Not doing well with Zantac, I replaced it with Pepcid. I took one 10 mg pill last night and awoke with racing heart and elevated blood pressure. Before I take another pill I'm wondering if anyone experienced side effects while taking Pepcid. One thing I will say in its favor though......no acid problem in the middle of the night. But yikes....blood pressure soared. Can anyone relate?

I've used Pepcid (10mg) and thought it was very effective however it made me jittery. Not sure if it is the same thing as you are describing but I had a hard time relaxing unless I took it early on in the day.

Zantac and Pepsid are in a class of drugs called H-2 blockers. They are very good for dealing with occasional heartburn, but they are far too weak to exclusively treat chronic heartburn/GERD or LPR.

To treat chronic acid reflux conditions, you need a PPI (a proton-pump inhibitor). There are Nexium, Aciphex, Prilosec, Prevacid and Protonix.

Prilosec is available over the counter, the others are prescription-only. Prilosec just came off its patent first, which is why its OTC now. Nexium is the most recent drug, and the most structurally different.

Aswander,
How is Nexium structurally different from the rest of the PPI's. Does it stop more acid than the other ones?

I haven't taken organic chem yet - so bear with me. My doctor says that Nexium is an isomer of another PPI and that makes the difference. There was a discussion 6 months ago on this board where someone gave a very good explanation about the difference. But the take home message is that Nexium is significantly different than the other PPIs. This difference hasn't been very noticeable for people with GERD, but my doctors say Nexium has become their medecine of choice for their patients with LPR. She says more patients "metabolize" Nexium better than the alternatives.

I started taking otc Prilosec recently for my bothersome heartburn (had an upper GI series done which showed very mild acid reflux), and the Prilosec, after a few days, took care of the heartburn. I need to buy more, though. I hope this continues to work because we won't have medical ins. soon, and I won't be able to afford an Rx heartburn medication.

Good luck with whatever you end up using (whether you stay with the Pepcid or switch to an Rx or something else).

Hoosier