Melatonin for GERD?

I found this study which indicates that melatonin may be helpful in preventing transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxations (TLESR). Thought I would pass it along. I imagine in the full text article it would show how much the subjects in the study took, I'm too broke at the moment to pay for it though.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16948779

Has anybody heard about or tried this? Did it work for you?

I think this one has been discussed before here with MockTurtle. A couple of us looked into it. I wanted to try it but you can't buy melatonin in the UK. I tried 5HT but it made me feel woozy. We discussed how it needs the B vits as co factor. I think there may have been a downside that there was concern about but I can't remember! Will see if I can find the previous thread for you.

MMM

I tried melatonin but only took 3mg at a time. I'm not sure if it helped much and I may not have stayed on it long enough.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-230X/10/7

I read on here that 3mg once daily at bed time for 4-8 weeks.
Than it can be slowly upped to 6mg once daily

Do you just stop after 8 weeks ?

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/717460_5

I found this article and looked up a few of the studies. They all sound very promising but it appears you need to stay on the Melatonin for 8 weeks for it to have lasting effects. I am taking so many other natural remedies that I figure one more couldn't hurt at this point.

I'm am going to give it a try and pray it works as it is no fun living with Gerd.

If anyone has tried this for 8 weeks please post your experience.

Thanks

I am on my 3rd week of taking 3mg of Melatonin at night. My Gerd is very much improved, not 100% gone but I'm going to stay the course and see how it goes. At this point I would recommend others to try it too.

I finished the course of Melatonin and think it may have helped somewhat. I actually repeated it again over during the summer. However, the biggest improvement came about a month ago when I changed my diet. I was having a fruit smoothie every morning for breakfast, which I thought was beneficial but in retrospect it may have been aggravating the GERD. For the past month I have been having dry corn flakes with my Yogi Stomach Ease Tea for breakfast and I would say I have an 80 to 90% improvement. I actually have some days that I don't even think about GERD at all because the symptoms pretty much vanish. At this point, I think the corn flakes are the key and they somehow absorb or balance the acid in my stomach. During the day I can pretty much eat what I want, although I have many allergies so I do avoid cows milk and wheat for the most part.

Wishing you the best Tu!

Hi Tu-

My GERD was also triggered by antibiotics. I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease and went to a Lyme specialist who put me on several forms of Doxycycline for around 3 months. From the beginning I was complaining about side effects. I developed an antibiotic induced cough and throat irritation. He insisted I stay on the antibiotics, but changed the prescription several times to similar strains of antibiotic. Finally one day about a year ago my digestive system seemed to shut down, I felt like I couldn't breathe or eat. It even created a panic attack from not being able to breathe right. When I told the dr he wanted to put me on another antibiotic...last time I ever went to him. I think he would have killed me if I kept taking them.

Anyway, it's been a long road. I self treated for a while. Changed my diet, took supplements, when to a holistic practitioner who gave me more supplements. I finally had an endoscope this past spring which showed nothing significant. (Thank God) I refused to to on PPI's as I was afraid of the side effects. It's been almost a year now. I feel much better than I used to, but know I am still not quite out of the woods. Diet is very important and avoiding triggers.

Pho used to trigger me much more than it does currently. Hopefully that means I am healing.

God Bless!

i found a lot of my heartburn was caused by sugar and sea salt. Take a muscle test from a naturapath to find out what you are intolerant to. Sugar was a big one and can be difficult to avoid but makes a world of difference.

Hi Andy-

In the beginning I thought I would never feel better again. The whole ordeal was very scary to say the least. For most of my life I have been able to eat whatever I wanted and never had any stomach issues until I took the antibiotics for those 3 months. Since then my life has changed. Like I said, it has been a long road, but if I look back to where I was a year ago when I was at the point that I was afraid to eat anything, I have definitely made dramatic improvements where now I can eat most things I want with limitations. Much has been trial and error.

Ruey said...
Hi Andy-

In the beginning I thought I would never feel better again. The whole ordeal was very scary to say the least. For most of my life I have been able to eat whatever I wanted and never had any stomach issues until I took the antibiotics for those 3 months. Since then my life has changed. Like I said, it has been a long road, but if I look back to where I was a year ago when I was at the point that I was afraid to eat anything, I have definitely made dramatic improvements where now I can eat most things I want with limitations. Much has been trial and error.

What happened after you were off the antibiotics and on the road to recovery? How long was it before you saw even some improvement? I'm 3 months on and even worse now than when I started, it's so hard to put up with the constant nausea and then pain. I barely eat anything because everything seems to trigger symptoms for me, so just stick to boiled potatoes and some fish.

I also have major depression from this, I was already depressed before but this has really done me in and I'm just getting suicidal, which I'm sure is feeding into the symptoms as well and making everything the worse. I'm getting treatment for the depression but its a long road, and feel like I can't properly battle it until my physical problems start to improve. :(