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How did you modify your diet?


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.


Some of the complexity (I think) is that there are at least two different things going on:

Some foods might increase the extent to which the contents of one's stomach end up in their esophagus.

Some foods might increase the extent to which it is unpleasant if or when the contents of one's stomach end up in their esophagus.


How long does it take for you to realize if cutting something off your diet helps?

Since I feel like some foods can take days to affect my GERD it can be difficult to tell what helps and what doesn’t.


I've started changes in my diet with an "acid reflux detox" for a month, which meant eating a very limited group of foods that most definitiely shouldn't cause acid reflux and drinking pretty much only water, after that I've started slowly introducing stuff that potentially could cause acid reflux and observing how I feel, in my case I get acid reflux almost immediately after eating something that I shouldn't, so it's quite easy to eliminate.


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.




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