Acid Reflux Alternative Treatment

Q: What alternative medicine claims is that the LES needs a pH of less a 3 in the stomach to close fully. Alternative medicine claims that acid reflux is for many the result of the decline in HCL secretion due to aging or pathology What I think is a higher pH in stomach results in a longer residence time of food in the stomach. I suspect this leads to air swallowing and reflux. Can anyone help me solve this problem?

A:In most cases of GERD the problem isn't excess acid. Even conventional/orthodox medicine says that chronic heartburn is the result of an incompetent lower esophageal sphincter (LES). What alternative medicine claims is that the LES needs a pH of less a 3 in the stomach to close fully. Alternative medicine claims that acid reflux is for many the result of the decline in HCL secretion due to aging or pathology. What I think is a higher pH in stomach results in a longer residence time of food in the stomach. I suspect this leads to air swallowing and reflux. When one is using the PPI drug the reflux is nonacidic therefore it less damaging. Go back and read Howard McCollister caution about alkaline/bile reflux. One does need a pH below 3 for the pepsinogen to be cleaved and activated into pepsin. Indeed, the ideal pH range for pepsin is between 1.5 to 2.0. So do I fully agree with alternative view? Not yet, I'll need more time which why I plan to keep posting to this forum and this thread as a sort of blog. But I do now know that lowering the pH with additional acid is a GREAT HELP. I won't do this if I was bleeding due to an acid damaged esophagus ( been there done that) but since I am in remission it seemed like a reasonable experiment and it sure seems to help. No longer do meals just set in the stomach for hours with the resulting belching and reflux. I am still

starting the night sleeping in an easy chair with the back propped up to 40 degrees from horizontal. I have been finishing the night in a set in the horizontal position the last two nights though I not sure it is safe. Sleeping in a easy-chair as I described, should be the first recommendation every GERD sufferer receives. The standard/conventional recommendation give to GERD sufferers to raise the head of the bed by 8 inches is far far too little to really be an effective help. To make this conventional suggestion is to condemn people to expensive drugs, misery, and worse. It is my goal never to take a PPI drug again. If I have to suppress acid levels, I'll take sucralfate QID