Ok, after a few years of off and on trouble with acid reflux, I went to the Tahoma Clinic in Renton, WA today (the clinic consists of M.D.s who are basically into finding out the roots of the problem and prescribing supplements, when possible, instead of the latest drug craze). It was my first visit, so I chatted with my doctor for a while. She took one look at my fingernails (they have vertical ridges in them, something I'd never thought twice or even once about) and knew that my body wasn't absorbing things (protein, vitamins, & minerals) correctly. Since I have a good diet, it's not from lacking of eating the right things. Her first guess was food allergies (I had ear infections as a child, which can apparently be an indicator of food allergies). Food allergies can cause all sorts of GI trouble, including acid reflux/heartburn. (I really had no idea about this stuff until I started reading books on it.) Since I have environmental allergies, it doesn't surprise me, but I have never gotten hives or anything like that from eating food (unlike a friend of mine who can end up in the hospital if she has something with eggs in it), so I never suspected.
Anyway, my first step was to go next door and have my blood drawn for a food allergies test. I'll get the results back on that within a couple weeks. In the meantime, my doctor prescribed a bunch of supplements (mostly vitamins) that will help make up for my imbalances, and some supposed to be good at strengthening the LES (which is the little dealy at the bottom of the esophagus that lets food into your stomach and--when you're having troubles--acid out).
For the curious, here's a list of what she's giving me:
- manganese -- 50 mg daily
- choline -- 1,000 mg 3 x daily
- pantothenic acid (B5) -- 500 mg 3x daily
- B1 -- 50 mg 3 x daily
- glutamine -- 1 tsp. 3 x daily (between meals), which is dissolved in a little bit of water (this helps heal the stomach lining)
- B12 -- 1 cc injected 3 x weekly (this is supposed to help my asthma--see post on my asthma and how it could be related to heartburn--as well as lowering the stomach acid so it'll break down food better). Later, I should be able to go to a B12 pill instead of the injections.
So, anyway, it's a lot of stuff, but if I find out a food allergy is responsible for my troubles, then in the future I'll just have to avoid that food, and I shouldn't have to take anything. These supplements are designed to help get my body back into a healthy state (and maybe make those ridgey fingernails go away, heh).
Of course, if it doesn't turn out that my acid reflux is from a food allergy, the other possibility is that my stomach doesn't produce enough acid. I'll have to have a "Heidelberg" test done to check that. The test involves swallowing a capsule on a little string, while they monitor your stomach for an hour or two (all the while this string is going from your stomach to dangling outsside your mouth). If that turns out to be my problem (not enough stomach acid), I would have to take an HCL and pepsin supplement, pretty much forever. Personally, I'm hoping for the food allergy, even if it means giving up something I enjoy. But either way would be better than not being able to sleep at night because of acid reflux, something that would surely only get worse as I get older.
I'll keep updating with progress.