I've mentioned before that I have had chronic, intense heartburn, for the better part of a year now. I'm only about 15 pounds heavier than I ought to be, so I think its mostly just an age thing. I despise the thought of being dependent on zantac or similar daily heartburn meds, just to be able to eat without feeling pain. So I sleuthed out the root causes of my heartburn and eliminated them from my diet. The sleuthing was the easy part. It turns out that it is was simply the usual suspects, alcohol, caffeine and dairy. The really hard part was quitting all of those things (strangely, I found caffeine to be more difficult to let go of than alcohol). I've gone almost three weeks now and the only hearburn I've felt has all been correlated with mild dehydration.
Now I'm not making any promises to let go of any of these things permanently. I can still take small doses of dairy, and I like having a drink when a social scene calls for it. I don't mind having to take an occasional zantac before going out, and as long as I keep the dairy low I think I'll be OK. It seems that the caffeine was the worst culprit anyway, I can't even have decaf coffee or tea because even those things had enough caffeine to give me raging heartburn. I've also started jogging and eating less, just to get rid of those 15 extra pounds, just for good measure.
Lifestyle changes are really fucking difficult.
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