positive results from alkaline diet

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Marf

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hi neptunian -
LIke i said, i haven't been this symptom free for years. the lump is mostly gone from my throat!!! its great, and worth it to give up the food i loved.

Dr. K says to eat a lot of whole wheat bread,like a loaf a week, but no butter (sometimes i use a little bit), and nut butters are out (sad face). Chicken without skin, she says what kind of apples are ok, i guess they all have different pH. i think she said no green apples or red mackintosh. Avacado is out, at least in the beginning bec. of fat content. All kind of rice and grains are ok. Its a pretty high carb diet with tons of fiber.

I still get a lot of mucous when I eat - but not breakfast, oddly, only lunch. Today i had oatmeal with banana, milk and raisons, no reflux. For lunch i had a large salad with rabroad egg, sweetpotato (great for lpr), brown rice, radishes, 1TB of olive oil, and a piece of ww bread. I was clearing throat whole time, but it stopped when i was done.
I still have to use the DG licorice, they really help, and i need to supplement with the Gaviscon Advance, those are the only two things that seem to help. There has been a lot of research of the Gaviscon Advance, about it stopping the LPR in its tracks. I ordered 3 bottles from EBAY in UK, and a pharmacy there will deliver it. Pricey, but worth it.
 
hi
i haven't posted on these boarRAB for a few years. I have similar story of getting LPR after a bad cold with horrendous coughing. My tongue turned dark purple after this, and i was getting reflux sx. A Gastro said i had reflux and prescribed PPI. This was in 1999, i was 50 yrs. old. Over the years my sx got worse, and I had full battery of tests which confirmed severe LPR, and surgery was recommended, which i never had. I developed chest pains which i thought were esophageal spasms from reflux, and went to acupuncture, also to treat what I felt was like a "tic" in my throat, possibly from vagal nerve complications (I figured this out on my own, much like Seeking Sunrise on this board). It turned out I actually had coronary artery disease (i have normal cholesterol, blood pressure and weight, etc. eat well, so its probably genetic). ended up with bypass surgery - just a warning note to those who think their chest pain is from spasms - and over the years LPR continues to drive me nuts with throat clearing and drowning in mucus feeling.
I found out about Jamie Koufmans book on this site, and tried the diet a few weeks ago. I have to say, my mucus and throat clearing is much improved. I went off the twice a day PPI's bec. i don't think they do anything. I am back on Deg. Licorice, lots of them, and famitodine 3x a day. If i stick to the diet it really seems to help. I also add Coffee Tamer to my one cup of coffee a day, but cut out ALL carbonated drinks and drinks with grapefruit, lemon and lime, which i loved and consumed a lot of. I don't drink but alcohol is a big no-no.
I also notice that that the mucus and throat clearing increase when i feel more anxious. I take a swig of Gaviscon Advance (from UK), and this really helps it to stop.
I have tried Elavil in the past and wasn't able to deal with the medicated disoriented feeling I got from it. I love Klonopin, which is great for anxiety, but is very addictive, as is Valium or Xanax. If you are going to take Klonopin, you should start with 1/2 of lowest dose, which is .5, not 5mg. Ten mg Klonopin is a huge dose, yet some drs. will prescribe it for you - not a good idea.
I think Dr. Koufman's ideas are interesting, that sinus, allergies and diet must all be addressed. She suggests a new kind of medicine, i think it was called Integrated AeroDigestive Medicine.
Sunrise, thank you so much for all your interesting ideas, i wish most dr's could be as creative as you.
 
lol coincidence i just bought a bottle of gaviscon yesterday, i wanted to see if it would get rid of the acid/salty taste i get every every mornin, has this ever happened to you? sadly gaviscon didn't work mine has 500 mg of sodium alginate in 10 ml so i took 20 ml to get 1000 mg but still it didn't do the trick
 
wow, i'm really surprised - i just thought it would work.....have you tried the lovely (being sarcastic) deglycerized licorice tablets? you chew two tabs to a paste before eating and take them as needed after. Sometimes i chew around 6 or so and it does seem to help a lot. Its supposed to help heal the esophagus tissue as well. I order mine from online vitamin store.

You can also order the Coffee Tamer online and it comes in a shaker bottle or in packets. You can sprinkle it in your food or coffee, and i don't know if it helps or not, but its not pricey so worth a try.
 
hi
basically there is a two week induction diet in which you don't eat anything with a pH less than 4.0. this basically knocks out soda and carbonated drinks, alcohol, tea, many fruit juices. I was surprised at the fruits she said to not eat besides the obvious citrus - no kiwi, strawberries, grapes, many apples, most berries, and cherries. She said bell peppers are ok, but i can't digest them. no onions or garlic. There are many veges you can have. You have to limit fat a lot, NO chocolate and no fried fooRAB. You can eat lots of cereals and i happen to love oatmeal with bananas, which you can have a lot of, but no nuts.
After the two weeks, you have given your esophagus a chance to heal, and you move onto to the recipes, which are pretty good, still low fat.
Her theory is that the problem is Pepsin, not acid, and she explains that in book.
I have Barretts Esophagus and my vocal corRAB are pretty scarred up from all the throat clearing over the years. I also had colon cancer a few years ago, just a polyp that was removed, but i don't want to push the cancer risk, so I feel willing to be a bit stricter than many people.
 
i havent tried DGL yet but i definitely will eventually, i'll try everything i wont rest until i get rid of this disease, im trying probiotics now :confused:. Have you ever experienced any voice problems or acid taste in your mouth with LPR? and have you had double probe ph monitoring or Multichannel intraluminal impedance? im not sure if my reflux is acid or non-acid if i don't respond to ppi's im guessing non-acid but what confuses me is the acidic taste i get every morning, LPR is enough to give anyone a headache :dizzy:
 
hi again
i was looking at previous posts on acid/alkaline fooRAB, and i have to say Dr. Koufman's list is very very different. They used some kind on instrument to measure the response. All i can say is her way works, and my lpr has never responded to any other intervention.
 
hi neptunian
i've tried most things with little success until i went on this diet. i can't even remeraber the things i have tried. Probiotics doesn't seem to do much for me, and i have tried several kinRAB. I take them anyway, since they seem to be good for digestive health in general.

I had two probe tests, and i can't remeraber what they are called. One was done in the dr.'s office and it involved him putting a probe repeatedly down my throat while i gagged and tears were coming out of my eyes; i don't recommend it. The other one might have been the double probe, and slept with it on, i think it recorded all the "events", and it proved that i did not have that much acid at night while i was lying down, which makes lpr different than gerd. I was having very acidic events during the day, probably when i'm clearing my throat. i think that might have changed recently, bec. i am noticing some actual acid back in my throat at night when i lie down.

By the way, PPI's are known for not working for LPR. i think Famotidine works better, but everybody's different. I just ordered 4 different branRAB of DGL to try more of them, and they are each really different in taste, some are sweeter. I think they really work though. Let me know what happens when you try them. You are supposed to chew them 20 minutes before you eat, i've been chewing them afterwarRAB.
oh, and my voice can get really deep sometimes, so i guess it has changed.
 
how much have you improved with the diet? and is it ok to eat bread, noodles, chicken, red apples, soy meat, avocado and rice? im really confused with the diet i don't eat any trigger fooRAB but still get LPR and where i live doctors don't know anything about it, i agree with Jamie Koufman it has to be pepsin she proved it, this disease is hell im really scared with how it might evolve
 
Hi Marf

Many thanks for the kind worRAB! I agree that it would really help all of us if doctors were much more creative in their approach to the treatment of LPR, and much more interested in searching for other explanations for its symptoms than just going for the easy diagnosis. The waste basket diagnosis, as I've heard it called. Supposedly in recent years, 1 in 10 people were leaving an ENT's office with the diagnosis of silent GERD. So basically you can say, ENT doctors fail to do anything for 1 out of 10 patients.

In any case, I think the biggest thing is to question if your "LPR" began with a virus. If it did, you probably won't have much luck with diet and ppis. In any case, if we think of the body in a holistic way, it wouldn't hurt to eat better, because that could only improve overall health. I personally would encourage all sufferers of this spectrum of symptoms, if they are not going away for months, to always try different approaches, and never stick for a year with a therapy that is not working. And of course, we have to post about our successes so that others have an idea of what to try.

Sadly though, this spectrum of symptoms seems to have a lot of causes, and so it is a very individual problem, as anyone who has it knows.
 
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