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How I cured my gastritis

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ines6375
ines6375

When I got diagnosed with mild gastritis (but no H. Pylori) and esophagitis, I looked all over the internet to find what to do. I did not find many accounts of people who have cured themselves successfully and how they did it. So I thought I would write my story once I am cured. Here it is. If you have cured yourself from gastritis too, please share your experience below as well.

Many people ask how long it takes to be cured. At first I started on dexilant for a month but I did not see any improvement. After a month I kept taking dexilant and I started the low acid diet in parallel. I got much better in 2-3 days. After two months on dexilant and one month on the diet, I felt completely good. Then I stopped the dexilant cold turkey and got a lot of pain and acidity back in my stomach. Now I regret I did not take the dexilant a little longer as my stomach was obviously not healed and not strong enough to go through the rebound effect of stopping dexilant. I regret also that I did not stop dexilant slowly taking it every other day for a week, then every three days for a week, .... I felt anxious about taking a medication that has so many side effects taken long term and I wanted to stop immediately, which was not reasonable.

Anyway there I was back at the beginning with stomach pain and acidity day and night. I felt pain related to the esophagitis as well which really scared me. I hesitated to take dexilant again but I decided to try to cure myself the natural way. Below I describe what I did. I got cured in approximately two months, getting slowly better week by week. After two months of natural cures I had no stomach pain anymore and no excess acid, I was able to sleep again, felt like a new healthy (and lighter -- I lost a few pounds) person. However after those two months, I felt that I needed to follow the diet another month for my stomach to get strong and be able to handle a less strict diet.

THE CURE

Books

Most of what I did is summarized in two books which I found very useful:

The first book is "Dropping acid: the reflux diet cookbook & cure" by Jamie Koufman. This is the book I based my diet on. The only disagreements I have with the author regard dairy products that I stopped taking as they make the stomach produce more acid (very clear for me), and the use of ginger, manukka honey and aloe vera which I find too irritating and/or acidic (and I don't feel that they help). Also she does not talk about salt which is known to be irritating for the stomach lining in excess, I felt an improvement when I lowered my intake in salt. I will explain the diet more in details below.

The other book is "Ulcer free! Nature's safe & effective remedy for ulcers" by G. Halpern. I know you may have gastritis and no ulcers but the two conditions are related and what cures one usually cures the other too. I used some of the natural supplements recommended in this book. In particular slippery elm (this one is actually not mentioned in the book) and DGL licorice for stomach pain (coat the interior of the stomach lining), Zinc-Carnosine (reduce inflammation and protects stomach lining - I felt a great improvement after starting to take it especially with acid production at night), and cabbage juice (finished my recovery with this one, after two days I had no stomach pain anymore at night). I describe the supplements more below.

What did not work for me

Mastic gum hurts my stomach. It is supposedly helpful against H. Pylori which I knew I did not have (I had been tested).

Prelief removes the acid in food and stomach very efficiently but causes constipation.

Tums works well for 45 minutes but then there is a rebound effect with the stomach producing more acid.

Manukka honey hurts my stomach (Too acidic, Ph level 4, but maybe also because of the tea tree essential oil in it). It is supposedly helpful against H. Pylori.

Aloe Vera is too acidic (around Ph level 4), and I don't feel it is doing anything positive.

Ginger is irritating and I don't feel it is doing anything positive.

Probiotics helps with digestion but not really for the stomach.

Zantac works very well at removing the acidity but makes me feel dizzy and incredibly tired.

PPI worked very well at removing the acidity and pain in my stomach while I was taking it while doing the diet, but I had a bad rebound effect when I stopped (one must stop slowly by taking it every other day for a while). Also having too low acid in the stomach because of PPI might cause problems in the long term (problems with Calcium and B12 absorption, bacterial infection more likely).

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  • skystarsriver
    skystarsriver ines6375

    Posted

    I am making some diagnostic progress.  Have IBS causing pain (no infection there)...and oesophagitis/gastritis causing pain. had to take a lot of antibiotics to address a nasty infection...think that has caused imbalances for me.

    Raised the bedhead with 2 bricks under each top leg...I think that is really making a difference, I'm not waking with the yukky bitter taste during the night...my voice is normal again and I don't have a sore throat in the morning.

    Not yet taking the zantac...was recommended peppermint oil caps for the IBS. Confused but at least now I have a lable to research and am assuming there will be some overlap in what helps the IBS and oesohagitis. 

    Going to do more meditation, more regularly and make sure I walk. Drinking slippery elm as tea.

    Best wishes to everyone.

  • mitch_jr55265
    mitch_jr55265 ines6375

    Posted

    Hi, my name is Mitch, i just started realized that i have this gastric, its been one weeks now, it started after i went for jogging, the pain was started. Now i'm barely  usually at night and morning i have this pain. its quite worried me. My friends suggest me to take milk but from what i read on your article, dairy product is not effective. i was confuse on how to treat this pain. I've met with nurse in my college, she said that it was a gastric based on what she said on my detail about the pain. She gave me medicine written there "gastric pain'. But its already a week since this gastric occur and sometimes it feel really pain. what should i do? is there any easy things that can be done? i'm still a student, so i cannot afford all those expensive medicine. is there any natural way to cure this gastric? I'm really afraid this pain, it really stressed me out. 
    • ines6375
      ines6375 mitch_jr55265

      Posted

      You can start by following the diet I describe at the beginning of this thread, see if it helps.
    • gaynor61068
      gaynor61068 ines6375

      Posted

      Hello ines, or anyone else that can help,

      I've made a chicken broth lady night and put it in fridge over night. I've taken off fatty layer this morning but the liquid still looks thick and wobbly. Is this right? xx

  • tanyar
    tanyar ines6375

    Posted

    Hi there, I used to have gastritis and it got better but now apparently I'm suffering with excess stomach acid. I'm following a diet quite similar cutting out all the acidic foods ect. Been going about 3 weeks and only feel sick on rare occasions now, any advice on slowly 're introducing foods back into my diet? Will be doing in a few weeks but nervous ill over do it and be back to square one! Any advice would be appreciated, Thank you.
    • ines6375
      ines6375 tanyar

      Posted

      My answer is probably going to make many people unhappy but I don't think there is a return to a "normal" diet when one has a sensitivity that has led to gastritis. I might be wrong but my feeling is that excess acid might be just a lower level of irritation of the stomach that needs to be taken care of for a long time (months).

      Anyway what we consider a normal diet was not normal 100 years ago, most people in the developed world are eating much more acidic foods than they used to, and for some of us, much more spices than we used to (I am thinking of people or european descent for which indian or other exotic spices were not part of their usual diet).

      What I am trying to say is that if you want to make sure you stay healthy for the long term, it would be best to consider your current diet your normal diet, and than when you can't avoid it, allow yourself a little something on the side that is not recommended in reasonable proportions. I read the stories of many patients of Dr Koufman who were doing good on the low acid diet than a few years later were back in her office because they went back to a "normal" diet.

      Anyway that is just my opinion and for now I can't really test for myself since with the pregnancy I am having excess acid as well, and I hope it will get better once the pregnancy is over.

  • ines6375
    ines6375

    Posted

    I just made another discovery worth mentioning. It takes 4-5 hours for a normal person to empty her/his stomach after a normal meal. After 2.5-3 hours, only half the content of the stomach is emptied. So yesterday I had dinner at 5 pm and did not eat anything afterwards (beside alkaline water) until I went to bed 6-7 hours later and I slept so much better. My stomach did not bother me at all and I had much lower level of acidity than usual.

    Also yesterday there was an interesting article in the New York Times called "simple rules for healthy eating". These rules are very close to the low acid diet rules we follow except for the avoidance of tomatoes/red peppers/garlic/onions. If you follow the link about milk, it leads to the article I mentioned a few weeks ago about dairy.

  • rebecca93695
    rebecca93695 ines6375

    Posted

    Just a question and trying to understand...  I've been researching ph level foods.  Why is it that we cannot consume some the the fruits that have high amounts of ph?  Like Lemon for example is right up there with Melons.  Why avoid lemons?  I have been diagnosed with Gastiris/ GERD.  I have been living with it for 2 years now.  I took an acid blockler for one month.  It did nothing to help so I stopped taking it.  I didn't want to take it in the first place.  There are so many negative side effects it couldn't possibly be healthy.  My dr wanted me to take a different med and for a lot longer period of time.  So I've just been dealing with the bloating and pain.  The recommended diet seems so hard, but I'm willing to give it a try.
    • ines6375
      ines6375 rebecca93695

      Posted

      You don't have the right list of ph level of foods. Search on google for a page called "Table of the pH of Foods and Food Products - to Help in Home Canning and Food Preservation" on a webpage called "pick your own dot org". You will see that lemon is very acidic, ph level between 2 and 2.6. When you are in pain you should only eat foods with ph level 5 and above. When you get better you can eat sometimes foods with ph level between 4 and 5 also.
    • nataly87663
      nataly87663 ines6375

      Posted

      Hello, Ines!

      I looked up this list. Interestingly it has meat and diary as above level 5. So there doesn't affect us the same way as vegies and fruit?

       

    • ines6375
      ines6375 nataly87663

      Posted

      Meat is good as long as it is low-fat. Any high-fat food will cause reflux which increases inflammation. Milk/dairy can be alkaline (milk is alkaline but yoghourt is at the limit) indeed but also causes more reflux, that is the reason it is better to avoid it.
    • sirivinay1786
      sirivinay1786 rebecca93695

      Posted

      They say that lemon becomes alkaline in the stomach. I dont think that is true, atleast in my case I found it to be very acidic. I took it and it made my gastritis worse. I took it only for 3-4 days. I stopped and felt much better.. For fruits, it is best to stick to melons, bananas. 
  • acakes
    acakes ines6375

    Posted

    Does anyone get really bad tight chest or heart palpitations from acid reflux? I don't know that I have acid reflux because I don't feel it. But during the endoscopy my GI doc saw some signs of acid reflux. I can't figure out where this terrible chest tightness is coming from. It feels like my heart hurts. It could just be something I'm reacting too like a vitamin or supplement.
    • sirivinay1786
      sirivinay1786 acakes

      Posted

      It's possible. my first day of this dreadful illness started off like that. Terribe chest tightness. Didn't even realise it was acid reflux till I got classic symptoms a week later. Lol.
  • by63474
    by63474 ines6375

    Posted

    Can we take Pepzin GI as a long term supplement? I have been on Nexium for over a year now... thought that will help contain my symptoms buti seemed to still have flare ups every now and then.
    • ines6375
      ines6375 by63474

      Posted

      I think so, it is just a zinc supplement with an amino acid. I heard of people taking it for long periods of time.
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