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Pugsy wrote:

SleepingUgly wrote: You see a gastroenterologist for your GERD? Are you on medication?

Yep to both questions.
Right now trying Dexilant but having some really nasty side effects that make it really difficult to have a life outside the bathroom.
It's a known side effect but I didn't know just how bad it is. Diarrhea.
Think colonoscopy prep diarrhea without any warning at all. No ability to control it at all.
It worked really great the first month and I thought I was home free but it has been downhill ever since. Right now trying to work out if maybe a pill every 3rd day would keep the GERD at bay and let the esophagus heal and not have me having huge accidents on the way to the bathroom ever 15 minutes. It's bad.

Pugsy,
I tried Dexilant a couple months ago, but since it is SO expensive, I've been using it once a week when my symptoms come on early. Otherwise, I'm on extended release generic pantoprazole every other day. Seems to work for me, without trying for anything other than reasonable control at reasonable cost.
As a matter of fact, I could use a little help for my chronic constipation
Hope you find a compromise that works for you, Pugsy.

n0hardmask wrote:As a matter of fact, I could use a little help for my chronic constipation

I would gladly trade you some of my problem for some of your problem.
Ever had the colon prep for the colonoscopy?...you know poop till its clear and massive water is expelled at one sitting?
That's what I ended up with but zero control over it. No warning that it was about to come spewing out...none of the usual pre diarrhea cramping or anything like that. 10 steps to the bathroom and I still didn't have time to get clothes out of the way. I kid you not. My husband was saying we needed to go get me some Depends if I even wanted to go to the grocery store.
If it was just a little diarrhea every now and then I wouldn't care. I have had my gall bladder removed so I am used to that sort of diarrhea when I eat fatty foods.
Plus I know that massive water loss like that really screws up the electrolyte thing...not good either.
Damned if I do and damned if I don't...again. Story of my life sometimes.

Sorry guys if this was too much information...I had always wondered why the warnings about diarrhea with various meds...thought "hey, what's a little extra pooping"..now I know first hand why the warning.

Well, this thread has certainly gone "south"
--and I thought I had problems. I'll just shut up, now.

I don't want to give up my bread yet...so that idea is on hold.
My chosen "diet" is not helping things I know, but hell, I have had to give up a lot of other stuff I enjoyed doing do to the back/pelvis stuff...I am just not too keen on giving up more stuff that I like just yet.

Pugsy, this is EXACTLY like CPAP in some ways. How many people do we see who come here who would rather go through painful, potentially dangerous surgical procedures with life long side effects rather than do the work to get used to CPAP???

It is daunting to think about changing your diet so drastically, but you'd rather take drugs with nasty side effects or consider a surgical procedure??? Sound familiar???

I say, give it a good, real 30 day trial. All the wheat in the world will be there waiting for you when you are done with 30 days, but my guess is you won't want to add it back in. And I disagree that you need to just drop gluten--there are other things in wheat that may be problematic too. NO Grains, no fake grains (tapioca, rice flour, etc). The world will not end and you will not die going 30 days without bread.

I used to think of it as deprivation, but now after two years, I think of all the great stuff I "get" to eat (butter on EVERYTHING! ). The best way to deal with it at first is NOT to try to make fake breads and other grainy foods to compensate, but figure out ways to eat what you love without missing the wheat. I eat my spaghetti sauce on a bed of zucchini or eggplant, sandwich fixings in a bowl (egg salad, tuna salad) or as finger food (turkey slices wrapped around avocado--YUM!).

Janknitz wrote:It is daunting to think about changing your diet so drastically, but you'd rather take drugs with nasty side effects or consider a surgical procedure??? Sound familiar???

I hear you. And I understand all you are saying but I know I am my own worst enemy here I am not ready to do that yet.
I admit...I don't practice what I preach. I am guilty as charged.
Kept hoping that the cpap would fix me but as I have said often...cpap don't fix stuff unrelated to sleep apnea.

In all honesty here...yes, I would prefer surgery over changing my diet. There, I said it. That's how I feel right now.
Tomorrow I might feel differently. Right now I am just generally fed up with things in general and the heartburn hasn't been so bad because I haven't felt like eating anything so I have no great push at the moment to motivate me to do something I don't want to do.
That's not to say I won't change my diet and give it a good try.....later after I have read up on all the stuff I would have to avoid. So can you be happy with "I will think about it for now" because that's really all I am up to right now.
And no, I really don't want to keep popping pills. Guess who is also a prime candidate for osteoporosis? And long term PPI stuff is starting to make me nervous as I approach another birthday next month.

I have been doing some reading on the hiatal hernia thing. Diet won't fix that.
I need to figure out just how small my hiatal hernia is.

Just because I would prefer the surgery because I am just like everyone else "I want to fix it and not have to deal with it anymore"...that doesn't mean I am going to right out and get it done. I have a little more common sense than that but it doesn't stop me from wishing.

I have been under some added stress lately which I don't really want to go into and I know it has impacted how I deal with my various aches and pains and whatever.
If I didn't know better I would say I was having another big hormone reduction from a second menopause because that's exactly how I feel.
Short tempered enough and mean enough and mad enough to tackle the biggest grizzly bear and whip his ass.
Even if it is hormonal making things worse...can't take HRT.

You all know what I mean. Little things that alone aren't any big deal but a bunch of little things all at one time are starting to wear my nerves pretty thin. So I can't cope as well as I am used to and that frustrates me too.
Sounds like a bit of depression doesn't it? Probably is and probably situational and I will get things sorted out eventually.

I know my mind is a bit muddled right now so I won't go making any hasty decisions and end up doing something I might regret later.

So I am done...no more talking about my infirmities....I have had my pity part and vented and I am done.
So the pity party is over...

I hear you Pugsy and totally sympathize. And, it's totally honest to say you'd rather take the "easy" (but not really!) way out. We all feel that way more often than not.

I KNEW what I had to do and let myself go 12 years and get 100 lbs overweight before I took the bull by the horns and stopped eating the things that were killing me. I truly believed I was dying. It took something really awful for me to face myself and get through the hard part (which lasted all of 2 or 3 days ) and to the other side. I realized I wouldn't be there for my kids, wouldn't ever see grandchildren or my youngest daughter grow up, I would leave my husband alone (heck, he pretty much WAS alone because there were so many things I could no longer do!) and they would all have to watch me die.

Finally, that awful day was enough to convince me that my homemade bread and lava cake dessert indulgences were NOT worth it! But I had to get there myself. I'm just so glad I did and I wish the same for you, hopefully minus the awful day.

JanKnitz, I am so glad that your GERD is improved, as well as your overall health. There is a connection between being overweight and having GERD. The most parsimonious explanation for why your GERD improved when you went off grains is that you lost weight. Nothing to do with grains. But I'm so glad that things are better for you!

Brenda mentioned several months ago that she wasn't overweight. So, that doesn't seem to be part of the equation for her. I think that when you aren't overweight to begin with, it has to be so hard to cut out foods you crave/love. It's bad enough when you have to lose weight (me, 20 lbs.) and use food for a consolation prize for everything... happy, sad, depressed, etc.

I do admire someone like Jan who can take control and obviously manages to stick with it. Food to me is like someone's booze or street drug. I know ahead of time that if I eat garbage I will pay a price... gerd, heartburn, acute indigestion so that I can't keep the mask on, etc., and I eat it anyway. Food is my drug of choice. Not happy, but while I'm eating that corn beef sandwich on rye with deli mustard and a helping of slaw (with mayo), I'm in heaven and not giving a thought to how I'll feel an hour later. Yeah, I need a gerd bracelet.

Damn... family just yelled out that it's deli night tonight. Gee, I'm soooooooo upset!

Well....while I am not horribly obese...I am typical 60 year old woman who has shrunk from 5' 2" to barely 4'10"....so it seems like every extra ounce lands on my butt or belly.
I could stand to lose 10 to 15 pounds and not be stick thin.
Problem is the usual it's hard to exercise to burn off extra calories when it's painful to just walk very much.
I keep an eye on calorie intake and some days actually make the effort to add it up...if I eat or drink 1500 calories that's a lot for me.

I know I need to increase my activity level and it should happen now that the weather is better. It seems like I always "winter well" and come out of winter with a few extra pounds. Not only do I take care of the yard work here I also do my mom's.
Her yard is on my list for tomorrow.

I am going to make an effort to eat less wasted calories stuff (like my corn flakes) and see if I can trim down that bit of extra weight because I know at my body frame size it sure isn't helping things.

The carb-specific cravings may also be a symptom of high blood sugar levels.
It may be significant that one cookie leads to two, which leads to the whole dang bag.
If I can avoid the first one, I do a lot better.

Pugsy wrote:I am typical 60 year old woman who has shrunk from 5' 2" to barely 4'10"....so it seems like every extra ounce lands on my butt or belly.
I could stand to lose 10 to 15 pounds and not be stick thin.

Well, when we "met" almost two years ago you were 5'2" and thin. What happened to you? The same thing that's happened to me I guess... 'cept I'm 5'1" now (almost). When we met I was 5'2"... at least that's what I told everyone.

JanKnitz, I am so glad that your GERD is improved, as well as your overall health. There is a connection between being overweight and having GERD. The most parsimonious explanation for why your GERD improved when you went off grains is that you lost weight. Nothing to do with grains. But I'm so glad that things are better for you!

Nope, nope, nope! I've had GERD since I was a thin little thing (and I was for the first half of my life--110 lbs soaking wet). My GERD stopped when I stopped the wheat--well before significant weight loss--and I can make it come back by eating a slice of bread or eating something with hidden flour in it. My GERD was NOT caused by the weight. Obesity may be a contributing factor, but it did not cause the GERD I suffered.

SOME of my GERD is related to OSA. Prior to dropping the wheat, if I fell asleep even for a few minutes without CPAP, even if sitting straight up, I had reflux. But the daily heartburn and reflux that occurred when I wasn't sleeping were present before the obesity, and disappeared before the weight really went anywhere. It was not the obesity that caused it.

I said I knew what I needed to do 11 years before I did it. That's because prior to getting pregnant with my youngest I'd done a low carb diet, and within 2 weeks with only a 5 lb weight loss at that point I was already off my GERD meds--no heartburn, no GERD. Then I got pregnant, and it took me 11 years to get back on track. I knew what was causing the problem, but it took me that long to talk myself back into what I knew I had to do.

ETA: again this is a lot like the myth that only obese people get OSA--likewise plenty of thin people have GERD

ems wrote: What happened to you?

It was those damn aliens I tell you...they do reverse liposuction on us.
I still wear a size 3 left ring finger. Neck maybe 13 inch circumference. Bones are tiny. Butt and belly aren't .
How 10 or 15 pounds can concentrate in such a small area is totally amazing to me.

When I first saw the title of this thread, I thought someone had another quack "magic magnet power bracelet" you put on your wrist, and it was supposed to eliminate GERD by aligning your cosmic crystal energy or something.

Pugsy wrote:How 10 or 15 pounds can concentrate in such a small area is totally amazing to me.

For the same reason that if I lose 5 pounds, 2 of them seem to come from my breasts!