do them at the right time of day to not make it terrible. Over time this went away and I'd have to eat a full meal right before to feel the same now. I wonder if I trained this muscle similarly.
I used to get a strange reflux from sleep apnea (which can be mitigated by exercising and losing weight)
Basically, when you are sleeping and your throat collapses, you breathe in, and instead of pulling air via the throat, your lungs pull stomach fluid up your esophagus and sometimes into the lungs. I would wake up sometimes with GERD feelings, and sometimes as I was throwing up into my mouth.
This is one of those posts that could change my life. Thanks for sharing. Sorry to not add to the discussion but I have terrible acid reflux and sometimes it feels like it runs my life. I often don't sleep well because of it.
Same, I'm going to give it a shot as well. 20 years of GERD with 10+ years of daily medicine that I'd like to stop taking. I wonder if a yoga downward dog position might be equivalent?
I have a prescription for daily 40mg pantoprazol, which reduces the amount of acid my stomach produces.
But I've also noticed that it doesn't work as well if I eat too much or eat too late in the evening. It makes sense that your stomach produces more acid in response to eating, so simply eating less can also lead to less reflux. Losing some weight would be a nice bonus for me, but I haven't been very successful at that yet.
That said, training my oesophagus to keep the acid in my stomach also sounds like a good idea.
A book I read recently called "Why Stomach Acid Is Good for You" has a section on bitters (which I believe would include mint) are good for reflux - their prescription is chew/eat bitters ~5 minutes before a meal.
I have a serious case of acid reflux, I eat 4-6 maalox a day and sometimes another one or two during the night if the pain wakes me up. It never goes into my mouth or throat but the stomach pain is really annoying.
Will try this as well although pictures of the positions would have been welcome.
You may not have acid reflux if it acid never gets into your throat. I have at least a yearly episode of waking up choking and the epiglottis is stuck shut protecting my lungs from acid. It's horrible to wake up like that but am always fine after the episode and yet every time it happens I can't shake off the sheer panic I'm in. I could say I got used to it and yet when it happens it's horrifying.
I had acid reflux from the time I was 15 years old. By the time I was 22 it had eaten holes almost through my esophagus, so I had Laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication surgery. They basically wrapped part of my stomach around the valve and it tightened it up. No more heartburn.
On the down side, I no longer can vomit, so there's that. (Confirmed after the not-so-smart decision to try every booth at a chili cook-off.)
You should be taking omeprazole rather than antacids.
For those not in the know, antacids control the acidity levels. Omeprazole signals to the stomach receptors to reduce/stop producing the acid in the first place. The difference is that, when your body senses a pH change upon taking the antacid, it provides some intermediate relief, but eventually the body senses the reduction and produces more acid to compensate for the shortfall, resulting in an even greater amount of acid. This can turn into a very vicious cycle very badly.
Ideally, you should be taking both Maalox with each meal and omeprazole on a regular basis every day, till your physician directs you to change course. 4 Maalox a day is actually a lot.
Why don’t you get proper medication to deal with this as opposed to antacids? I also had bad reflux and Omeprazole took care of it pretty quickly. OTC antacids were no help really.
Food for thought. A few things work for me. First, eat your last meal early - we eat dinner around 6 and are in bed anywhere from 10pm to midnight.
Second, natural apple cider vinegar... If you are getting that terrible burning feeling that isn't subsiding, take a small sip of apple cider vinegar out of the fridge. Rinse or brush your teeth right away as it's hard on them. I feel like as with everything else this should be done in moderation.
Another thing to add for me personally is no alcohol a couple hours before bedtime, especially bourbon/whiskey/etc. And absolutely no spaghetti or red sauces anywhere close to bedtime.
I remember being a kid and thinking that animals that bend down to drink from a pond must be forcing the water to travel up their esophagus. Hmm, I wonder if humans can do that. So I filled my mouth with water, did a head stand, then swallowed. Yes, no problem. Newfound respect for my body that day.
My 8th grade science teacher showed us this back in 1960: he had one of us do a handstand and drink water from a cup using a straw with no choking or gagging.
Your story reminds me of this segment from Mr. Wizard that I saw as a child. This kid eats an apple while doing a hand stand, and I remember being amazed by it.
> Gastroesophageal reflux results from weakness or relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) [1]. Personal experience with this problem lead me to think about it, repeatedly.
LOL.
More seriously: Is there something about a modern diet or lifestyle that tends to cause this weakening? Or have anatomically-modern humans just always had a similar rate of reflux, for this reason?
We don’t drink directly from streams or pools of water. Pre-technology humans would have had to use their hands to scoop water to their mouths and it’s more efficient when your mouth is closer to the water source since you don’t lose as much on the way up. We also just don’t spend much time bending over anymore which is probably another source of resistance that is missing.
Getting an illustrated children's Bible 22 years ago, I was most surprised by when God told the commander to tell his soldiers to drink from a stream and they were wildly idiosyncratic, some lapping like cats, some cupping the water into their hands etc.
Spoiler alert: commander did multiple tests, each selecting for idiosyncrasies, resulting in a force a fraction of the original size, and won the battle.
There is an episode in Andrew Hubermans' podcast which goes into the details of this. Overall if you are keeping your digestive track in "digestion mode" frequently thus not letting it rest will eventually building up constant acid (to digest the food) resulting in reflux. The digestive track goes into "rest mode" about 3-4 hours after your most recent food intake.
We eat a lot of processed foods which are softer compared to chewing tough meat for example. This is known to affect jaw and palate development (which in turn affects teeth alignment, tongue position, and even breathing). [1] Seems like it could also affect the esophagus.
I had a small hunch that it could also be related to how thoroughly we chew. I've noticed over the years that I chewed less and less while eating and started swallowing most pieces whole. Since a few months ago I started to make an effort to really chew on my food until it's properly minced.
According to the link that seems to be part of the problem.
Yep, I had a terrible diet a few years ago which flared up some moderate acid reflux whenever I had certain sugary drinks. Fanta and Coke were the worst for me. I think the likely culprit was the aspartame. I very rarely drink those types of beverages now and I don't have acid reflux anymore.
I have recently had a significant improvement in acid reflux symptoms. The key for me was to just eat less.
I am not morbidly obese. I have a pretty small frame and am about 5 ft 6 in tall. My BMI before cutting my portion sizes down was on the upper end of the normal weight range (24.9).
I tend to be a fast eater, and I think that did me no favors.
It makes a lot of sense in retrospect. But when you're not obese, cutting your portion sizes is not the first thing that comes to mind as a method for improving health.
I have had GERD since 2012 after a surgery and it has been extremely unpleasant to say the least. The author mentions Rantadine which I also took but the problem with that drug was it was found to contain carcinogens and I promptly stopped taking it. I now take pepcid AC 20MG daily and would love to find a way to stop taking it altogether.
In case you are wondering(and I have been to the Dr many, many times about this), triggers for GERD are stress(for me it is the strongest trigger) caffeine, heavy fried foods, spicy foods, cabbage and soy. Methods to avoid acid reflux flare ups are eat slowly(I eat really fast!) eat at least 2-3 hours before bed, and also avoid huge meals. I am truly thankful to OP for this article and will apply its techniques right away, hope the stuff I mentioned helps others as well.
GERD is multicausal, which is why there's so many responses already. Personally I went from occasional heartburn to GERD during a period where I was eating spicier food more often, eating more overall, and consuming more alcohol. The latter two are modern problems, spiciness might be as well.
When I was seeing doctors for stomach issues years ago, I remember being told to avoid spicy food among other things. However, population studies don't show a higher rate of GERD/stomach ulcers for groups who report eating spicier food. I think it just irritates damage that is already there that you might not have noticed.
For me, it turned out I was reacting to something in my well water and a bit after switching to bottled water, I could go back to chocolate/coffee/alcohol/spicy food with no problems.
It's not just weakening that's the problem, but also more pressure from below, and obesity can cause the stomach to be pushed up.
I have a hiatal hernia, where there's a too large opening allowing part of the stomach to slipe through the diaphragm, and that massively increases my acid reflux if I don't take medication.
Weight changes dramatically affects the strength of my symptoms. As I've lost weight the symptoms have largely disappeared again.
Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle will cause mitochondrial dysfunction throughout the body and prevent muscles from working effectively, including the esophageal sphincter. I don't know that causality has ever been directly proven there but it seems likely.
hiatal hernia runs in my family, so it's genetic for me
not sure where you're coming from but LOL for a disease that definitely leads people to die of esophageal cancer on a regular basis not to mention makes living and exercising difficult seems....inappropriate ?
Their "LOL" was in reference to the author's statement of "...personal experience led me to think about this, repeatedly" (which is the author presumably making a joke)
I would posit that chronic inflammation of the stomach mucosa due to the SAD diet could cause neuromuscular problems in the regions that control the LES.
> Personal experience with this problem lead me to think about it, repeatedly.
It's a comically-understated way to say "I kept having acid reflux, just, so very many times, and it hurt like a motherfucker so I became preoccupied with fixing it".
Uh, there's likely more than a few confounders here, which are, at a minimum, undocumented in the report. Intuitively, one would expect lower caloric consumption with altered eating habits, which would lead to decreased fat and decreased intra-abdominal pressure. There's also no test of LES function prior to initiation of the experiment, so no delta was actually measured.
There's also a bit of misunderstanding, I suspect, in the pathology report: 0.2 x 0.5 x 0.3 cm is a perfectly reasonable size for an esophageal biopsy, and it was almost certainly measured with a ruler like (1) or (2).
I've passed this to a GI friend to get their thoughts, but suffice to say, more study is required before making this any sort of recommendation.
It’s great that he wrote it up in such a nice format so others can now run more sophisticated studies.
Imo journals should encourage such articles along the lines of “here’s a neat idea that we tried and that appears somewhat plausible, and we’re not even going to pretend to do statistics”.
Note that there's also a less known type of Acid Reflux called Laryngopharyngeal Reflux (LPR), also known as Silent Reflux, which doesn't manifest with "usual" symptoms like heartburn or a sour taste in mouth, but instead with symptoms like sore throat or hoarseness. For a long, long time I didn't understand why so often after eating my throat was full of phlegm and I had to constantly clear it, I thought it has something to do with paranasal sinuses because I rarely experienced symptoms commonly associated with Acid Reflux, but after some research I found out about the Silent Reflux so I modified my diet and the symptoms mostly disappeared.
I battled what I believe to be silent reflux for years. For me it started out as a weird persistent sore throat. Then after months I started getting bouts of nausea and a feeling of swelling in my ears and throat. After a lot of doctor visits (who kept repeating GERD) and various medicines, I totally gave up coffee. It wasn’t immediate but after a few months I felt better and after a year I was totally back to normal.
In case someone out there is searching for a success story.
It was really hard because nothing worked immediately. I still can’t be completely sure it was the coffee but I feel better now and will never go back to try again.
I have a little bit of silent reflux, and it will cause me to gag occasionally. I definitely attribute it to coffee + alcohol. While I've cut alcohol down dramatically, I've also tried lowering the acidity of coffee, using darker roasts, adding more water, seems to help a little.
Ugh, I’ve had this for over a decade. It’s a real bummer. Unfortunately, neither diet nor medicine seems to help mine, so I just constantly feel like I have a mild cold, even if I’m not eating anything.
I had (have?) this, too. I went to my doctor because I was clearing my throat all the time. This was the diagnosis. This actually scares me, because I believe it's likely (I'm not a Dr, so this is a guess) that having silent reflux for a long period of time could cause esophageal cancer.
I understand there's lots of caution in this thread about about this paper/post. It's definitely worth a try and it seems like there couldn't be much of a downside.
This is a textbook GERD symptom for me... took me a long time to recognize it as such, because I thought it was just a post-nasal drip, but it was so bad it would wake me up in the middle of the night.
Drinking a couple sips of Alka-seltzer always fixes that choking feeling and lets me fall back asleep.
Diet in GERD/LPR is a quite tricky and complex topic, when you start reading what types of food and drinks should you avoid it can easily overwhelm you, because besides obviously unhealthy stuff there's also a lot of healthy stuff (including many vegatables and fruits) that you should avoid and a lot of "basic" things that many people will find hard to eliminate like chocolate, coffeine, milk, cheese, butter, pepper, mint and many, many more. The thing is that there are certain types of food and drinks that will most definitiely cause acid reflux in anyone with GERD/LPR, but there's also a lot of stuff that possibly could cause acid reflux, but you must check yourself if it's good for you or not. Personally in my diet I have heavily reduced stuff like whole milk, cheese, eggs, pepper, chocolate, onions, lemons, oranges, tomatoes (including ketchup), anything spicy or fried, soft drinks - at first avoiding all that stuff is burdensome, but with time you get used to it.
One thing people can do is to never eat chocolate or take ibuprofen (and many drugs like it) before laying down. These things relax the sphincter at the bottom of your esophagus. If you pay attention, you'll often notice an immediate burp when you eat chocolate.
I restrict chocolate to nothing after 2pm (ish).
My gastroenterologist told me to treat my stomach like a hot cup of coffee. When it is full, be very careful to tip it over, otherwise you will get burned.
I've had reflux for 10+ years, and noticed that in the last 2 years, it hasn't really bothered me. I was attributing it to a dietary change (went from mostly vegetarian to vegan), but at the same time, I also started working out with a personal trainer. He loves to have us doing plenty of things with our feet above our head (push-ups with feet up on a bench, burpees, but kicking up on to a bench). My reflux bothered me during workouts at first, especially if we worked out in the afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. But, now I never have reflux issues working out, and rarely have them when sleeping...
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> The resistance was provided by positioning my head below my stomach in a kneeling posture. This required food being swallowed to be pushed up an incline. I began eating part of each breakfast (oatmeal) and sometimes lunch (a sandwich) in the exercise position. I would kneel on a platform (which happened to be 6 ½” high), take a normal mouthful, chew it as needed, and prepare to swallow. I would then lay my forearms and the backs of my hands on the floor, rest my head on my hands, and complete the swallowing process. With a little practice, I was soon able to initiate and complete the swallowing process with my head resting on my hands on the floor. I did not attempt to determine what the optimal height of the platform might be or if, indeed, any was necessary.
Deleted Comment
Basically, when you are sleeping and your throat collapses, you breathe in, and instead of pulling air via the throat, your lungs pull stomach fluid up your esophagus and sometimes into the lungs. I would wake up sometimes with GERD feelings, and sometimes as I was throwing up into my mouth.
I'll definitely give this a shot.
Strength: Capsule > Leaves > Mint tea
Usually we eat the raw leaves. They are tasty! You can make a salad out of it.
At night drink some mint tea.
And in emergency take a capsule.
But I've also noticed that it doesn't work as well if I eat too much or eat too late in the evening. It makes sense that your stomach produces more acid in response to eating, so simply eating less can also lead to less reflux. Losing some weight would be a nice bonus for me, but I haven't been very successful at that yet.
That said, training my oesophagus to keep the acid in my stomach also sounds like a good idea.
Will try this as well although pictures of the positions would have been welcome.
On the down side, I no longer can vomit, so there's that. (Confirmed after the not-so-smart decision to try every booth at a chili cook-off.)
For those not in the know, antacids control the acidity levels. Omeprazole signals to the stomach receptors to reduce/stop producing the acid in the first place. The difference is that, when your body senses a pH change upon taking the antacid, it provides some intermediate relief, but eventually the body senses the reduction and produces more acid to compensate for the shortfall, resulting in an even greater amount of acid. This can turn into a very vicious cycle very badly.
Ideally, you should be taking both Maalox with each meal and omeprazole on a regular basis every day, till your physician directs you to change course. 4 Maalox a day is actually a lot.
Second, natural apple cider vinegar... If you are getting that terrible burning feeling that isn't subsiding, take a small sip of apple cider vinegar out of the fridge. Rinse or brush your teeth right away as it's hard on them. I feel like as with everything else this should be done in moderation.
Another thing to add for me personally is no alcohol a couple hours before bedtime, especially bourbon/whiskey/etc. And absolutely no spaghetti or red sauces anywhere close to bedtime.
Good luck and I hope it gets better for you.
Deleted Comment
https://youtu.be/bC6jJnVe1LI?t=1072 (starting at 17:52)
LOL.
More seriously: Is there something about a modern diet or lifestyle that tends to cause this weakening? Or have anatomically-modern humans just always had a similar rate of reflux, for this reason?
Spoiler alert: commander did multiple tests, each selecting for idiosyncrasies, resulting in a force a fraction of the original size, and won the battle.
[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2020/07/21/toll-shrinking-jaws-hum...
I had a small hunch that it could also be related to how thoroughly we chew. I've noticed over the years that I chewed less and less while eating and started swallowing most pieces whole. Since a few months ago I started to make an effort to really chew on my food until it's properly minced.
According to the link that seems to be part of the problem.
The following either didn't work, or only reduced the severity of my reflux:
- Medicines were helpful but not an outright fix.
- Dietary changes did not help at all.
- Sleeping upright helped but only so much. And my sleep quality was terrible.
- A medical device that applies light pressure to your Adam's apple. This actually helped a lot, but was not fun to sleep with.
The two things that I think actually got rid of my reflux for good are:
- Intermittent fasting
- Vomitting cat exercise
I am not morbidly obese. I have a pretty small frame and am about 5 ft 6 in tall. My BMI before cutting my portion sizes down was on the upper end of the normal weight range (24.9).
I tend to be a fast eater, and I think that did me no favors.
It makes a lot of sense in retrospect. But when you're not obese, cutting your portion sizes is not the first thing that comes to mind as a method for improving health.
Chewing thoroughly until the food almost liquefies helps the stomach digest faster and empty its contents into the intestines.
In case you are wondering(and I have been to the Dr many, many times about this), triggers for GERD are stress(for me it is the strongest trigger) caffeine, heavy fried foods, spicy foods, cabbage and soy. Methods to avoid acid reflux flare ups are eat slowly(I eat really fast!) eat at least 2-3 hours before bed, and also avoid huge meals. I am truly thankful to OP for this article and will apply its techniques right away, hope the stuff I mentioned helps others as well.
For me, it turned out I was reacting to something in my well water and a bit after switching to bottled water, I could go back to chocolate/coffee/alcohol/spicy food with no problems.
It's not just weakening that's the problem, but also more pressure from below, and obesity can cause the stomach to be pushed up.
I have a hiatal hernia, where there's a too large opening allowing part of the stomach to slipe through the diaphragm, and that massively increases my acid reflux if I don't take medication.
Weight changes dramatically affects the strength of my symptoms. As I've lost weight the symptoms have largely disappeared again.
not sure where you're coming from but LOL for a disease that definitely leads people to die of esophageal cancer on a regular basis not to mention makes living and exercising difficult seems....inappropriate ?
What's funny...?
It's a comically-understated way to say "I kept having acid reflux, just, so very many times, and it hurt like a motherfucker so I became preoccupied with fixing it".
There's also a bit of misunderstanding, I suspect, in the pathology report: 0.2 x 0.5 x 0.3 cm is a perfectly reasonable size for an esophageal biopsy, and it was almost certainly measured with a ruler like (1) or (2).
I've passed this to a GI friend to get their thoughts, but suffice to say, more study is required before making this any sort of recommendation.
(1) https://www.neobits.com/thermo_fisher_scientific_nc9759439_r...
(2) https://www.aaawholesalecompany.com/fis-s40641-pk.html
Imo journals should encourage such articles along the lines of “here’s a neat idea that we tried and that appears somewhat plausible, and we’re not even going to pretend to do statistics”.
In case someone out there is searching for a success story.
It was really hard because nothing worked immediately. I still can’t be completely sure it was the coffee but I feel better now and will never go back to try again.
I understand there's lots of caution in this thread about about this paper/post. It's definitely worth a try and it seems like there couldn't be much of a downside.
It seems to goes away if I use Gaviscon, have my last meal at 5pm and avoid spicy/fatty foods.
This is a textbook GERD symptom for me... took me a long time to recognize it as such, because I thought it was just a post-nasal drip, but it was so bad it would wake me up in the middle of the night.
Drinking a couple sips of Alka-seltzer always fixes that choking feeling and lets me fall back asleep.
I restrict chocolate to nothing after 2pm (ish).
My gastroenterologist told me to treat my stomach like a hot cup of coffee. When it is full, be very careful to tip it over, otherwise you will get burned.