How I cured my gastritis
Posted , 375 users are following.
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).
39 likes, 3077 replies
ffmffm7 ines6375
Posted
joanne84073 ffmffm7
Posted
jennann ines6375
Posted
I've been very grateful to everyone that has posted on this forum. It has been very helpful to me. I thought it is getting to be time to share some of my own experiences to contribute to the knowledge pool.
- I started noticing my stomach did not feel right at night about a year and a half ago and was not sleeping well because of it
- in the 6 months before that I had two urinary tract infections for which I took Macrobid and they fully resolved. Conincidence? I also moved into a new house a few months earlier and had travelled a bit.
- I have a history of some anxiety but was not really in any unusual stressful situation
- I was generally pretty healthy and followed a mostly vegan diet
- Dr gave me rabeprazol. It worked for a couple weeks then stopped working. Gave me omeprazol. Worked for a couple weeks then stopped working. Symptoms much worse after stopping.
- Ranitidine was horrible. Did not help, prevented me from sleeping properly. Would have literally lost my mind if I'd kept taking it.
- Took 80 mg of esomeprazol per day, didn't really help. Took 160 mg per day and this helped a lot but I was afraid of the risks so stopped (slowly). Symptoms gradually came back after a month.
- endoscopy confirmed four patches of inflammation in my stomach and no h-pylori.
- the diet Ines outlined has helped a lot but not perfect. Cutting way back on fat makes a lot of difference. I've noticed basically any additives/preservatives in foods seem to make my symptoms worse. Eating too much at once makes things worse.
- I feel really tired and depressed and hopless when I am having gastritis symptoms. I kind of suspect this is another kind of symptom because I recognize that it doesn't make sense to feel that way.
- I tried taking B12 supplements, iron supplements, resevetrol, fish oil, turmeric, the zinc carnosine complex mentioned in this thread. None seemed to make any difference. I stopped taking them because I am concerned that taking pills might physically irritate my stomach lining.
- DGL LICORICE IS AMAZING. I feel much better when I take it. Before I tried it my favorite thing was the foaming Gaviscon tabs. But I think they were giving me rebound effects.
- I went to a Chinese medicine doctor recently. She gave me a tincture and said to take 5 drops in water a half hour before meals, sipping it slowly over 5 minutes. She said to take saurkraut right before meals. She said do not eat any raw or cold foods. I have been doing all this. She said the gastritis is due to me not having an emotional support system. She did acupuncture which hurt a lot. The first week I thought there was improvement but now I am in the second week and have had acupuncture twice and I'm not sure it's helping. I will try some more.
- I had optometrist and dentist appointments recently and my eyes and gums are getting worse. I suspect this is related to my illness, particularly my gums, because I clean my teeth like a fiend.
- I am debating if I should go on the huge doses of esomeprazole again. Also curious if antianxiety meds, as other posters mentioned, might help.
I will post more as it comes up. Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to post their experiences, I can't even express how much it helps to know I am not alone in this.
jennann
Posted
One other thing I thought of... as a child, honey always upset my stomach, so I didn't eat it for years and years. But a couple of years ago I tried it again and had no problems whatsoever. So I started eating it a lot of it. Maybe I shouldn't have. Probably only a remote chance that is related, but I thought I'd mention it.
jennann
Posted
This is a very frustrating illness, but I can't see any reason why it shouldn't be completely curable. I don't have h-pylori, but even if I did, lots of people have h-pylori with no symptoms. So if it is an infection, why should I not be able to host it without symtoms? Right now I suspect some combination of microflora and hormone imbalance. I should be able to get one or both of those things back on track eventually.
jennann
Posted
I'm doing a lot better. I have stabilized at a healthy weight. I still avoid foods with more than 2g of fat per serving, and avoid great quantities of chocolate, tomatoes, onion, garlic, spicy food, and banana. I try not to eat too much sugar or white flour. I take aloe and probiotics. I still take amitriptyline and and very slowly weaning off esomeprazole (I only take it every other day now).
ManageIT jennann
Posted
Did you gain back your lost weight? How long did that take? THanks!
Neoison555 jennann
Posted
jennann ManageIT
Posted
I haven't, but I was a bit overweight to begin with so it's for the best. I'm holding steady at a healthy BMI now.
jennann
Posted
I had about 6 weeks of rebound symptoms after completely stopping the esomeprazole. After that went away, I was mostly better. I am careful what I eat still but can get away with small quantities of just about anything. A six-month course of esomeprazole, amitriptyline, and reducing stress in my life are, I would say, the most important things I did. I still use Prelief and Gaviscon foaming tabs to buffer "bad" foods - both of these are invaluable.
I did not find Chinese medicine to be helpful, in fact, I got worse during those treatments. I don't think zinc carnosine helped me either. Cabbage juice was helpful for the gastritis in the short term but I became quite ill while taking it - I don't think it agreed with me at all.
jennann ines6375
Posted
I also wanted to enquire if anyone that knows they are sensitve to oil and fat has tried coconut oil? Someone told me that it is a different chain length and it gets digested further along the digestive system so there is a possibility it won't be as irritating to the stomach. I'm nervous about having so little fat in my diet. I've tried avocado and it upsets my stomach just like every other oil.
I don't know why the backlash against low fat diet for losing weight, it works like a hot damn. I'd actually like to slow down the weight loss. It scares me a little that it happens so fast without my consent, even though I can still stand to lose a few more kilos.
ines6375 jennann
Posted
I don't feel so good with coconut oil personally, it is very rich in saturated fat like butter is. I feel much better with cold pressed virgin olive oil.
jennann ines6375
Posted
Well darn it. I haven't had good luck with olive oil so far either, but maybe I'll try again later.
scott20738 jennann
Posted
Coconut oil doesn't sit well with my stomach. Not sure why. Neither does olive oil. Fortunately, full-fat Greek yogurt works great. Like you, I was losing too much weight on a low-fat diet. After including lots of yogurt, along with gluten-free granola, I've been able to add about 800 or more calories per day. So I've went from 2300 calories to well over 3000. I'm starting to gain weight, finally. I hope it can help you, too.
jennann scott20738
Posted