(A3eyedfish, your uninformed medical advice could cause someone with a weakened esophagus and a weakened muscle that controls flow of liquid between stomach and esophagus, to throw up violently, possibly leading to suffication.) Your doctor took a blood test to check for a bacteria that is common in people with ulcers. A negative test does not rule out an ulcer, and there is no blood test for acid reflux or GERD. Your doctor should be explaining things like that to you. If you are at the point where your doc is taking blood tests, folk remedies won't cut it. If you take baking soda (which works great, better then tums), take 1/2 teaspoon in a cup of water. Drink as much as you want but never go above 1/2 teaspoon per cup. Trust me, please. Lots of acid + lots of base = lots of heat. Lots of bicarbonate + lots of H+ = lots of gas. Together, = throw up. Besides a bicarbonate solution is a buffer, and adding more baking soda will not increase the effectiveness, but drinking more of the same concentration will. I used to have chronic heartburn. I mean, 7 days a week 24 hours a day, heartburn. Wake up with it, go to bed with it. I was taking 40 mg of prilosec/day for years, going through boxes of baking soda, and bottles of tums. I did all the stuff they told me, diet changes, bricks under the head of your bead, weight lose, and it kept getting worse. I went down the surgery route. Let me tell you my story about getting surgury for chronic heartburn. First, the doctor will need to do some bloodwork. Then, they will need to do a test where they shove a camera down your throat to get a picture of your stomach. (You get a muscle relaxer before this surgury test yay!). Then, the doctor will need to do another test where they shove a thin cord into your stomach from your nose, and take pressure readings and different levels. This is very uncomfortable (especially if the nurse drops the monitor and the cord was almost down your throat to your stomach yanks out really fast, like happened to me.) If the tests confirm the problem, you then get to have surgury. In my case, the surgery went well, except they used a belt to hold me to the op table and the belt crushed a nerve that runs down my leg, leaving me with a periphial Neuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain that is non-responsive to opiate therapy and non-operable). Post-op, they told me to ring for morphine as soon as I felt pain because if I got in bad pain, it would take a lot of morphine to get it under control. So I felt pain, rang, it took them 2 hours to get it for me. This is right after surgury on the mucsle that controls your lungs (Diaphram), so I couldn't yell, because even breathing shallowly caused bad pain. Then I required a huge amount of morphine to regain control of the pain. Next, they fucked up again that very same day, and took 90 minutes to get my morphine. Then I got a morphine IV that would get a herion junkie off, and started hallucinating and having an OBE from the morphine. Well, set and setting are important to having a good trip, my trip was a nightmare. Not one of those bad trips where you realize something important about yourself or have a near death experience or whatever. Just a nightmare. I sort of had a psychotic break from all the morphine, including ideas of reference, seeing faces is everything, and some voices for weeks. I had to stay an extra night in the hospital crazy ward. Then, I had to start taking neurontin for the pain. Well, the neurontin caused chronic insomnia, so I came close to having another break after not sleeping for four days straight. Diphenhydramine worked to get me sleep, but I switched from neurontin to amitryptaline, and that works for the nerve pain, but has bad side effects. Ironically, the reason I had the surgury was so I didn't have to take pills every day. Ohh, and 6 months after the surgury, my heartburn is just as bad is it was the day before I went in. All in all, I have 5 scars from surgury, lingering mental effects from the psychotic break from the morphine (mostly limited to seeing faces in things), heartburn just as bad as before surgury, a chronic nerve condition that is getting worse not better, a medication that prevents me from enjoying my favorite ethnogen, and a cool water bottle I got from the hospital. So, I don't recommend the surgury, but your milage may vary. If you do have heartburn that requires medicine every day, eventually, your stomach acid will dissolve your esophagus, leading to problems like throat cancer, stomach cancer, problems swallowing, and other fun stuff. As your stomach acid dissolves your esophagus, your esophagus gets weaker to further acid, leading to progressively worsening heartburn. Barretts Esophagus or something similar to that.
-------------------- "I am eternally free"
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