Chatper 2: This Wasn’t Just Acid Reflux — It Was a Gut Health Wake-Up Call

Welcome back to my gut healing story. If you’re just joining me, this blog is part of an unfolding series where I’m sharing my gut-healing journey — one chapter at a time. In Part 1, I introduced the onset of my illness: how I went from suddenly sick to symptom-free in 19 months, and why I believe God guided me step by step. Today in Part 2, I’m zooming in on one of the very first major milestones of that journey — a turning point that gave me my first glimpse of hope. I’ll walk you through what happened, what I learned, and why it mattered. My goal is to share both the process and the perspective, so you can be encouraged — or maybe even find your own breadcrumb to follow.

Eighteen months ago, if you’d asked me if I had an unhealthy gut, I would have said no. After all, my first symptoms had nothing to do with my stomach. I had a persistent cough I couldn’t shake. It had been going on for 4–5 months. It sounded deep and congested, like it was coming from my lungs. It wasn’t until December that it really started intruding into my everyday life. I noticed that I was short of breath a lot, too. I would get woozy walking my dog around the farm. Kurt finally encouraged me to see a doctor.

Shortly after the New Year, I visited my Primary Care Physician to address my coughing and shortness of breath. But strangely, he told me my lungs were clear. Still, I was prescribed antibiotics in case of an infection and given a full wellness check. Some of my lab numbers were “off” so that set off a series of other tests. My anxiety level ratcheted up. What was wrong with me?…

The antibiotic didn’t help my cough. A few days later, I ended up in the ER, because I couldn’t breathe and felt chest pain. I feared I was having a heart attack. But tests ruled that out, and I was sent home.

Still, I struggled to breathe.

At my next visit, my doctor changed his diagnosis: ‘You have acid reflux.’ It explained my recent new sore throat, the globus (constant lump in my throat), and the chest pain. I was actually relieved to get a diagnosis. Finally—an answer.

He handed me an info sheet about reflux and prescribed me a PPI medicine — Prilosec. ‘You’ll feel better in a few weeks,’ he said. But after five days on the medication, I felt worse. I lost my appetite. I didn’t want to eat anything. My belly bloated like I was three months pregnant. I had no energy. I lost 15 pounds, and I still couldn’t breathe. (That’s what scared me the most). It dawned on me that maybe the Prilosec itself was part of the problem, so I stopped taking it.

The only time I could breathe was when I took a round of steroids – which I did, again. This time I went to an urgent care center and basically told the doctor to give them to me. But once they ran out 10 days later, I was right back to my old symptomatic self.

My doctor was trying to figure it out. He put me through a lot of tests. (Let’s just say I maxed out my deductible by the end of March).

I was sent to see a lung specialist. I was sent to a heart doctor for a stress test. I was referred to a GI doctor for my intestinal problems. I booked an appointment with an ear/nose/throat specialist, because I was now losing my voice and my throat was so sore.

Unfortunately, many of these appointments were 3 months out.  I was worried I wouldn’t last that long, and so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I began to feel like I was just a number in the system, being cycled around to every specialist known to man. I wasn’t confident that my doctors actually knew what was wrong with me, or that they’d be able to help me. 

I remember there was a key turning point moment in February, when I decided I would not just “roll over” and act like a victim. I was not going to just “sit around and wait” 3-5 months for my next appointment. Instead, I would investigate. I would educate myself and do what I could “in the meantime” to find an alternative.

I believed that someone else out there had what I had, and figured it out.

I just had to find them.

So I began scouring the internet for help. Mostly I was trying to find someone with medical authority who could explain my shortness of breath — was acid reflux causing it?…. And in March of 2024, I eventually did.

I ran across a blog by a Dr. Jamie Koufman. She was a retired doctor, specializing in Laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR), often referred to as silent reflux. LPR is when reflux comes up into the esophagus, and begins to inflame the lining of the entire trachea. The resulting inflammation in the windpipe makes it feel like you can’t breathe. She was my first “breadcrumb” in the journey to self-healing. I read her entire blog, learned a LOT about silent reflux, bought all her books. And I did a phone consult with her one Sunday morning in March. She diagnosed me with silent reflux and encouraged me to try using her “Low Acid Diet” which she claimed would heal me.

Dr. Koufman gave me hope. She was the first medical professional who linked my shortness of breath to acid reflux. She claimed it was one of the most common symptoms associated with LPR (silent reflux) among the thousands of patients she had worked with. Now I knew why I couldn’t breathe! And she gave me permission to challenge the medical establishment and fight for my own health. I remember how she ended our call: “You can do this! Don’t give up! It will take a few months, but it will work!” she said.

Before I describe her protocol, I want to tell you that her remedy was not the thing that finally healed me, but it did start the process. It helped me heal my esophagus, but I also think it caused some problems downstream later.

Her Reflux Detox treatment in a nutshell involved a few key elements.

1. No more processed food or sugar ever again. Period. I had to eat only from her list of low-acid foods. Foods (even “healthy” ones) that were mildly acidic were not allowed to travel down my esophagus, for fear they would trigger more inflammation.
2. Stop taking Prilosec ASAP and take an H2 blocker instead. Prilosec is a PPI (proton pump inhibitor). It shuts down the proton pump in your stomach to help manage reflux, but it also shuts down proton pumps in other places in your body — like the kidneys, lysosomes, brain, nerves, and mitochondria energy cells. That’s a bad thing for you long-term. Instead she put me on an H2 Blocker medicine twice a day — Pepcid — to lower the acid levels. I took this for many months. Looking back now, I realize this probably created other digestive problems like my increased bloating. 
3. Drink alkaline water (pH of 9.5). I had to buy a special Brita pitcher that turned all my water’s pH to 9.5 or above. (Normal tap water has a pH of 6.0). When treating LPR, you’re trying to keep anything below 5.0 pH from going down the esophagus, because it will potentially react to the stomach acid that may be in the throat due to the reflux. Alkaline water is a key part of treating LPR. However, I think there may have been a negative consequence to my long-term use, namely contributing to a low-acid stomach environment that ultimately made it take longer for me to digest food, leading to fermentation and bloating in my gut.
4. I had to sleep sitting up. Silent reflux does its destructive work at night when you are lying flat. By sleeping upright I would keep more damage from happening. This meant moving my “bed” to the LazyBoy for 3 months. Boy, that was rough on so many levels. Not only is it hard to sleep in a chair, so i was always tired. But I really missed my husband. Reflux is so isolating on so many levels, and this was just icing on the cake. (Update: I am now back in my own bed, sleeping without an incline).
5. No more eating after 5 PM. At the time, I was simply told that I needed to have an empty stomach when I went to bed if I wanted to heal my LPR. It wasn’t until later that I also learned how 18 hour fasting windows are helpful for your gut for other reasons. 
6. I took an algineate to help manage the pain of the heartburn. Algineates are a natural compound derived from seaweed that forms a kind of “raft” when it comes into contact with stomach acid. This floating barrier sits on top of the stomach contents and helps keep acid and food from washing back up into the esophagus. For me, it acted like a protective shield: when I took it after meals, I noticed less burning, less throat irritation, and fewer reflux episodes. It didn’t fix the root cause of my gut issues, but it gave me relief and breathing room so I could focus on the deeper healing work without constantly battling symptoms.

Armed with a plan, I went cold turkey into this Acid-Free way of life. I believed I could do it.

I completely changed my diet.

I leaned into her promise and I decided to try her Reflux Detox treatment. I gave up all sugar and processed foods overnight, and began eating from a very restricted, “blah” ingredient list. I’m pretty sure I went into sugar withdrawal and a depression. I felt horrible for about a week. I craved starches and sugary foods. I missed my old foods. I was angry that my family could still eat them. I could feel the addiction to sugar. But I stuck it out, because I was scared. I was losing weight, and I was wasting away. I was desperate to try anything.

I bought all new foods for the pantry. One of the hardest parts about it was that I still had to make breakfast and dinner for the family. So I was making a “blah” meal for me, and a “yummy,” forbidden meal for my family. Talk about torture.

Suddenly, my whole world revolved around my food and my feeding times. I became hyper-vigilant about food and drink. I had specific times I had to take my meds, eat, digest, drink that alkaline water, take more meds, rinse and repeat. In the early days, I could barely motivate to eat 1/4 cup of food. I had no appetite. It would take me an hour to force it down. And I had to get 2000 calories in by 5 PM. And when you’re eating nothing but whole foods like vegetables, (because you can’t digest protein easily), this is hard to do. I was fixated on calorie counting. I could NOT lose any more weight. I bought a scale for the first time in my life, to make sure I wasn’t losing weight.

After a few weeks, my appetite returned. Praise God! I finally had the desire to eat again. That gave me hope that something was healing. Now I needed to figure out what my culprit foods were that were causing the reflux. So I kept a meticulous food journal to catalog everything I was eating. I kept track of my symptoms every day, too. I studied it to try and connect the dots.

I couldn’t see the pattern yet.

Symptoms begin to improve.

After two weeks of this low acid diet, my cough disappeared. This felt like progress, and I realized that my diet had something to do with it. This is what kept me going – hope that it would continue to slowly improve until one day – it was gone! By May, my weight eventually stabilized at 130 lbs. By June, I could breathe again. My energy was coming back. 

I still had that globus in my throat all day — except while I was eating. The bloating after mealtime was still a problem too. In fact, it was getting worse. I looked like I was 3 months pregnant, and it would last for about 4 hours after my meals. That “reflux” pressure pushing up on my sphincter was non-stop. I would get relief for a few seconds every time I burped, and then I would get that feeling of “I need to burp” again.

This felt like a clue: something was making air in my stomach – like it was fermenting…. But why?

I was frustrated. Why wasn’t this going away? I was doing all the right things. Other people in Dr. Koufman’s facebook group had success. How long would it take for me? I kept at it, thinking it was just a matter of time. “Maybe next month” was my constant battle cry.

In the meantime, I finally met with my GI doctor for a consult. We scheduled an endoscopy and colonoscopy for the end of December… that was 5 months away (in case you’re keeping track). More waiting?!… I was getting more and more cynical about my medical team. My PPC scheduled another fun test — a “barium swallow.” This is where you drink a fizzy nuclear drink that makes you burp and then they rotate you upside down while taking images of that liquid in your esophagus. The goal is to identify if you have a hiatal hernia — or some other anatomical abnormality that might be causing the reflux.

I didn’t.

What the hell was wrong with me?!

Another clue…

This is the part of my story where God sent me another breadcrumb. It was in the form of a church friend – Jayne Klett. She and I went for a walk one day, and she shared her own healing story with me around her digestive issues, and how she was taking a digestive aid every day to help her. The next day, I found this blue bottle of digestive enzymes on my porch – her “miracle cure” that had helped her resolve her digestive issues. I looked at the ingredients, and because it had “citric acid” in it, I told myself that Dr. Koufman would probably not allow it. So I left it alone.

God tried again. A few weeks later, during a farm event, one of my CSA members, Morgan Mainous, was listening to my story. She is a doula, trained in alternative health, so she had some authority when it came to medical advice. She said, “Have you considered taking digestive enzymes?…”

There it was again! The digestive enzyme prompt.

That night, I found the bottle of pills Jayne had left me on my porch, and I took 3 of them with my meal. 

No bloating with my dinner.

Thunderstruck, I felt a surge of hope. This was a break-through. For the next 3 days, I took those digestive enzymes with every meal, and my food digested more quickly. My bloating was less, and my reflux pressure was majorly decreased. 

This is the moment when something clicked….

When I realized, “Why does my body need digestive enzymes? Is something wrong with my digestive system?”

What are digestive enzymes anyway? Where do they come from?

What if I’m treating the wrong thing?

What if the acid reflux is a symptom of something else?…

BOOM!

It’s not just reflux. Your gut is messed up.

My friends, this may seem obvious to you, but it was not for me.

It had never occurred to me that something could be wrong with my whole “digestive system!” I was just looking at the stomach and esophageal sphincter! In truth, I didn’t even remember how the digestive system was connected. (Remember that chapter in high school biology?)

So I began researching anatomy books. I learned that the digestive process actually begins the moment you start thinking about eating. The mouth, the tongue, the esophagus, the stomach, the small and large intestine, the gall bladder, liver, pancreas, kidney, vagus nerve, and yes – even your appendix – they’re all part of “the system.”  

I started seeing the term “gut health” on Google and social media, and an older gentleman with funny glasses.  A new door had opened – new territory to explore.

And It led me to the next chapter of my healing story: Dr. Ruscio and Dr. Gundry.

We’ll talk about that chapter in my next blogpost…. (This one is already long enough!)

There were a few key take-aways for me from this chapter of my healing. Sometimes these take-aways don’t appear until hindsight. I’ll share them below:

1. Be your own health advocate. Do not give your power away. YOU get to decide. YOU can bring something to the table. DO your research. Educate yourself about your options, because the system is set up to make us follow, not question.

At first, I didn’t even question my PCP. I just went right along and popped the pill he gave me. I figured there was a cure for that, and I would be a “good patient” and take my medicine, and it would work like it always has in the past, and everything would be fine again.

Until it didn’t work.

I could have just stayed small and let the “experts” shuffle me around. I could have stayed small and let my fear overwhelm me.

But what if they don’t know everything? What if there are natural remedies that actually work — remedies that aren’t tied to the world of “Big Pharma”?There is no one-size-fits-all in the world of health. Be aware of this as you go through your own journey. 

• Do not give away all your power to your medical experts and doctors. They should be your advocates. They work for YOU. Stand up for yourself. 
• Do not assume they know it all. Be proactive about your health solutions. Explore alternatives you want to explore.
• Do not assume that there isn’t someone else out there who could have another piece of the puzzle. (Remember, my friends Jayne and Morgan, who steered me to digestive enzymes! My doctors never mentioned those to me!)

I had a moment this past summer, when I was buying medicine at my local Rite-Aid. I was standing at the checkout counter, and I look around the cash register, surrounded by sugar, candy, chips, pop, and all kinds of addicting processed foods — foods that I used to crave. I was struck by the irony that my own pharmacy was selling the very poison that was making us all sick. It was surreal.

I got angry with a righteous anger. Something about this was messed up.

I was going to prove that there is another way. Nobody was going to make me feel small or powerless in my health journey ever again.

2. Be careful who you listen to. Avoid all-or-nothing thinking.

Don’t become so devoted to your current medical guru, that you can’t question or consider another opinion as possible for someone else.

Healing isn’t always one-size-fits-all, and no one has the full picture. I am constantly watching out for this now.

I got so caught up in my first medical expert’s advice… I took Dr. Kaufman’s word as Gospel. I refused to listen to ANYTHING that didn’t align with her method! She had to be right, because if she wasn’t, then that meant I had made a bad decision to trust her.

Learn from my example… In hindsight, I can now see that although some of her advice was really helpful… Some of it delayed me from seeing the path to healing. I was eventually ready to accept that the Low Acid Diet/protocol no longer served me. It had gotten me as far as it could take me.

Moral of the story: Know when it’s time to move on and find your next breadcrumb. Don’t worry: the Universe is always in motion. Something else will come along to point you to your next step. As you make progress, things shift, and you may be able to explore options that weren’t possible at first. 

For example, in the first month of my healing my LPR, I could not eat anything with apple cider vinegar. That acid would have burned my inflamed esophagus going down, and kept it from healing. Alkaline water therapy and low acid foods were a temporary solution for a temporary problem. But once my esophagus healed, I could ease up on the restrictiveness of my diet. Now I drink San Pellegrino “Cokes” every day (with a splash of balsamic vinegar), because vinegar is good for your gut health.

What doesn’t work for you now may work for you later. 

3. Research “digestive enzymes.”

I will write more about these in the weeks to come — don’t worry! But in the meantime, be aware that there are many variations of digestive enzymes. Do your research! (Don’t just start taking them). Some are higher in protease, some have lactase, some are better for fat digestion if you have a very fatty meal. Some have HCL betaine to break down the food. Some can make you feel crampy or nauseous if they’re too strong. So discuss this with your doctor. Here is what I use:

NOW Foods Supplements Plant Enzymes with Lactase, Protease, Papain, and Bromelain (Amazon Affiliate link)

Puritan’s Pride Papaya Enzyme – I included this one, because it’s that blue bottle my friend Jayne gave me. I think it’s an easy entry into the world of digestive enzymes. I still carry these around because they’re easy to chew!

4. Your body is giving you clues right now. Are you paying attention?

Your body will tell you what you need to know. Remember that feeling of reflux I had? I noticed that I felt better when I burped because the pressure would release momentarily.

• That made me ask a good question: “What’s causing the burping?” Answer: Gas.
• Question: what makes gas? Answer: Something is fermenting.
• Question: Why would something be fermenting? Answer: Your food is digesting too slowly.
• Question: So why is my food digesting slowly?…

Ah… now that’s a good question.

Acid reflux isn’t the problem. It’s just a symptom. Start practicing looking at the clues your body is leaving behind. Your symptoms are often a cascade effect. Figure out what caused the dominoes to fall. 

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Next week, you’ll meet one of the three doctors who has helped me cross the finish line. They each taught me some very valuable lessons along the way. If you’re looking for the specific roadmap that finally healed me, it’s coming soon.

I believe in you.

Corinna

Every week, I’ll be sharing a recipe that I’ve used in my journey to healing. In the early months, I was very restricted in what I could eat, to give my gut a chance to rebuild and seal. I went through a lot of sadness, not being able to eat things everyone else was eating. So when I find recipes that make me feel like I am eating “normal” again, it’s empowering. Here’s a recipe for Cole Slaw, that you can mix with shredded cabbage, kohlrabi, or carrots. It uses avocado mayo.

Gut-Friendly Cole Slaw Recipe:

• 1 cup avacado mayo (I use Primal brand)
• 2 Tbls sheep yogurt- optional (Meijer grocery store has this) — sheep’s milk does not contain the A1 casein protein which sets many of us off
• 1 Tbls Swerve (or monkfruit or allulose)
• 1 Tbls lemon juice
• 2 Tbls apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp. Ground pepper
• 1/2 tsp. Sea salt

Whisk sauce together and add to 24 oz shredded Cole slaw mix.

 

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through them—at no extra cost to you.

Want to read more?….

Chapter 1: How I Healed My Gut – The Beginning

Chapter 3: How a Functional Medicine Approach Changed My Trajectory