Hiatal hernia "fix" without surgery?

Yes, you are right to avoid surgery if you can. I avoided it for at least 20 years. You do however, have to use common sense and avoid silly fads and fakes.

Yes, the stomach can get hung up above the diaphragm, but usually it doesn't stay there. The gravity treatment might work for a sliding hernia, but those generally pop back down by themselves after your stomach finishes churning a meal. Same for the pushing or pulling the stomach down. These fads are not cures and can cause harm. The stomach is going to pop back up when you eat again, and generally pop back down all by itself.

There are two types of hernias, sliding and paraesophageal. The latter is the kind that gets stuck and is a serious danger to your life and urgently needs surgery because it can quickly twist and strangle itself and die.

Sliding hernias rarely cause symptoms unless the tear in the diaphragm is large. I had a small one for many years, found as they usually are, on a study for something else.

The thing that causes all the pain and burning in the throat is acid leaking past the lower esophageal valve, the one just at the top of the stomach. If the valve doesn't work properly you will be miserable. You can try all the remedies like raising the head of your bed, but acid will still come up sometimes. Acid reducing medicines worked for me fine for many, many years. Stomach juices came up but caused no harm to my throat because they were "non-acid." There is no homeopathic cure for a bad valve, and some are dangerous. For instance, aloe vera is touted, but beware that a recent report shows if the skin of the leaf is used it can cause cancer.

If you don't have a hernia, but instead have a bad valve, you might get away with one of the less invasive surgeries (after trying and failing other legitimate medical treatments). If you've got both problems you're stuck with one of the time-tested surgeries, which aren't fun but work for most people. I had a variation of Nissen which for my surgical group had a satisfaction rating of high into the 90% range. Still, I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't gotten the giant paraesophageal hiatal hernia GPEH.

A legitimate treatment, advised by my allergist, was the food journal. I found I had specific acquired food intolerances, to sulfites, that caused most of my stomach heaving, which I call refluxing. It was free and easy to keep a food journal and find and avoid my problem foods. I still had a bad valve, but with non-acid stomach, I was able to function until the hernia. Surgery doesn't cure food intolerances.

thanks alice and jim...

i had my swallow done and discovered i didn't have a hiatal hernia...but just some damage done by GERD. the doc told me to double up on the omeprazole (40mg per day) and to take gaviscon at night...which, evidently effectively creates a barrier at the LES to prevent acid refluxing into the esophagus while you sleep. after about two weeks, i was feeling better. i have since gone back to 20mg of omeprazole and take the gaviscon only as needed.

that said, in my "healed" condition i tend to get a bit cavalier with my eating habits and the other night partied relatively hard (for me) and paid for it yesterday with some lingering and annoying esophageal spasms. but i'm fighting back with the omeprazole and gaviscon. today is much better than yesterday.

but jim, to your point about intra-abdominal pressure creating the reflux and other issues, does that mean reflux can be completely managed by diet?