Alternatives to PPI's Part 3

Hi Everyone, Hayley sorry you are not well with this new upper respiratory problem. I think your immune system must be all out of wack. I hope you feel much better soon and can enjoy your vacation.
Javery, thanks for doing the PPI's part 3. I should hate to lose my contact with everyone. This board has been such a help for me during the last couple of months with this struggle.
Mouche, how are you doing?
I hope anyone else that reads these messages finds them helpful.
I am not receiving any notices anymore about the messages so I use an old one to get into this board. how about everyone else?

Hello everyone, wow part 3 already, too bad we can't be made a sticky topic that's on going. I pray everyone is doing well, Haley I hope you get to feeling better soon.

Sorry I haven't been on much but have been so busy with dr visits and it turned out my lumpectomy site is infected. :( I have been going every few days to have fluid drained and that sucks, I finally have my appointment at the cancer center on the 9th. I'm ready to get started and have this all behind me.

My GERD symptoms have been about the same, doing well on the 20mg dose and will continue that for another month and then will maybe try to reduce again. I'll be checking in on everyone from time to time.

Mouche, I forgot to say I hope you are doing better today and I am so sorry you are dealing with this infection at the lumpectomy site! What an inconvenience and I hope it resolves quickly and this will be all behind you very soon! (((Hugs))).

Andy,

I have noticed that before when I was on PPI's, I had to take 4 Tums and sometimes that didn't even help. Now that I'm just on H2-blockers 1 Tums is all I need. It's a HUGE difference. I'm not sure why there is such a big difference between the two scenarios but it is well worth being off the PPI's. I hope you get there.

Hello Everyone. I am finally getting my life back a bit at a time. Since February going through all the misery it was rendered just about unlivable. I haven't had any nausea in a couple of week now, thank goodness. That is the absolute worst thing to deal with as it seemed to affect everything. I haven't lost any more weight either because I am eating a little more food and a little more varied diet. I am experiencing some heartburn though on the lower dose of PPI. I am hoping it will stop when I balance out.
Mouche I feel so sorry you are having such a bad time of it with the infection and can't get on with the treatment until that is taken care of. I hope it soon clears up so you can move forward. I am so glad your PPI reduction is going well.
Hayley, I hope you soon feel better and get your voice back. Other than the losing your voice it sounds like you have felt a bit better.
Javery are you still growing your seeds? Are you still juicing? I really enjoy the juice especially apple. I seem to put into my juicer whatever I have in the fridge but carrots seems to always been the base of whatever else I am going to put in. My husband is also very enthusiastic about it as well so that is a good thing.
Andy take it slowly if you are going to try and get off the PPI and welcome to the group.

Hello everyone,

I think I've found something that is working for me as I haven't had any problems for awhile now and things seem to be working well enough. The sprouting has been going good. Just waiting for a little extra money in order to purchase some different seeds to try out. The juicing is still going good. I still eat pineapple a couple times each day and it doesn't give me any problems still. I'm now going through 4 pineapples a week though. I'm hoping that if I can keep this up for another couple more weeks then things will start improving more. The one thing I've noticed the most about how I'm doing things now is that I don't have any cravings for anything anymore. My wife made cookies the other day and I didn't care if I had any. She also had some pizza for lunch the other day and usually I'll have a piece but this time I didn't want any. I guess that means that my body is satisfied with what I'm giving it so it doesn't have cravings to want other things like it used to. I'm hoping it stays like this because it's when I start eating the bad stuff is when things start to move backwards again.

I hope you all get through the rough patches and continue to improve with the heartburn and getting off the PPI's.

Hi guys! Glad that most of you are doing great.
I'm currently taking loratadine for my allergies and it seems working on my cough. Everyday I feel an improvement, symptoms subside one by one. My only and stubborn problem is my back pain! It been almost 2 months! I remember I told you it's not that severe, but hell, it is so ANNOYING!
I'm taking vit d3, vit b complex, vit c and iron supplemetns but I also consider taking magnesium as I found out from Croftboy that magnesium deficiency is one main reason why some of us suffer from anxiety, depression, muscle spasm and twitching and other things! So I hope it will solve my case. My doctor thinks that my back pain comes from work (I am a graphic artist) and from carrying my niece very often. She thinks it's just muscles. I hope so.
And lastly, she thinks that GERD is not my main issue anymore.
It seems to be a never ending cycle of confusion BUT I'm still hopeful it will get better.
Hope everyone have a nice sleep.

Post Edited (angelcat) : 6/6/2014 10:53:50 PM (GMT-6)

The NutriBullet is not really a juicer as a juicer is defined as separating the juice from the fiber of the fruit/vegetable. The NutriBullet can create juices, but in a different way as it includes the fiber from the fruits/vegetables. I think it really comes down to what your goals are primarily. Both methods have great benefits. With a juicer that removes the fiber, the nutrients are absorbed much faster which helps with the healing process because your body doesn't have to work so hard because there is little to no fiber to deal with. A downside to this is with fruits as it can cause insulin spikes from the higher amounts of sugars. Using something like the NutriBullet can benefit more when using fruits as the fiber will help slow down the digestion process to reduce the insulin spikes. Using the NutriBullet will also keep you fuller longer while still allowing you to get the nutrients.

I juice for the fast digestion of the nutrients. I don't know if I'll ever stop juicing or not. I first thought it'd be temporary and I wouldn't be juicing after a couple months. I tried to stop for a week and then did smoothies but it wasn't the same for me. It's now been 8 months since I started and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.

I know it can be a hard decision to make to choose between a juicer and something like the NutriBullet. Maybe thinking about what other uses you can get out of it may help you decide. The Nutribullet can create juices with a little extra fiber along with smoothies. They have more uses than a juicer which seems to be able to do one thing, create juices. It seems to have good reviews so I think it would be something that would be good to use.

I have an update for my situation, some good and some bad. The good first. As far as my GERD goes, I think things are still improving as I haven't actually been feeling any heartburn for a few days now so I think things are stabilizing again. Seems like it takes awhile to get back on track once you take a wrong turn for a day or two.

Now for the bad. As you know, I've been eating more pineapple as that seemed to be working for me in terms of helping my GERD out. That's still the case but now I'm having other non-GERD related problems due to the pineapple. My teeth are now very sensitive. I've never had sensitive teeth in my life. They hurt when I eat or drink anything now no matter what the temperature. I still want the benefits of the pineapple, but they are just too acidic to keep eating so I'm going to incorporate it in my juices again.

Because of my new problems with my teeth I decided to do some research on how to heal teeth naturally, not expecting to find anything, and evidently, with the proper diet, you are able to restore your teeth naturally. I find this to be great news as I'm already pretty much on the diet I need to be on to make this happen. I just need to increase the amounts of sprouts I'm eating and have a little more variety. I also need to cut back on the pineapple a bit. So I've decided to alter my diet a bit by eating sprouts for breakfast and then increasing the amounts I eat throughout the day. I'm going to order another sprouter and stock up a bit on seeds and start to increase my production. I think the sprouts will really start to help all around with helping with problems I currently have an help prevent other ones from coming up.

My overall goal is to be able to get all my nutrition from food alone where I don't need to take any supplements in pill form. I think that is the best way to do it as supplements are also man made and are not the same as getting the nutrients from the source.

Lily,
I'll just eat the sprouts raw and as is. I'm not much of a breakfast person but I'll eat them and drink my juice as well. I don't mind the taste of them without anything else. I do snack on them here and there without anything else with them. They are a little dry but not so much that they dry out your mouth like when eating crackers. It's more that the outsides are dry but not the insides. Sprouts actually do contain quite a bit of water in them considering their size, but it's not like eating a melon either. It's hard to explain. It also depends on the sprout too I think. The reason why I am eating them without anything else is because I think people eat them with something else because of the taste. I don't think it's any more beneficial to have them with something else. Another reason is because I want to limit the amount of things I need to prepare. I just want something that is simple, easy, and I can just grab and go. If you could store fresh juice and have it retain all it's nutrients, I would make that the night before. But it's best to drink right after you make so I continue to do that in the morning. I'm happy juicing is working out for you though.

Tiredness, weakness, constipation, loss of appetite, weight loss, megaloblastic anemia, nerve problems, such as numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, problems with balance, depression, confusion, dementia, poor memory, and soreness of the mouth or tongue.

If any of those sound like symptoms you have, it may be a good idea to get your Vitamin B12 levels checked. This information was grabbed from here: http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-QuickFacts/

Vitamin B12 is essential and is only naturally found in animal products. This also includes milks and cheeses, not just meats. Just though I'd mention this as these tend to be some symptoms many people on the forum have said they have. It also explains in the article that if you don't have enough stomach acid, then your body is not able to properly break down the proteins to separate the Vitamin B12 from the protein so when taking PPI's, you may not be getting the proper amounts either depending on how much stomach acid is being restricted.

As I continue to do more and more research I keep finding things that prove a lot of other information I have read to be false. This is a little disappointing as the reason why I've been doing things a certain way is because of these false items.

One in particular is enzymes. There seem to be credible sources out there that are for and against enzymes, but not because enzymes are bad, but just the different beliefs on how enzymes taken in are used. Some believe that taking enzymes by eating raw foods or a supplement will help with breaking down foods. Others say that the enzymes do nothing and are just digested and have no impact. I would say that I tend to believe the people who say that enzymes are a bunch of hype at the moment as I remember countless number of times that people have said that taking enzymes didn't seem to do anything at all for them.

I have also found articles that state that eating both raw and cooked vegetables are important as some nutrients are better digested from raw vegetables as others are better digested from cooked vegetables. This doesn't mean that I'll be changing the way I'm doing things though, but it does change the reasoning behind it.

Now I'm focusing on nutrients such as vitamins and minerals instead of enzymes. I'm not sure really what to truly believe anymore since there seems to be credible sources that have scientific backings to their theories for many different things. I guess it's more of a personal trial and error type of thing. Try something long enough to see if it makes a difference or not.

Just something to think about I guess.

BTW: An update on my sprouts. My salad spinner will be in today and I have a new crop of sprouts ready for harvesting so I will get to see how much more useful it'll be to use that to dry the sprouts rather than laying them on paper towels. It'll also save me some money as well. My wife always tells me "This isn't isn't Harvest Moon where you need to 'harvest' any crops" every time I tell her it's time to harvest the sprouts. lol. It does seem a little like Farmville though where it takes a relatively short amount of time before I have my final product vs. actual farming that can take months. I am also getting a different mixture of seeds so I'll see how those taste. My next investment will be in another sprouter to be able to grow more at once as my consumption has gone up.