Acid Reflux Esophagus

Q: I have the kind of of Reflux that only affects the Upper Esophagus (bad taste in mouth, sinus reactioj). Will putting the head of my bed up 6" help or does this only help for other kinds of reflux. I only ask because it actually seems my reflux goes away when lying down.

A:Actually, there is no such thing as acid reflux that affects only the upper esophagus, since the refluxate has to go by the lower esophagus to get to the upper esophagus. What you probably mean is that your most severe symptoms are in the upper esophagus. The problem is that the refluxate may be causing damage to the lower esophagus even though you are not having symptoms located there. That damage may include stricture, or pre-cancerous Barrett's esophagus. To make matters even worse, successfully treating the symptoms by suppressing the acid reflux with drugs such as Nexium or Tagamet may not affect the risk of esophageal cancer since those drugs will still allow alkaline reflux, which may very well continue the pre-cancerous damage to the lower esophagus.

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