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That title sounds like a JRPG.
Anyway, I had a scratchy throat and an itchy dry cough for the past few months, along with severe postnasal drip. I thought it was desert dust, pollution, moldy vent ducts at my workplace, but the doctor seemed to think it was acid reflux irritating my throat at night. What a dummy, I thought. It's allergies or something.
WRONG. SHE WASNT THE DUMMY. *I* WAS THE DUMMY.
Okay, she's kind of a dummy sometimes, because she said I wasn't sick and could go back to work and refused to write me a sick leave, and then I literally tested positive for COVID the next day and shoved the positive test in her face.
Anyway, she wasn't a dummy about this thing. Turns out I did have acid reflux, and I started noticing it more and more -- and not just when I overgorged during my weekly restaurant date with wifey, but even if I had just a protein shake.
Okay, so now I know what the problem is, easy to fix, right?
WRONG. You got acid reflux? Too bad, it's a lifelong problem and you can just not drink alcohol, coffee, fuckin tea or even fucking THINK about enjoying anything in your mouth. For the rest of your life.
Acid reflux, it turns out, is caused by your lower esophagus being a weak-ass bitch that's so atrophied that it can barely hold a little stomach soup out of your throat. Since it's an involuntary muscle that's supposed to contract when you swallow food, if it atrophied over time, you can never really build it back up.
...Right?
WRONG.
I did my own research and there's a semi-academic paper that's really more of an extremely detailed anecdote but a guy who figured out how to train this muscle. It was such an obscure study that I can't even find it again. But basically, he said that he had severe acid reflux, to a point that he had to sleep with a wedge to position his throat higher than his stomach. Basically, he started eating his breakfast and dinner with his throat lower than his stomach, figuring that forcing his esophagus to work against gravity would train that involuntary muscle and cure his acid reflux.
Welp, it worked for him, and it worked for me. I'd position my body on my bed, place my dinner on the floor, plank my lower body on the bed, and eat from the plate on the floor, with my elbows and forearms balancing me. The first time I did it, I almost barfed my sausage and egg McMuffin, but I can upside-down swallow my breakfast easily now. I'm still not 100%, but my postnasal drip is gone, my cough is gone, and I no longer feel my stomach acid in my throat whenever I bend over at the gym... And I've only been doing it once a day (if that) for a week.
tl;dr: acid reflux? go bat-mode while gnoshing
Anyway, I had a scratchy throat and an itchy dry cough for the past few months, along with severe postnasal drip. I thought it was desert dust, pollution, moldy vent ducts at my workplace, but the doctor seemed to think it was acid reflux irritating my throat at night. What a dummy, I thought. It's allergies or something.
WRONG. SHE WASNT THE DUMMY. *I* WAS THE DUMMY.
Okay, she's kind of a dummy sometimes, because she said I wasn't sick and could go back to work and refused to write me a sick leave, and then I literally tested positive for COVID the next day and shoved the positive test in her face.
Anyway, she wasn't a dummy about this thing. Turns out I did have acid reflux, and I started noticing it more and more -- and not just when I overgorged during my weekly restaurant date with wifey, but even if I had just a protein shake.
Okay, so now I know what the problem is, easy to fix, right?
WRONG. You got acid reflux? Too bad, it's a lifelong problem and you can just not drink alcohol, coffee, fuckin tea or even fucking THINK about enjoying anything in your mouth. For the rest of your life.
Acid reflux, it turns out, is caused by your lower esophagus being a weak-ass bitch that's so atrophied that it can barely hold a little stomach soup out of your throat. Since it's an involuntary muscle that's supposed to contract when you swallow food, if it atrophied over time, you can never really build it back up.
...Right?
WRONG.
I did my own research and there's a semi-academic paper that's really more of an extremely detailed anecdote but a guy who figured out how to train this muscle. It was such an obscure study that I can't even find it again. But basically, he said that he had severe acid reflux, to a point that he had to sleep with a wedge to position his throat higher than his stomach. Basically, he started eating his breakfast and dinner with his throat lower than his stomach, figuring that forcing his esophagus to work against gravity would train that involuntary muscle and cure his acid reflux.
Welp, it worked for him, and it worked for me. I'd position my body on my bed, place my dinner on the floor, plank my lower body on the bed, and eat from the plate on the floor, with my elbows and forearms balancing me. The first time I did it, I almost barfed my sausage and egg McMuffin, but I can upside-down swallow my breakfast easily now. I'm still not 100%, but my postnasal drip is gone, my cough is gone, and I no longer feel my stomach acid in my throat whenever I bend over at the gym... And I've only been doing it once a day (if that) for a week.
tl;dr: acid reflux? go bat-mode while gnoshing
