Ivermectin worked for me, my son and my wife. And when my wife took it it had a very surprising upside. You see my wife has had severe acid reflux. We even had to tip our bed so it was not flat. She has been rotating through various pills for this for like 10 years. It sometimes gets so bad that food gets stuck and she cant swallow due to the swelling and throat inflammation. She has eaten a truck load of antiacids and tons of prescription pills.
After taking the ivermectin when she was very sick from covid/flu she has not had acid reflux since. Its been a month and its gone. Not reduced but gone. This is the first time in over 10 years where she is not being tortured daily by it.
The funny thing is that she knew I was taking tons of ivermectin, my son took it, but she fought me on taking it until she was very sick. Its almost like she hates to admit that I was right and the acid reflux is a super bonus.
I have chronic reflux, and have to use a large wedge in the bed to prop me up. There are several reasons for reflux...the most common being a corruption of the esophageal opening in the diaphragm, known as a hiatal hernia. A more uncommon cause of reflux is a heliobacter pylori infection in the stomach. That would make sense if the ivermectin cured the reflux, by wiping out the infection.
Another is actually too little stomach acid. Betaine HCL with Pepsin can usually turn it around.
I have had horrible GERD for decades, I even had surgery for hiatal hernia when I was younger. Sleeping in a bed has not been an option, even with the head of the bed raised by any of the neat tricks people use. I have been sleeping in a recliner for nearly 3 decades so that I can stay more upright to minimize the GERD to a point where it's livable.
Here's what I found a couple of years ago through many hours of internet research: The LES (lower esophageal sphincter, the muscle that separates the esophagus from the stomach) is supposed to close when you have food in the stomach being digested to keep the acid and food from flowing backwards up into the esophagus (GERD). Until a few years ago, nobody knew what caused the LES to open and close, but now they have figured it out. It is controlled by the acidity of your stomach. In order to be stimulated to close, the pH in your stomach needs to be 2.0 or LOWER (extremely acidic), maybe 2.5 at the absolute highest for some people. So by taking medications that stop your stomach from producing acid, you are doing the WORST POSSIBLE THING YOU CAN DO by making your stomach less acidic and raising the pH of your stomach above that 2.0-2.5 threshold so that the sphincter remains open and allows reflux. In spite of this, every doctor I have gone to in the last 5 years has still tried to bully me back on to the pills (I quit taking them after well over 20 years once I found out the truth). My reflux is much more under control since I stopped taking acid blockers.
Even worse? The FDA added a warning to proton pump inhibitors several years ago (which I never heard about until my research) which says that you should not take them for more than 3 consecutive weeks, and should not take them for more than 5 weeks out of each calendar year because of several very serious side effects that they can cause, some of which can be permanent (like damaging the nerves that control your digestive system, possibly forcing you onto a gastric feeding tube for the rest of your life). In spite of this warning from the FDA, the first thing done for GERD patients by every single doctor I know of is to prescribe these pills to be taken 365 days a year for the rest of their lives. If you say no, many of them will try to bully you into changing your mind. DON'T DO IT!
Would apple cider vinegar work for the ph problem ? Asking because my son has a problem swallowing food. I seen him go through 2 large glasses of tea while he was eating dinner. He is 40 & has had this swallowing problem for years.
If he has GERD, many people say ACV can help, but it didn't work for me. Swallowing problems can be for a whole lot of other reasons though. The medical term is dysphagia if you want to research it.
It’s such a shame.
PPIs cure my acid reflux. When I stop taking them I get bad heart burn. How do I get off the PPIs??
Keep in mind that I am NOT a doctor, everything I am telling people here comes from my own personal decades of experience and my own research.
PPIs don't cure reflux, they treat a symptom and they do it poorly.
PPIs reduce the amount of acid in your stomach with the idea that less acid in the stomach means less acid that can reflux and cause heartburn. The problem is that less acid causes the LES to stay open all the time, so the remaining acid has nothing to stop it from passing back up into your esophagus. And because you have less acid to digest your food, your food stays in your stomach a lot longer, giving more time for reflux to happen.
A much better option is to have the proper amount of acid and the proper pH in your stomach, which will cause the LES to close when it is supposed to (assuming it isn't damaged somehow), and will digest your food in a normal amount of time so it can leave your stomach into your small intestine. In order to do this, you have to stop taking all acid blockers, so understand that before you decide to proceed or not.
There is a huge problem when you stop taking PPIs after you've taken them for years, and that is rebound heartburn. Basically when you stop taking them your stomach will not just go back to producing the normal amount of acid, it will produce way too much acid for possibly a few weeks before it gradually returns to normal. That is why the recommendation for stopping PPIs is to NOT stop cold turkey, but to wean yourself off of them slowly. For example, for the first week or two, take 3/4 of each pill, then for a week or two take 1/2 of each pill, then for another week or two take 1/4 of each pill, then stop. This will make the rebound effect much less severe, but it may not completely eliminate it. Personally, I was in a hurry so I did 1/2 pill for a week and then stopped. Everybody is different, so do what works for you but err on the side of doing it more slowly.
Personally, the only reason I can see for taking PPIs or any kind of daily acid blocker is if you have some kind of nerve damage or some other medical issue that causes the LES to be non-functional so that reducing acid is the only option remaining.
I had gastric bypass for weight, but Instant cure for GERD.. I have genetics for esophageal cancer. This should be a standard optional treatment.