You have been managing your reflux for years. Has anyone asked why you have it?
Two pages on reflux. The six things that stop the valve at the top of your stomach from holding, where it shows up when there is no heartburn at all, and what settles it while you work out which one is yours.
Where should we send it?
Two pages, free.
- Eight things that help in the first week
- The tests worth asking about, by name
- Adults, children and babies
What is in the guide
Two pages. One on what is driving it, one on what to do about it.
What is actually going on
- The six things that stop the valve at the top of your stomach from holding, including the one most people have backwards
- Pepsin, and why a cough, a hoarse voice or constant throat clearing can be reflux with no heartburn attached
- Where pressure comes from underneath, and how SIBO and constipation push from below
- Stress and the vagus nerve, the driver most often left out of the plan
- What is different in babies and children, and why none of the adult positioning advice applies to them
What to do about it
- Eight changes that work in the first week, with the reason each one works, from which side you sleep on to how far apart your meals sit
- Five questions that point to the driver, so you are investigating rather than guessing
- The tests worth asking about, named properly, including why H. pylori blood serology cannot tell you about now
- The symptoms that need your GP promptly rather than a plan at home
If you have been treated for sinus, asthma or a cough that will not clear
Pepsin is the stomach's protein-digesting enzyme. When reflux reaches the throat and airway, pepsin binds to that tissue and stays there, reactivating whenever anything acidic arrives. It can irritate the throat, the voice box and the airway without ever registering as burning.
That is why reflux turns up as a night cough, a hoarse voice, constant throat clearing, post-nasal drip, dental erosion the dentist notices first, or asthma-type symptoms that do not respond the way they should. People are often treated for all of those for years before anyone looks at the stomach.
The guide lists the eight places it shows up when there is no heartburn at all.
I just avoid the foods that set it off.
At the bottom of your oesophagus sits a ring of muscle called the lower oesophageal sphincter. It should stay shut between meals and open only to let food through. Reflux happens when it opens when it should not, or when pressure from below pushes past it.
Coffee, chocolate, alcohol, peppermint, fat and large meals all relax that ring. The reactions people notice are real, which is why the list of foods to avoid tends to get longer every year.
Here is what the list cannot tell you. A valve with good tone handles coffee. The food is the match. The question worth answering is why the valve has become easy to open, because that is the part that resolves.
Why we made it
Reflux is one of the most common things we see, and one of the most commonly managed rather than resolved. Acid suppression has a genuine place and it works, which is exactly why the question underneath it often never gets asked.
SIBO, constipation and slow stomach emptying push from below. Low stomach acid, which looks identical to too much, leaves food sitting and fermenting. H. pylori changes acid production and is treatable once it is identified. Coeliac disease presents this way more often than people expect. Stress drops vagal tone, which slows digestion and loosens the valve. Most people have one or two of those, not all six.
The guide walks through each one so you can work out which is yours, and names the tests that help answer it.
Babies and children are in there too, because the drivers are different at that end. An immature valve, feed volume and pace, latch or tongue tie, cow's milk protein allergy, and a gut microbiome disrupted by a caesarean birth or early antibiotics. We see reflux across the whole family, infants included, and none of the adult positioning advice applies to a baby.
Send me the guide
Free, two pages.
General information only, and not individual advice. It does not replace assessment or treatment by your own doctor, and nothing here is a reason to stop or change a prescribed medication. Speak to your GP before altering acid suppression. See your GP promptly for difficulty swallowing, unintended weight loss, vomiting blood or black stools. Chest pain always needs cardiac causes excluded first. © The Family Naturopath, The KAN Clinic.