fluffy rambles: GERDing my loins

GERDing my loins

September 15, 2022 7:08 AM (a year ago)

I used to have pretty bad issues with GERD back in the day, which I ended up successfully treating through a change in diet and habits, namely not eating after 9 PM and pretty much eliminating mint from my diet (aside from the occasional treat). But lately I’ve been having GERD issues again, and for the past few days in particular have been waking up in the middle of the night with acid in my throat and, often, rather loud noises of bubbling through my body, which I assume are peristalsis with gas bubbles or something.

This has been pretty badly affecting my sleep and making my fatigue way, way worse than usual. Ugh.

I suspect that the current culprit is tomatoes. I’ve been back on a pizza-making kick lately, and on days when I’m not eating pizza I’ve been having a chickpea curry in tomato sauce, which I made way too much of (and am not particularly enjoying anyway). I think I should limit tomato-based foods to lunchtime for now.

I can’t think of anything else which would be causing GERD to happen; I usually only have at most one coffee drink a day and when I do it’s always before 3 PM (and that’s definitely been the case for the last few weeks).

Another possibility is I might have a hiatal hernia. I certainly have pretty much all of the risk factors for it (aside from my age, but given all the other crap going on with my body, what’s 6 years in the grand scheme of things?). I think I need to be more consistent about eating bran flakes for breakfast. Getting more vegetables in my diet wouldn’t hurt, either.

I used to also use omeprazole as a first-line treatment for GERD whenever my symptoms returned, but the last time I tried that (7-8 years ago, I think) I got some of the weird rare neurological side effects of it, so I’d rather not mess with that this time around.

I should also probably prop my bed up again, too. I had the headboard propped up a few inches but I didn’t set that back up when I moved a year and a half ago, and while I doubt that’s the reason the symptoms are back, it certainly isn’t helping matters right now. Propping up my current bed frame is kind of a chore and this might be the excuse I need to finally replace it; I’ve had the same bed frame since 2005 and it’s overdue for a refresh. That’ll be another thing to think about when my condo sale goes through in a couple weeks.