user1029384756

Note: I’m not a healthcare professional so please take anything I say with a grain and salt and be sure to do your own doctor consultations + research. This should not be taken as medical advice, its just what has been working in our case.

@myshpa posted a link above which I hadn’t seen before, that actually confirms many of my own independent observations: https://chriskresser.com/how-to-cure-gerd-without-medication...

What worked for her:

- 10-15 minutes before every meal, suck on a DGL (Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice) tablet. This will interact with saliva and cause the GI system to secrete mucus to protect itself from acid.

- During the meal, take a digestive enzyme that contains at least Betaine HCL, Bromelain and Papain which will help break down carbs and proteins and stop food from entering the gut half digested, which can cause gas production from fermentation.

- Take a probiotic supplement every night before bed (we’ve found 15 billion to be sufficient, but you can try ones that are less/more potent). If you need water to swallow, squirt a tiny bit of lemon juice into it first.

Diet-wise: Avoid things that will relax the LES such as caffeine, mint, chocolate, etc. Avoid anything with tomato skins and certain types of legumes (if you want to eat these, remove the skins). It can be difficult, but reduce sugar intake as much as possible. Try not to drink water while eating (it will dilute stomach acid) but if she needs to, its been my observation that a tiny squirt of lemon juice with water helps.

Eat fermented foods regularly like Kefir, Kimchi, Sauerkraut, yogurt, etc. These probiotics will need to consume fibre from prebiotics in order to not starve in the gut. Increase your intake of all kinds of high fibre whole foods. Kale, beans, broccoli, whole grains, potatoes, whole almonds, etc. Google “low FODMAP diet”.

Regular exercise is important. It can be something low intensity like walking. It helps stimulate the digestive system and gut activity. Do it before meals, preferably.

It can be counterintuitive, but I think the root cause of a lot of GERD symptoms is actually weak stomach acid. That article linked above summarizes it pretty nicely. If that’s the case, make sure your girlfriend is at least supplementing with vitamins C and D, plus a B-complex with Methylcobalamine. Low stomach acid can cause malabsorption of these nutrients and others.

Keep a log book. Every body is different, so every time there is an episode, be sure to record what was specifically eaten that day and then avoid that food.

Any other questions feel free to ask.

This course of action was only taken after consultations with trained professionals had already failed and as I mentioned, the effect of the omitted supplements paled in comparison with the probiotics. Also this is a thread about gut bacteria so I thought I’d only mention the most relevant part of the treatment.

It’s pretty clear that this (like 99% of internet advice) is all anecdotal evidence and again, I’ve made it clear it may not work for everyone. I’ve also mentioned elsewhere that I’m not a healthcare professional. But if my comment is able to help even one person escape the hell of not being able to hold food down and the sleep deprivation and depression that comes with severe GERD… then that’s worth one snarky linux systems guy yelling at me on HN.

:)

> Digestive and autoimmune both are labyrinthine in potential problems and misdiagnoses.

No argument there, and I appreciate the warning. It definitely gives me no pleasure playing doctor and I’m very conscious of the risk of giving misleading medical advice.

The reason why I’m confident enough to post this is that it has already been more than a year now since the major symptoms went away. The effect of the probiotics was/is pretty definitive (she recently stopped taking them for about a week while on vacation and the symptoms started slowly creeping back, and disappeared again shortly after resuming). Also, there is pretty much no real alternative treatment aside from PPIs or physical LES surgery anyway. If there is indeed an underlying autoimmune condition though, I can’t see how this diet could hurt too much. But maybe that’s due to ignorance.

I’m so happy you overcame that hell.

Before the current home-brewed protocol, she tried many different things and many different diets and was told by the doctor there wasn’t much he could do since it had to do with a weak/loose LES.

No I’ve never heard of this, thanks for the tip. I’ll definitely be checking this out.

I guess the difference is that being an antivaxer can potentially harm society whereas trying a high fibre, probiotic rich diet can’t hurt anyone.

And the answer is no: I told her not to tell her doctor under any circumstances that she got armchair advice from her “kid” that actually worked because if I was a doctor who went through 10 years of med school + training, I would definitely be rolling my eyes if some senior came in and told me this story.

The point is, I haven’t dropped any probiotic brand names, I’m not hawking anything, I don’t gain anything by posting my little anecdotal experience. I’m just happy that I found a solution to a problem that has been torturing someone I care about for 10-15 years and wanted to share it so that it might help others in the same situation.

Edit: to be clear, there were other things too that helped clear up her symptoms that I omitted because my post was getting too long and because out of everything, probiotics seemed to be the biggest gamechanger. For example: first few months she also took DGL (Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice, to promote mucus secretion) 15 minutes before every meal, followed by a digestive enzyme taken with the meal (she doesn’t actually need these anymore and only takes it as a precaution if the meal is particularly starchy or high protein). Cutting out LES relaxers like caffeine, mint and chocolate helped. Also lifestyle changes were made in terms of physical activity. She still needs to sleep at an incline on a wedge block, but at least she’s not vomiting all over the carpet anymore.

I am not in any way shape or form a medical professional, but there do seem to be some studies that show there is evidence of an increased risk of gastric cancer with long term PPI use. Again, not a medical professional, so if it works for you and suits your personal risk tolerance, please don’t let a random internet commenter freak you out.

Putting this out there in case it may help others: My mother suffered from GERD for years and years and about two years ago, her condition seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. We’re talking waking up in the middle of the night projectile vomiting. Constant heartburn, burping and indigestion after meals and daily constipation. The doctors were completely unable to help except to recommend antacids and possibly PPI medication which can have serious side-effects.

I put her on a prebiotic + probiotic diet (kaffir, yogurt, whole grains, dark leafy greens, etc) along with a basic probiotic supplement every night and now according to her, at least 95% of the symptoms have gone away. She’s able to sleep through the night now, better mood, better energy, better everything.

Not saying it will work for everyone, but it worked for her. I feel like so little is understood about the gut microbiome and modern medicine is letting people suffer needlessly.

Edit: just realized this sounds exactly like a paid infomercial lol

Fyi, it’s pretty simple to add a custom filter to any decent adblocker like uBlock to prevent annoying domains from showing up in search results. I haven’t seen a Pinterest result or Stackoverflow clone in years…

I’ve been tempted to get a set of gymnastic rings for a while. For someone like me who tries not to accumulate too much junk, buying any kind of bulky gym equipment is not an option.

Gymnastic rings seem like the perfect minimalist’s exercise equipment… the only thing is I have no idea where I would hang them.

I’m not really surprised by this news after his Twitter post [1] soliciting the public for code, tbh.

Anyone who knows anything about search knows that it’s not an easy problem to solve, especially at Twitter scale and especially given only 12 weeks to do it. The mythos of the lone genius coder really needs to just die already.

[1] https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/159527086740295680...

The US government rationalizing its own propaganda:

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it.

“The U.S. propaganda network relentlessly pushed narratives against Russia, China, and other foreign countries. They accused Iran of "threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth," and of harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees.”

There is so much handwringing and unsubstantiated claims about Russian / Chinese propaganda networks operating on this site. Yet here is a story about how the US is running military psyops programs on their own populace that can’t even make it to the front page. The joke actually writes itself.

> #3: Everyone who was holding up the company, the "10% who do all the work", switched jobs and is now working for Facebook across the street

You mean Meta? The company that froze hiring and just laid off 11,000 employees?

I tried searching for what kind of GraphQL support they offer on their repo (which is an advertised feature) and it still seems to be a WIP, though you have to kind of dig through the readme to find that out. Same problem with the full-text indexing feature, as another user here mentioned.

Looking through the SurrealDB website and marketing copy, I can’t help but be a little bit skeptical of the feature set [1]. Many, many smart people have burned many millions of dollars and thousands of man hours building databases claiming far fewer capabilities.

Don’t get me wrong though, it would be a really awesome product with my dream feature set if they can actually pull it off. I wish them the best of luck and it will be very interesting see where SurrealDB ends up in a few years time!

[1] https://surrealdb.com/why