From: Rusty
Date: 02 Feb 2005
Time: 22:07:12
Remote Name: 67.169.150.103
Rep, I appreciate your comments. Cure may have been the wrong choice of words. By cure I meant the burning and uncomfortable feeling from the "episode" was reduced with the use of Raw honey. I was actually looking for a remedy for when acid did in fact get in my throat up to my adams apple. No one seemed to have any suggestions. Background: I had started having acid reflux a couple of years back. The frequency was 1x per 3 months or so, maybe furhter out than that. I had a physical as I do every year and told the doctor that my mom had successfully beat colon cancer the year before and asked if I should have a colonoscopy. He suggested I should since I was 45 yrs old at the time. So upon going through the meeting with the doctor I also explained to him about the acid problem. He suggested they do an endoscopy as well. The results for this procedure showed everything was fine except for a very small and shallow hiatel hernia. He did explain that this would not get better and could possible get worse over time. He suggested I take a generic OTC acid reducer like Zantac. This seemed to have worked. I don't take it all the time but listen to my body and take as appropriate. A couple of times over the year I may have an "episode" like the one the other day. It was a very small amount of acid but enough to do damage and make me look for something to lessen the burning uncomfortable feeling this causes. I found that honey helped reduce this burn and in fact helped in the healing process of the esophogus. I understand that the esophogus is not as strong as the stomach lining and that damage can be done by eating hard things such as crackers, potato chips, pretzels etc....that can scratch the esophogus walls as it constricted to pull the food into the stomach. The LES may also have been inflammed and damaged from eating habits and thus the idea of the RAW honey would help heal the scratches and may help in reducing the inflammation to the LES. I am not against medications but want to look at all alternatives. I am very unhappy that every doctor has a different opinion when it comes to treatment and prescribing meds....you can talk to 10 Dr's and get 10 different prescriptions depending on what pharmaceutical company is pushing that week. This is my frustration. The news of Vioxx and Celebrex has done little to boost my confidence in our "system". There does seem to be some natural remedies that may also help. I am exploring all of these to determine which is the right path for me.
A couple of years ago I also suffered from panic attacks. This also coincided with my acid reflux getting to be a weekly occurance, prompting the Dr visit. I explained that I had tried Xenadrine (diet supplement) for about 6 weeks but didn't like the way it made me feel so I stopped it. He wanted to put me on Paxil and told me I needed to commit to taking this for 12 months. I said, "you've got to be kidding me?" "I'm not taking Paxil, for something that just came upon me. I want to figure out what contributed to this feeling and wrok it out. Of course at the time I had no idea how I was going to do this and the panic would come at night and I had no "safe" place. It was an ugly view into a dark room that I do not want to visist again in my life. But it did give me perspective of what others are going through fighting mental illness like this. I've not had another panic attack for three years now with plenty of opportunities to do so, since one of my major feas had been public speaking. I have since been on live TV three times with no preparation, handled my brothers sudden death (Hypertrophic dialated cardio myophathy) a few months ago and even gave the eulogy for some 25 minutes in front of 450 people. Company spokesperson for high technology firm. Now prior to my panic attacks and finally overcoming this on my own without medication, I would not have been able to do any of this. In fact I would run from a situation like these. But now I am able to handle these situations purely from getting stronger from overcoming the problem. I know your response is to make sure people are seeking medical attention and they should do this to insure the severity of their problems but can you also share non medical ideas or direction along with your canned "seek medical attention" too. It seems alot of people are at wits end in this site on problems not satisfied by the medical community. Or maybe there is another site you can refer people to who are looking for other options to investigate after exhausting medical advice.