I went through the whole song and dance with that shit, man. All kinds of tests, procedures, invasive monitoring. The works. I've got more pictures of my esophagus than some people have of their children.

Best things I ever did were:

1) Cutting down on alcohol and ESPECIALLY hard liquor. Honestly, this made the most difference. I was destroying my stomach with that booze. Now that I leave it alone most of the time and try to stick to beer when I do drink, its so much better.

2) Dexilant. Fuck all those other pills, they were all worthless. But Dexilant, a fairly new pill, really worked. After a couple days of taking it I felt so much better. After a couple months of taking it my esophagus had healed to the point that I was able to stop and maintain a healthy diet. Now I keep a bottle in case of flare-ups, but haven't had any.

3) Gaviscon. If I ever get a flare-up, which usually happens when I wake up in the morning, I tip back a bit of that and it neutralizes it right away. As long as you don't let it sit there and erode your throat, you won't have any lasting damage that needs to be repaired. And your stomach producing the excess acid and letting it into your throat is actually a symptom of pre-existing damage to your throat due to acid reflux. Its a self-perpetuating condition.


Using that method, I'm able to eat damn near anything I want, with the exception of french fries. Which is fine, because I never really liked them anyways.