| Re: hiatal hernia---- told that i have this....anyone else??
Yepper. From what I understand, reflux & hernia are a chicken-or-the-egg type of thing. Lots of adults have the HH without symptoms. Doc says my symptoms are caused by the acid reflux, the hernia is nothing. Never had heartburn in my life--used to walk right on by that whole "stomach" aisle in the drugstore until a couple years ago. That bout lasted a couple nasty months, but didn't have serious symptoms since. Now I'm getting over a month-long round, which has finally gotten under control with Prilosec OTC and diet changes.
However, I'm convinced that I feel the hernia more than anything. It's pushing everything up, causing the strangled feeling in the throat and stomach pain, which moves on up to heartburn and tightness in the chest.
Haven't tried Zantac, but for me most antacids never feel like they're making a dent. Seems like a few pieces of candied ginger and a cup of hot water was more settling than way too many Tums, Maalox, etc. Feels like the problem is more mechanical somehow, and a PPI like Prilosec or Nexium, bland diet, cutting out coffee and pop, and TIME are the only things that work to push it all back down again.
I've even seen where some people drink lots of water, then bounce up and down to drop the stomach back in place. I've never mastered that technique, though!
From reading other posts here it seems that I've gotten off lucky, and that there's a really wide range of symptoms. Would guess that a lot of folks with super bad heartburn and LPR don't have the hernia at all. Good luck!
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