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Since I started over a week ago now, I have had near constant heartburn. Today, it seems to be totally in remission. Why? I didn't take ANY omeprazole yesterday, but instead was taking a swig of pickle juice before each meal as well as eating a few almonds after every meal. It didn't seem to have that big of an effect yesterday, but then I had taken my usual 20 mg of omeprazole the night before, then took none in the morning and none last night.

I'm really happy...but being aware of how PPIs work, extremely puzzled. Before my titration study, I had tried to wean down on omeprazole and had started taking a supplement called Zypan my chiropractor recommended, once I had gotten myself down to about 8 mg of omeprazole a night. After taking the Zypan a few days, I ended up with a horrible acid stomach, so I stopped it and went back on the omeprazole. After CPAP, however, omeprazole would just not even touch the heartburn I was experiencing, even when I increased it to twice per day. I even got some ranitidine, which I had stopped taking a few years back because it just did not work anymore, and of course it still didn't work. Tagamet also did not work, which didn't surprise me after reading online that if you had ranitidine resistance, you probably will also be resistant to Tagamet.

So, one day after starting pickle juice therapy and everything feels quite normal. I'm hoping this continues. Anyone with a similar experience? It almost seems as though omeprazole was causing the heartburn rather than correcting it.

My heartburn problems seem to be less if I increase my minimum pressure.

I'm guessing that struggling to breathe or restricted airflow somehow moves stomach acid up from the stomach. Or maybe there's some degree of stress involved.

YMMV.

Pickle juice may be helpful because it has enzymes and acids your stomach needs. But more likely it is coincidental. A lot of newbies experience heartburn and reflux at first on CPAP which seems to be related to aerophagia. It may be that your body has learned what it needs to do to reduce the aerophagia.

On the other hand, there are people like me with terrible reflux--CPAP helps to reduce my reflux significantly--a fact that is proven every time I fall asleep without it, even when sitting upright!

Janknitz wrote:Pickle juice may be helpful because it has enzymes and acids your stomach needs. But more likely it is coincidental. A lot of newbies experience heartburn and reflux at first on CPAP which seems to be related to aerophagia. It may be that your body has learned what it needs to do to reduce the aerophagia.

On the other hand, there are people like me with terrible reflux--CPAP helps to reduce my reflux significantly--a fact that is proven every time I fall asleep without it, even when sitting upright!

One theory behind the pickle juice is that it triggers the stomach lining to stop producing acid, so you don't overproduce. Another theory is that as we age we produce less stomach acid, so adding vinegar or pickle juice at the start of the meal helps digest your food and cut down on excess acid produced to try to digest food. I don't know why it works or why it only works for some people and not others, but I can say it is working for me. I've had reflux ever since I was pregnant with my first child and have been on chronic reflux medication for 15 years or so. But even then, it was for reflux... I rarely had heartburn.

I even had a large cup of coffee this morning and still no heartburn or reflux at all. I've been having aerophagia to some degree every night since I started. But I am happy to say, I finally got the pressure adjusted on my machine today, so hopefully tonight I won't have aerophagia.

You may want to look further into resolving your heartburn to improve your cpap therapy. I have mild heartburn myself and read on this forum a long time ago about how acid-reflux and GERD were detrimental to cpap therapy. The way it was explained to me was that the soft tissues in our throats are held open by the air pressure from cpap. The heartburn irritates those soft tissues causing them to essentially stiffen up, making the cpap less able to hold them open. When I read about it, I remember hearing that even very mild heartburn can have a negative effect on cpap. I mentioned it to my Dr and he agree'ed that I should treat the heart burn to improve cpap therapy so I got some over the counter heartburn medication that helped. I don't think that helps you all that much so I guess this is just a "hey hang in there" and a "BTW heartburn affects cpap" post. Hope you find a good solution.