Posted 7/5/2017 1:01 PM (GMT 0)
Remember all the posts that say surgery is the last resort!
If you don't have erosion or pain, what is the reason for considering surgery? I'm only a patient, so listening to a real doctor is what I recommend. But just having a bit of burping or stomach fluid leaking up isn't enough reason for me to undergo a long operation. I went over 20 years just keeping my stomach contents non-acid.
Are you having refluxing/heaving events after eating? That was my main problem, although I also had a weak lower esophageal sphincter (LES). But I found I had food triggers, stopped eating them and got rid of the regurgitation part of the problem. Have you looked into food triggers?
Food triggers have nothing to do with the idea of eating non-acid foods. It's about finding your own sensitivities or allergies. In fact, it's often recommended to eat or drink something acid to tell your stomach acid pumps to close down. Also, taking your PPI (I assume you are on them) properly is critical. They don't work unless you take them 45 minutes before eating, and thenyou must eat something to trigger the pumps to open up. Then! the medicine can work!!, telling the pumps to shut down. PPIs don't work in the stomach. They have to get into the blood stream (sort of like working from the back side of the pumps, not the inside of the stomach wall).
Back to sensitivities. Put the term "food journal" in the search box at the top of the page and read the hundreds of posts on the subject. That was how my allergist and I found a list of foods that cause me to have refluxing. If I eat gelatin or brown sugar or corn starch I get a slightly upset stomach, then frank refluxing, and often tachycardia (which feels like having a gas bubble trapped in my stomach). Then you put a few of your list of foods in a google search with "food allergies" and find out what's in those foods. My problem is sulfites, but others have different triggers. The usual recommendations of avoiding coffee, tomatoes and such had no effect on me, and I still enjoy them.
I lived happily with just sleeping on a couple of pillows, no irritation in the throat, for years. I eventually had to have the surgery after being in an accident that shoved my stomach into my chest. But believe me, surgery was a last resort. Surgery will not cure food sensitivities or allergies. I still have to avoid my trigger foods or I will get stomach heaving and tachycardia, although I can't throw up anymore.