Help with gut health/ acid reflux

[Jo96]

I am writing this forum to gain some wisdom/ insight into gut health.

I’m only 26 years old and I’m in pretty good shape. I do daily practice of yoga and I walk a lot, normally I eat two meals a day. Once in the morning after 11 after yoga. and a slightly bigger meal in the evening around 6 pm. I live a pretty non stressful lifestyle. My diet is vegetarian but I do eat a decent amount of protein from tofu and eggs. So it makes no sense to me that almost every night I have horrible acid reflux which causes me sleep apnea and this choking sensation, and affects so many other areas of my life. 
 

my diet is normally a lot of carbs. Like rice and vegetables and then fruit and tofu and eggs or Tempe. I am currently in Asia been in India and in Bali and so I’ve been eating Indonesian food and Indian food before that
 

Is there anyone else in this forum who had experience with this? I know @Leo Gura you talked about this problem at some point in your spiritual journey. If you or anyone one else found answers it would be super appreciated (: 

[Asayake]

I have been dealing with this on and off for years. The first thing I would do is to reduce the fat intake as much as possible. Remove oil and opt for tofu or beans over eggs. If you're eating street food/restaurant food you're gonna have to look for a place that got something without oil or fat such as steamed vegetable. This alone helped me quite a bit, with that being said I still have acid reflux from time to time, it seems to be multifactorial for me. In my case going to bed too late as well as just increased stress by itself are two triggers.

Another thing worth trying is avoiding to drinking water when you eat, instead try to drink 3 glasses 15-20 mins before your meals, as to not dillute your stomach acid and slow down your digestion. 

A quick remedy you could try is 2 tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar mixed in 1/2 glass of water, drink that at night before going to bed and flush out your mouth with water afterwards. After about 20-40 minutes of drinking that my acid reflux disappears for the night. However, relying on this longterm might not be great because it damages your enamel in the long run since it's acidic. And it could be more useful in the long run to get to the root cause of your issues. I hope you found some of this useful and I hope you find some relief from your symptoms.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Asayake

[Jo96]

58 minutes ago, Asayake said:

A quick remedy you could try is 2 tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar mixed in 1/2 glass of water, drink that at night before going to bed and flush out your mouth with water afterwards. After about 20-40 minutes of drinking that my acid reflux disappears for the night. However, relying on this longterm might not be great because it damages your enamel in the long run since it's acidic. And it could be more useful in the long run to get to the root cause of your issues. I hope you found some of this useful and I hope you find some relief from your symptoms.

Interesting. I will have to give this a try. Thanks for the tip. But I’m curious, why do you suppose this helps for you. Isn’t apple cider vinegar acidic? Do you think it has to do with the microbial content in the apple cider? I’ve been considering if probiotics would help recently or even if it’s a bacterial infection.

 

the part you said about fats also confuses me. I get oils but fats and protein I would think would help. Do you understand some of the science behind this? 

[Asayake]

1 hour ago, Jo96 said:

Interesting. I will have to give this a try. Thanks for the tip. But I’m curious, why do you suppose this helps for you. Isn’t apple cider vinegar acidic? Do you think it has to do with the microbial content in the apple cider? I’ve been considering if probiotics would help recently or even if it’s a bacterial infection.

 

the part you said about fats also confuses me. I get oils but fats and protein I would think would help. Do you understand some of the science behind this? 

In regards to the fat & protein thing, fat especially is more taxing on the digestive system, it takes longer to digest. Fruit or rice will digest in 30-60 minutes and higher fat foods will take much longer, about 4 hours to digest. Acid reflux is often a symptom of poor digestion. A lot of people who suffer from acid reflux do so because of low stomach acid levels/indigestion. The food they eat for dinner will take longer to digest than it should so by the time they go to bed they still have stuff filling up their stomach, causing juices to get pushed out of the esophageal sphincter more easily.

Beyond this, people with lower stomach acid levels don't have an as acidic enviroment in their stomach as others, either the acid is diluted by food that's not digesting quickly enough or the acid levels are just low to begin with. The acid level being as it should be is important because when acid gets in contact with the esophageal sphincter it triggers it to close shut so that sutff doesn't leak out and cause damage. If this is the case Apple Cider Vinegar will help to remedy this short term. Because it is acidic it will trigger the esophageal sphincter to help it close properly, this way you can lie down without stuff leaking out causing heartburn. There are also those who have high levels of stomach acid and that's the cause of the their reflux, for those people Apple Cider Vinegar would not help I believe, so testing Apple Cider Vinegar as a remedy could be helpful to try to troubleshoot what the cause of your acid reflux potentially is. 

If you eat something like cinamonn sugar rice porridge or rice & steamed vegetables or rice & chickpeas for dinner it will leave the stomach quicker, leaving your stomach acid less diluted so it can trigger the esophageal sphincter more easily as well as reducing risk of stuff getting pushed out of your stomach becuase of it not being emptied properly.

Edit: I wanted to add that you also want to figure out potential trigger foods and avoid them completely. For me pasta is a big trigger where as rice & potatoes works great. I still have pasta every now and then because I love it but there's a price to be paid for that lol.. Another trigger for me is chili pepper. For a while I couldn't eat tomatoes or canned tomatoes but that seems to work fine again now so some triggers seem to disappear as the digestion improves.

Edited February 2, 2023 by Asayake

[Jo96]

@Asayake  thank you so much for the words of wisdom. It is very helpful to have this concise explanation. Thank you again. I’ll try this out and experiment.