Yea, I had to google it too.
2 years ago I was at my parents eating tacos. I was eating my favorite, a hard shell loaded with cheese and meat and sour cream and salsa, when I swallowed a bite and BAM! A big piece of shell! Jabbed into my throat! Sharp pain that just wouldn't stop no matter what I swallowed. 24 hours later the pain was still there and now I was having trouble swallowing. A few hours later and my breathing started getting a bit difficult. With no other idea of what to do, I headed to the ER, thinking they could get this thing out of my throat and see what damage it had done. Upon getting there though, they did as much as an exam as they could and told me they could see nothing. They gave me what my sister refers to as an 'acid reflux cocktail' and told me to call someone in the morning. The following day I called an ear, nose and throat doctor who got me in that afternoon. After a quick scope of my throat (an unpleasant thing, by the way; not painful, just unpleasant), revealed that..TADA! Nothing there. Instead, he told me that my throat and larynx were red and inflamed and full of hate. I swear those were his exact words. Yea not really, but what he told me was that I had a moderate to severe case of acid reflux going on. I asked how that was possible since I'd NEVER had heartburn before except once years prior when I was pregnant. He then explained that I don't have the normal acid reflux, I have laryngopharyngeal reflux, which in a nutshell means that the little flap that keeps your acid in your stomach has failed (resulting in your typical acid reflux), and also the little flap at the top of your esophagus is also full of failure and so the acid was traveling all the way through my esophagus and pooling at the back of my throat and into my sinus.
Now, this of course doesn't sound very pleasant at all. Let me assure you, that it is 100% not. See, your esophagus has a thin but somewhat efficient lining in it to protect it for awhile against stomach acid. While it can't handle it long term, it can fend off the icky for awhile until you can get it back under control. The larynx however, wasn't given that gift. Seeing as it's allllll the way north of a decent length hallway that's blocked off by two relatively strong doors, your body forms on the assumption that those doors are gonna stay the way they should be and there's not really any need to put any sort of protective lining all up in your nasal cavities and voice box. What this means is that your larynx and throat can only handle a little acid for a much shorter while. Apparently it had been a lot longer than a short while by the time I got to the doctor because I wasn't aware what so ever of the symptoms of this. In the end, the doctor was able to put me on a couple of medications to bring everything back under control and I changed my diet to include pretty much nothing but rice and bread for a few weeks.
A couple years went by and all was mostly well with my tummy world, when one night my dear sweety brought home big bag of Blue Diamond wasabi and soy sauce almonds. Oh man was I in heaven. I love the suckers and I happily sat munching on them one night while talking to some friends online. An hour later I discovered I had eaten dear heaven almighty over half the stupid bag!!! Of course I quickly closed it up, laughed about it to my friends, downed a few glasses of water, and headed to bed.
We all know where this is heading, don't we?
A number of hours later I awoke to a SCREAMING PAIN IN MY BODY. My stomach hurt, my chest hurt, my throat had clearly been torn open by some evil clawed beast inside me and someone had shoved hot coals with a bottle of lemon juice chaser down my throat while I was asleep. I grabbed whatever antacids I could find and chewed/guzzled if not half the package, all of it. Somehow I managed to get back to sleep that night, but the next week was utterly miserable. I put myself on Prilosec and ate nothing but the most bland and boring foods possible. I bought a gallon of aloe vera juice and sipped on it with a 50/50 mixture of grape juice. Eventually things got better, but man did I learn my lesson. Online research led me to finding the symptoms of this horrid affliction and for the next year or so I was able to keep in under control by downing the acid reducers the minute I noticed some tell tale signs of reflux.
This brings us up to our current date, or at least current time frame. A few days after Christmas I noticed some symptoms creeping in of reflux so I began my normal routine of an acid reducer morning and evening. This time though, it wasn't working. The Saturday after Christmas I went out and bought some Prilosec again and started on those. Just when I thought I was set, things got worse. Now, they didn't get as bad as they had in the past, but they got bad enough that there were a number of sleepless nights due to congestion and coughing fits. My throat was burning quite a bit, and by 4 pm my voice was all but gone every day. I slept on a couch sitting upright and on my left side but nothing seemed to help this time around. Online I went to do more searching.
The pain about LPR is that it's not near as common as GERD. I found forums aplenty for people suffering from GERD, but LPR was a different matter altogether. I could only find pages that gave general information on LPR and what it was, but as for community support, there was not much to be seen. Then I came across this page.
http://www.natural-reflux-cure.com/
This lady had acid reflux. Not LPR, but your standard brand of reflux. I read through her site with little hope for help really. She had quite a bit of useful information and some suggestions that seemed viable to try, but not exactly what I was looking for. Then I came across a note she had made about LPR. It wasn't anything spectacular, but she mentioned it. This lady had done her research. When the doctors told her there was no cure for reflux, and she didn't like that answer, she cracked down and investigated the issue from all angles. I figured someone who'd done that much work had to know something if she'd even come across LPR and knew what it was (and wasn't a doctor even!). She had an ebook available for download and that's when my thoughts went, "Ahhh...here it is. Here's the catch. She has the cure, but you'll have to pay $14.99 for it and it'll be everything I've heard before." To my surprise, she was offering it up FREE OF CHARGE, saying that if it helps and you'd like to donate, that would be cool. On a side note, I totally plan on hitting up her site again and donating. She's put me on the path to what I hope will be the end of this. But back to the main story...
Her number one push was, surprisingly, carrot juice. Now, that wasn't the ONLY suggestion. Rest assured her e-book is 70 pages of loads of helpful information, but the first thing she mentions is juicing. Carrot juice first thing in the morning will help sooth the burn and put you on the fastest track to recovery, or so she says. Seeing as I was pretty desperate for anything at that point I figured I'd give it a go. I didn't have a juicer and couldn't get my hands on one that quickly, but I DID get a food processor for Christmas, and an immersion blender. Best gifts ever this year. True Story. My brand new processor quickly gained a faint orange tint as twice a day I chopped carrots in it and then dumped the pulp into a cup where I further hacked it down with the immersion blender. I then dumped all THAT into a cone shaped filter my husband bought to strain the oil from our deep fryer (and there's part of your answer as to how healthy my eating was) and then squeezed as much juice out of it as I could. The first cups were hard to get down. I had only straight carrot juice, and that was from baby carrots which are super sweet to begin with. I was not a fan. However, I noticed the second cup later that afternoon did seem to help soothe my throat a bit. The second day seemed to be a bit better. By the end of the second day, I could definitely feel an improvement. It wasn't an amazing transformation, but the burning was less. On day 3 I took some left over Christmas money and ordered a juicer, overnight shipping (thank you Amazon Prime and your $3.99 next day. I love you.). The evening of day 3 as I sat trying to sleep, I watched a show called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" on Netflix.
Liiiight buuuulb. (Yes I have kids and if you haven't seen Despicable Me, you really need to. Regardless if you have kids or not.)
The information in the documentary in combination with this e-book was A Golden Moment in my brain. Suddenly I realized things didn't necessarily have to be the way they were. I could take control of a good number of things in my life that would not only help rid me of this cursed reflux, but could possibly help with my stress levels, my memory (or lack thereof), my knee pains, my extra pounds, and maybe even give me a shiny, healthy coat...er...hair...to boot! Not that my hair isn't shiny or healthy. On the contrary it's both when I get a chance to shower. It just has a tendency to fall out. A lot. All the time. All over the place. I blame stress.
So, NOW I finally jump to the current date. Today. January 10, 2012 at 11:03 pm. After reading all that was contained in the e-book 3-4 times, along with the documentary and reading over their website 3-4 times, I have decided that tomorrow will be my first day of 'Rebooting'. I'm going on a strict fresh vegitable and diet only for the next 15 days to 'reboot' my system. Am I a vegitarian? No. Am I a vegan? Oh heck no. I'll take a sizzling T-Bone steak over a salad any day, but this is something I have to do. 60% of the American diet if processed foods, 30% is meat, and a whopping 5% is whole grains and the last 5% is fruits and vegetables. I have been depriving my body of natural healing for yeeeeears. I've taken my share of supplements and vitamins over the years and now it all seems so silly. We're a society that replaces fruits and vegetables with supplements and pills. We want our cake and we want to eat it too and if that means popping 20 pills a day so we can continue our unhealthy lifestyles then DARNIT we're gonna do it!
Until I few weeks ago that was my mindset. Pills and medication will solve it all, right? But something has always nagged me, increasingly so when every other commercial is for some new medication on the market. Something just isn't right, that we humans need so many different pills and chemicals and concoctions to feel better. I don't want to be that way anymore. I don't want to have to depend on man made fake stuff, to help my body function properly, when I can buy earth grown real stuff for 1/16th the price...and it has no side effects and in fact has bonus material! Again, don't get me wrong on this. When I read over what I wrote, I sound like a earth hugging hippy. I'm not, but there IS much to be said about incorporating more natural foods into ones diet, and limiting the consumption of processed foods that have been messed with so much that anything natural has long since been killed out them.
So tomorrow starts my Big Test. Tomorrow is the first day in what I perceive to be a rough road to recovery. I expect many temptations (chocolate...meat..you know who you are), and a fair amount of hurdles and cursing, and possibly some physical discomfort as well, but I honestly think in the end I will come out this much better, much healthier, and hopefully, much wiser.
"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."
~unknown
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