As I mentioned in my 2013 review, I had a health scare last
year. Since May, it has become a big
deal for me, something I think about or deal with on a daily basis. In my research I have noticed a lot of other
people with similar problems also looking for information or help or just
wanting to know someone else out there is dealing with the same kinds of issues,
so I want to document a bit on how I am trying to take my power back when it
comes to my health.
I have suffered from daily heartburn since I was in 11th
grade. I didn’t know it, but I had a
hiatal hernia. I carried Tums in my pocket every day through the rest of high
school and through 5 years of college.
After graduating and getting (a haircut and) a real job, I finally had
health insurance (which my parents never had) and went to the doctor, where I
was finally diagnosed after having an Upper GI test. They put me on a prescription for a fairly
new drug called Prilosec. This was
around 1999.
During college, I also started to have trouble swallowing. This was a side effect from what eventually
was coined Barrett’s Esophagus. That was
never diagnosed for me, but I’m sure that’s what was going on.
After starting Prilosec, I was a new person! I didn’t have daily, almost constant
heartburn, could live, eat, work, sleep, do just about anything. I wasn’t taking Tums constantly, and
eventually stopped carrying them with me because I didn’t need them. My swallowing issues disappeared.
Years went by, and in 2007 after I had some ongoing possible
gallbladder pain, my PCP sent me to a gastro specialist. The gallbladder thing turned out to be
nothing major, but he did do an endoscopy on me to look around. He told me at the time that there appeared to
be nothing other than the hiatal hernia.
My stomach didn’t seem to move food along as quickly as it should, so he
prescribed Reglan for me, a low dose.
Around now I was also switched from Prilosec to Nexium, the next
generation of the med.
Looking back on it I see that since the time I was first put
on meds I have very, very slowly started to develop problems eating. I would have a normal dinner, then wake up in
the middle of the night, say 2-3am, and my dinner was still in my stomach and I
felt sick. Really not good.
This started to happen more and more, and
sometimes during the day I would develop indigestion from whatever I had eaten,
and it would just sit there in my gut, and I eventually would throw it up. I learned a few ways to mitigate that to help
my stomach move things in the right direction and those would work most of the
time, but occasionally I would still get sick.
At some point around here, I was switched from Nexium to
generic Prilosec (Omeprazole) at a dose of 40mg a day, which was eventually
reduced to 20mg a day. My GI specialist,
whom I like very much, told me his goal was to get me off all meds and he
believed it was possible with proper dietary changes, weight loss, and
lifestyle changes. I lost 30lb in 5
years, started exercising more, and did change the way I ate some.
I discovered certain foods just stopped agreeing with
me. The worst was pork or pork products
like sausage. Again, these things came
on very slowly, so slowly that I couldn’t figure out what was causing it.
I now believe the drugs I’m on, over time, have changed my
digestion so that while I am on them I am pretty much not digesting food but
more likely fermenting it. Prilosec and
Nexium are supposed to reduce your stomach acid to less than 10% of your norm. You need stomach acid to digest properly,
therefore no acid, no digestion. Many
studies have now shown serious common deficiencies in B12, calcium, and a
variety of other vitamins or minerals occurring often in people who take PPIs
or H2 inhibitors, for exactly the same reason: you need acid to break down
and/or absorb these things.
This is my backstory.
It is important to me to get this out, especially in light of an
incident in May that really woke me up to my gut problems, how the drugs I’m on
are affecting me, and what I’m deciding to do about it. I will talk about that soon.
I also want to put in a standard disclaimer: this is my
story and my experience. I’m not a
doctor, and my decisions and choices are made by and for me. I talk about them here for informational
purposes only; you are on your own.
No comments:
Post a Comment