What is Gerd? - Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

Acid reflux disease, or GERD,  runs in my family. I was unaware of this until, as a nineteen-year-old, I was diagnosed with it myself. I had been experiencing a great deal of stomach pain for a period of many weeks. I had attributed it to stress as I had been going through a particularly rough time at my job. One night at dinner, I had eaten only a couple of bites of my dinner when I doubled over in pain. It felt as though my stomach was on fire and was burning a hole through the middle of me. I had never felt such pain and I have not since.

The next day I went to a walk-in clinic and was told that I had an ulcer. I was prescribed Nexium and told that it would clear up with time. At that time, Nexium was a relatively new drug and was extremely expensive. After only a few months on the prescription, I could no longer afford it and was forced to stop taking it. Although the pain I experienced that night at dinner was much worse than the everyday pain that I went through afterwards, I think it goes without saying that the pain never went away completely.

People who suffer from GERD know that it never really goes away. It is merely a matter of how bad it is from one day to the next. I did a lot of experimentation when it came to my diet trying to quell the acid reflux although at that time I was unaware that I was experiencing Gerd. To the best of my knowledge, I had an ulcer. If it was not an ulcer, then it was just heartburn. No matter what I tried I couldn't get rid of the pain.

I tried giving up coffee, which proved to be a difficult endeavor. I had heard that coffee, like orange juice, was very acidic and could be aggravating my ulcer so I tried low acid coffee. I was told that my habit of smoking was aggravating my ulcer and I worked on that as well. It was not until almost five years later that a new doctor told me about acid reflux disease. After relaying to my mother what the doctor had told me, I quickly found out that I was not the only one in my family who may have acid reflux.

After working with a new doctor and learning  about what is Gerd, I have been able, with medication, to manage the disease and the pain associated with it. I noticed after a month or so after I began to get a handle on my acid reflux that my nasal allergies had lessened in severity and I was having fewer health problems in general. As with most health issues, many of my problems were connected and treating my acid reflux disease helped my health in areas that appeared to be unrelated.

Tags: Acid Reflux, GERD, Reflux Related Conditions, what-is-GERD

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