GERD

Avoid It. It's NO FUN

I received a rather large wake up call this week that reminded me it was time to face facts.

I’m a bit of a nighthawk, the result of spending 30 odd years working nights in television news, so it was nothing for me to watch back to back movies on Netflix and end up going to bed at 1:30 on Thursday morning.

Suddenly, I found myself awake at 6:20 wondering why so early and why I didn’t feel well. But in that groggy, half-awake, half-asleep state, I couldn’t pin down the sensation.

Then it began to dawn on me: it was acid reflux. Or so I thought.

Now, I’ve had acid reflux before on occasion and usually after a mouthful of water and a couple of burps, the gas is gone and I go back to sleep. So, I climbed out of bed and got some water.

I tried to go back to sleep but the water wasn’t working. In fact, that lump in the throat that is acid reflux was getting worse. So, next on my list was to drink some milk and really coat the esophagus.

That didn’t work, either.

After tossing and turning in bed for an hour, I was forced to get up. The lump in the throat was now full-blown searing pain stretching from my Adam’s apple down to the top of my stomach.

It was as if there was a blow torch going full song in my chest. The pain was now around the back of my neck and down between my shoulder blades.

Heart?

Nope. A quick visit with Dr. Google diagnosed a likely suspect: GERD, which is a nasty-sounding acronym for gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Thursday was a write-off. I hunted for some form of antacid in my condo and came up dry. However, through some divine intervention, I found a prescription from last August that my GP had given to me after a moderate incident of acid reflux. I had filled the script and was now looking at a bottle of Rabeprazole, a protein pump inhibitor which reduces the amount of acid in one’s stomach.

The thing with Rabeprazole is that it’s not Tums, Gaviscon, Mylanta or any OTC product designed to combat acid reflux quickly.

Rabeprazole actually works to help heal the esophagus while reducing stomach acid. In other words, it doesn’t act fast.

So, while I was mighty glad to find it and start taking it, it didn’t do much to shut down that blow torch in my chest.

Anyway, as I write this newsletter, the burning is gone, the concurrent cough is pretty much gone and I’m on the mend.

But I’m convinced that it was GERD that had beset me in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Never have I experienced anything like it before.

I bring this up, not to elicit sympathy (always a base reason for a writer to write) but to make a couple of points.

First, GERD is often a direct result of diet. Since, at its base, GERD is acid reflux on steroids, then the foods we eat can act as triggers.

The list I found on Google included otherwise benign items like tomatoes, chocolate, hard cheese, and the usual suspects like fried and fatty foods.

Second, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website – which, so far has not been redacted or taken down by order of the White/Orange House – GERD is the most common gastric issue faced by older adults.

As a 73 year old male (last time I looked…) I have led a lifestyle of someone much younger. Not a good thing because my lifestyle has ignored the perils of alcohol, fatty foods (to be fair, I don’t eat a lot of that and NEVER fast foods), too much caffeine and too much red wine.

I recently visited with a cardiologist because I want to have my heart imaged in order to determine whether I have plaque build-up. During the initial consult, he asked me if I drank alcohol and coffee. I told him yes on both counts and how much.

“You need to cut that back,” was all he said. But, being a cardio doc, he didn’t need to say much more.

It’s odd that I keep coming across stories in the media since then about how bad alcohol can be, not just for the liver but for its capacity to generate cancerous tumors anywhere in the body.

Bear in mind that having the capacity for something to occur does not mean it WILL occur. Everyone and every body is different and unique. Call it a warning, though.

The point is that I must now recognize that I am 73 and not 43 – at least when it comes to what I put into my body.

That was my wake up moment on Thursday.

GERD is not something to be nonchalant about, according to NIH.

“Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is the most common upper gastrointestinal disorder encountered in the elderly patient. It is highly prevalent worldwide with a prevalence of 10%-20% in the western world. Although elderly patients with GERD have fewer symptoms, their disease is more often severe. They have more esophageal and extraesophageal complications that may be potentially life threatening.”

I am perfectly happy to adjust my diet in order to take care of my gut. It looks like I don’t have much choice, anyway, since once you have GERD, you are always susceptible.

As for alcohol, I have already taken steps over the past week and a half to eliminate it from my life and lifestyle. I have dropped five pounds, too. I like that.

I thought it would be tough to quit but it’s been surprisingly easy. Of course, I’m not hanging out in bars just to test my resolve, either.

Caffeine? Well, I’m still working on that one…