If you have LPR you ABSOLUTELY NEED to Read this

you can get evamour water, there is also another brand. they sell it at whole foods.

i would say its helps but its not a magic cure.

ACV is an acid, so i wouldn't be gargling that if you have LPR.

Viper
Bump

Someone asked about another high pH water besides Evamor. I found one called Iceland Spring, pH 8.88. I drink both but like the Iceland water a little better.

Jacket923 said...

NOTE: If you experience frequent heartburn then the following post will most likely be irrelevant to you.


Hey there guys...

For those of you who aren't familiar with me, I have had LPR for 3 years and was strongly considering getting the Nissen done. Well now, thanks to a visit to the doctor's office.......I don't have LPR anymore. You read that correctly.


I went to a GI Doctor at a university who my ENT referred me to to get the Nissen. I walked in and he asked me my symptoms and what drugs I had been on. He then proceeded to tell me that it was basically impossible for a fit, healthy 20 year old male to still have significant reflux after I had tried all 4 PPI's and made lifestyle changes. I got so angry I almost walked out of the room but my father calmed me down a bit.
He then went on to say that the GI community is in a kind of tussle with the ENT community in that whenever people come in to ENT appointments with Globus, Burning, and Post-Nasal Drip they automatically diagnose them with LPR and send them on their way. He said that he has seen hundreds of LPR patients go through with the Nissen and for a significant portion of those patients the surgery helps only about 20%. He said that the GI community believes there is a disorder with a large percentage of LPR patients of some nerves that have been damaged from some event (virus, particularly sudden onset cases) in which they become "hypersensitized." He went on to say that he has seen great success with about 50% of LPR patients who take an anti-depressant called Elavil that "balances" out the nerve.



I am going to interrupt my story to add some information I have garnered in the past week on my research from this "hypersensitivity." :

When damage happens to your throat, or anywhere on the body, your nerves become hypersensitized so it becomes painful. For example, your knee would hurt unbelievably if you tore your ACL, so you wouldn't attempt to run (common sense). 99.99% of the time, the nerves heal from this "hypersensitized" state once the physical damage is fully healed. In a large amount of these LPR patients, the physical damage (from a virus, infection, screaming like hell etc) heals normally but the nerve does NOT. It stays in this hypersensitized state, thus being irritated horribly by normal, incredibly tiny amounts of acid. An ENT research paper I came across compared it to getting a 3rd degree burn on your arm, healing perfectly, but still having incredible pain to the touch after it heals.
This research made immediate sense to me because I only really had super-intense burning and a lump on ONE side of my throat. Now if abnormal and damaging amounts of acid were actually coming up, wouldn't you think it would irritate both sides? Also, if any damage was actually happening to my larynx, then why was I able to sing and use my voice perfectly on stage.....but be hoarse off of it? Because NO ACTUAL DAMAGE had happened from LPR, but my nerve cells put me in so much pain all of the time that I thought I was hoarse unless I absolutely had to use my voice......are you following me?



So anyways, I have been on Elavil (25 mg) for 6 days and 90% of my burping and reflux is gone and my throat is healing at an amazing rate and I am probably a couple of months from being 100% normal again.




I know this post is all over the place and disorganized so let me get some quick thoughts in I missed:

1. If you have never had an incident of throat reflux while asleep, and always had your throat feel good after awaking, this post is probably particularly important to you. Because if your sphincters were actually bad, then you would most likely have frequent horrible nighttime reflux.

2. To Clarify: I was experiencing Acid Reflux and that IS what was doing the damage. But I do not believe I have abnormal amounts of acid, it just felt like I did. The PPIs DID help, they just only helped 60%.


3. If you want to research this yourself, search "Laryngeal Sensory Neuropathy" or "irritable Larynx syndrome" or "laryngeal hypersensitivity"

4. LPR specialist Jamie Koufman is reportedly increasingly treating SOME of her patients with Elavil and other nervous system drugs.

TO CLARIFY: LPR is a legitimate diagnosis for a good amount of patients, but some have this "hypersensitivity" and do not have abnormal LPR.

5. If someone wants to sticky this after a while if this ends up helping people, then please feel free to do so.

Hi jacket,

For how long did you take the medication. I have been on it for about 3 months and have seen tremendous change but feel the pain on some days. How long did you take it to see that the pain is completely gone.

I HAVE A SOLUTION THAT WORKS AND HAS HELPED ME HEAL AND LIVE LIFE LIKE A NORMAL PERSON AGAIN.
Hi. I have had this LPR problem for 5 months now and seem to have finally found information and a plan that is helping me to heal. I am a very healthy person. I am a vegetarian who is allergic to dairy. I don't drink soda pop and i rarely drink alcohol. I don't eat much fried food because they are usually stuffed with meat or cheese. though my doctors never heard me, a three week long bout with a constricted diaphragm caused refulx, which caused the LPR. going back to my pretty healthy diet did nothing to fix the problem, nor did taking the Priolosec twice a day. I found out why 5 months later and now I am better.

I am sorry to say how stupid and uninterested doctors are in healing patients with this, but they are truly wrong in how they want us to deal with it. So, If you have taken the PPI (prilosec, etc.), and you have eaten very carefully, not eaten 3 hours before going to sleep, elevated your bed and given up most of the joy you have in order to get better and you still have this 'throat thing' going on? - then I would like to share what is finally helping me.

Dr. Koufman is a doc in New York who treats LPR, EOS and GERD exclusively. She wrote a book called 'Dropping Acid' and it has an explanation for that burning sensation in the throats of we healthy, active people. Pepsin is an enzyme that helps to break down food. However it makes its way into our throats, once it got there it stayed there. pepsin binds to tissue and remains stable for a long time. the question is not whether it is active, but 'how' active. If you are no longer refluxing or never were, it doesn't matter here,because the tissue in our throats is sick and needs a period of recovery. Every time we eat something with a low ph/that is acidic, the pepsin feeds on it and becomes happy. that happiness can be felt in the form of not being able to swallow, difficulty breathing, raspiness, hoarseness, etc. And it doesn't have to be 'bad' food, just acidic. And the enzyme gets to decide what acidic means. An easy example is that I would have strawberries for breakfast and couldn't understand why I was suddenly 'flaring up.' Well, Pepsin becomes 'happy' when a food or liquid with a ph/acidity below 5 is consumed. Strawberries are 3.5 on the ph scale and therefore making pepsin INCREDIBLY happy. Are strawberries healthy? Yes. Are they helping us heal from the pepsin in our throat? NO. This has begun to explain why I would start feeling better and then 'out of nowhere' have a flare up and be right back in hell.

The second items she talks about is something i did by accident for a week while on a work trip, but didn't put two and two together when I started feeling better for a short while. Drink only a high PH balanced water during the healing process. PH balanced water helps to wash out the pepsin. I am drinking a brand called essentia, which is a 9.5 ph water, the highest you can get. The other one recommended is called Evamor, a ph of 8.8. I can't find Evamor at a store, but essentia can be found at Whole Foods or on Amazon. if you've had a glass of tap water or even filtered water, but your throat felt raw from it or you felt like you couldn't make yourself drink, you will love the ph water. when I couldn't swallow a sip of water in Vegas, I bought essentia and suddenly I could hydrate! It's a huge key in the healing process.

There is a 2 week diet in her book that highlights all of the foods you can eat that are a ph5 or higher on the scale. In the last 5 months I have considered suicide twice as an alternative to watching my life slip away to this horrible and unnecessary illness. I found a blurb about this book on the internet, walked 3 miles in humidity (which sucks for LPR sufferers) to get this book and I started it the next morning. It's been 8 days I have been on this high ph diet and with 6 more days to go I already feel almost completely normal. The sensation is still a little bit there, but it's very manageable. I can't talk as much as I used to, but I can still talk like a regular person. I am not constantly focused on my breathing or my throat. I actually had an almost completely normal day today. I gargle with the ph water in the morning and throughout the day and every day I am better and better. I plan to do this diet for 4 weeks just to make certain the pepsin has been killed or 'denatured' as the doctor calls it. I know it won't solve everybody's problem, because i have learned that throats and digestion and nutrition is specific to the person, and that with so many doctors using us as guinea pigs it's very easily a combo of factors for each one of us. I am not a dr, but I know what it's like to be abandoned by one. So, if my story sounds like your story, then i urge you to give it a try.

The book is called Dropping Acid. It's a kindle download if you need it right away. Barnes and Noble had it on their shelf to buy it in person. This book talks about the science and also talks about why drs are not looking at the pepsin research - big surprise - it's because they are waiting for a pill to denature pepsin rather than helping us get better right now with a diet that would do the same thing. Anyway, I believe that if you spend the 2 weeks being careful to eat only foods ph5 or higher you will start feeling the way I have started to feel. Normal again.

I wish you good health and a full recovery.

My gastritis symptoms are burning and pain in the stomach, GERD. I quit amytriptiline after 2 weeks. Made me extremely constipiated, gave me tinnatis, and overal I had very bad expirience with it.

Post Edited (getbettertummy) : 7/25/2013 3:03:42 PM (GMT-6)

Hi jacket923.

Can you tell me specifically what dosage you were on? The ENTS put me on neurontin/gabapentin starting at 100 mg a day, then adding 100 mg each day until I get to 400 mg. So far, I haven't noticed much of a difference.

Thanks! It's only been a week, so I'll be more patient. (My mother and I have a bet about whether or not it will work.) Right now, I'm only on 200 mg a day. We'll see. Thanks again!

Hi there.

The consensus (particularly among people on these forums) is that if it is LPR, it requires an aggressive treatment. I would first have a GI do some kind of PH monitor test. This is considered the "gold standard" in terms of diagnosing acid reflux disease. Some people, however, argue that it's more for diagnosing GERD rather than LPR, so in that case, talk to your doctor(s) about doing a double capsule monitor and/or the new ResTech tool. These methods theoretically will help your doctors decide if you have acid reflux.

If you are diagnosed with it, try all the things you're supposed to do, like avoid eating four hours before bed, taking 80 mg of PPI therapy a day, and try Dr. Koufman's acid detox diet for two weeks before slowly easing back into a low-acid diet. (Her research article is available online; it's a very strict two week diet.) Honestly, if after months of a strict diet and aggressive PPI therapy you don't see improvement, you either A) don't have reflux, or B) you do but the treatment simply isn't working and may require surgery.

If your doctors at some point decide to rule out reflux, your hypersensitivity might be caused by a neurological issue. (This is actually the original post's main argument.) Talk to your doctor about some of the nerve medicine; the most commonly used is probably neurontin but this original poster successfully used something else.

One more thing: The feeling of being unable to breathe is commonly a characteristic of vocal chord dysfunction, which is linked to reflux. Some people are misdiagnosed with asthma, only to find that the asthma medicine doesn't work.

I hope this helps and best of luck.

Yes, that's a common treatment, though some claim that PPI therapy is less effective with LPR and is more of a food issue (specifically, pepsin).

I would STRONGLY recommend you get some sort of test. No, your doctor can't "just tell" it's there, and he's arrogant if he thinks he can. Overseas, I had an endoscopy performed by a Jordanian GI and was diagnosed with non-erosive reflux disease (nice abbreviation) and tried for months and months and months of diet changes, elevated beds, Nexium twice a day and had no relief, even though a Lebanese ENT told me he was "99 percent sure" it was being caused by reflux.

Finally, I came home and my GI told me that a regular endoscopy is not very effective. He did a PH Bravo test which provides a more long-term picture of what's going on, and the test came back negative. Furthermore, an ENT, a laryngologist and a voice scientist all performed larynx examinations and weren't convinced that this irritation was being caused by reflux. These doctors are at the Cleveland Clinic, the highest rated hospital in Ohio. So yes, it's possible that I have reflux, but I'll take the advice from the CC doctors over the folks in the Middle East.

The low-acid diet is beneficial no matter what. Too much acid is terrible for anybody, and it's time this country realizes that.

Their "best guess" is that it is a neurological issue, so they gave me neurontin, which I'm to progressively increase, and lidocaine, which is a kind of numbing medicine.

Definitely schedule a Bravo test. The medicine can be very expensive, and a growing number of doctors are warning against the overuse of PPIs (though my GI said that the media exaggerates its side effects).

Don't take it from me. Ask another ENT/GI or two what they think and take it from there.

I can't say because I'm not an ENT, but it's worth discussing. Bile could also cause irritation. The original poster in this thread mentioned that his irritation was caused by nerves; so has another poster. The Bravo test is the "gold standard," but if you're looking for LPR, additional tests should be done, such as a larynx examination. The new ResTech tool is supposedly the first method designed to test for LPR instead of GERD.