How I Healed My Gastritis and Esophagitis Naturally: My Journey and Tips

Health & Wellness
1

When I was diagnosed with mild gastritis (but no H. pylori) and esophagitis, I scoured the internet looking for guidance on how to heal. However, I couldn’t find many success stories or detailed accounts of people who had fully recovered and how they did it. So, I decided to share my own journey once I had healed. If you’ve cured yourself from gastritis, I’d love to hear your experience too.

A common question I get is, “How long does it take to heal?” Initially, I was prescribed Dexilant for a month, but I didn’t see much improvement. After a month, I continued taking the Dexilant but also started a low-acid diet at the same time. Within 2-3 days, I began to feel much better. After two months on Dexilant and one month on the diet, I felt completely well. But then I made the mistake of stopping the Dexilant cold turkey, which led to a return of severe pain and acidity. In hindsight, I wish I had tapered off the medication slowly, as my stomach clearly wasn’t strong enough to handle the sudden withdrawal. I also regret not taking the Dexilant for a bit longer to fully heal my stomach lining before stopping. I was just anxious about the potential long-term side effects of the medication, which now seems unreasonable.

So, there I was, back at square one with constant stomach pain and acidity, day and night, and even more intense discomfort related to my esophagitis. I was hesitant to go back on Dexilant, so I decided to try a natural approach to healing. What follows is what worked for me, and I made steady progress over the course of about two months. By the end of those two months, I was symptom-free: no more stomach pain, no excess acid, I could sleep again, and I felt like a new, healthier person (and even lost a few pounds in the process). After two months of following this approach, I felt my stomach was strong enough to handle a less restrictive diet, but I continued with a modified version for another month.

THE CURE:

Most of what I did is based on two books that I found incredibly helpful:

  1. “Dropping Acid: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure” by Jamie Koufman
    This book formed the foundation of my diet. The only points I disagree with are regarding dairy (which I eliminated, as I found it increases stomach acid) and certain ingredients like ginger, manuka honey, and aloe vera, which I found irritating or too acidic. Additionally, she doesn’t mention salt, but I noticed an improvement when I reduced my salt intake, as it can irritate the stomach lining.

  2. “Ulcer Free! Nature’s Safe & Effective Remedy for Ulcers” by G. Halpern
    While this book is focused on ulcers, the remedies and supplements it recommends worked for my gastritis as well. I used slippery elm (not mentioned in the book but recommended by others), DGL licorice for stomach pain (it helps coat the stomach lining), Zinc-Carnosine (which reduces inflammation and protects the stomach lining — I noticed a significant improvement with this, especially for acid production at night), and cabbage juice (which finished off my recovery — within two days, my nighttime stomach pain was gone). I’ll go into more detail on the supplements below.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

  • Mastic gum: Though often recommended for H. pylori (which I didn’t have), it caused more stomach pain for me.
  • Prelief: While it neutralizes acid in food and the stomach, it caused constipation.
  • Tums: It worked well for about 45 minutes, but then caused a rebound effect with increased stomach acid.
  • Manuka honey: I found it too acidic (pH of 4), and it also contains tea tree oil, which may have been an irritant for me.
  • Aloe Vera: Too acidic (also around pH 4) and didn’t provide any relief.
  • Ginger: It was too irritating for my stomach, and I didn’t feel it helped.
  • Probiotics: They helped with digestion but didn’t really address the stomach pain or acidity.
  • Zantac: Effective for reducing acid, but it made me feel dizzy and extremely tired.
  • PPIs: Though they worked well for reducing acidity and pain while I was on them, stopping them abruptly caused a rebound effect. PPIs also lower stomach acid long-term, which can lead to other issues like calcium and B12 absorption problems or increased risk of bacterial infections.

I hope my experience can offer some guidance to others dealing with gastritis and esophagitis. It wasn’t a quick fix, but the natural approach worked for me in the end, and I’m now symptom-free. If anyone has additional tips or has had similar experiences, I’d love to hear from you.

2

NICE!!!

Follow-up:

I haven’t had an endoscopy or colonoscopy yet. Honestly, part of the reason is the old joke: “The operation was a success, but the patient died.” I’ve been able to rely on non-invasive tests, like checking for blood in stools (which was negative), elastase (fine), ova and parasites, including giardia (none detected), and I think even a stool culture. In the beginning, I thought small bowel overgrowth might be an issue, but I wasn’t willing to do the breath test—it seems barbaric and has a low accuracy rate. From what I’ve read, a simple blood test for folic acid is just as good a predictor (elevations can suggest SIBO), and mine was 19, with the upper limit of normal being 20 (though most tests are meant to check for deficiencies).

For a while, going off dairy helped, as I mentioned before. But now, even though I’ve been dairy-free for over a year, the symptoms have come back, and worse than before.

As for the Valtrex I started recently, it seems to have triggered a new issue—gastritis, maybe an ulcer. One interesting thing I found on this list is that fat isn’t great for the stomach lining, and I agree. But what’s worse is that anything with omega-3, like the flax oil I was using to swallow my crushed pills, actually makes it worse. Omega-3s inhibit prostaglandins (which reduce inflammation), but prostaglandins are actually important for maintaining a healthy stomach mucosal lining.

Another thing I wanted to mention about testing—since it’s a huge challenge for me due to other autoimmune conditions—doing a test feels like a major investment of time and energy (weeks to months of recovery, and autoimmune flare-ups after tests). And even if I get results, the conventional advice often isn’t practical for me. For example, if they find I have an ulcer, they’ll just recommend PPIs, but I can’t take those. If they find a wide-open LES, the advice will likely be to take PPIs again.

For me, the main reason to do invasive tests would be to check for cancer—though there’s currently no blood test to replace that—but for now, I’ve made the decision to risk the possibility of cancer rather than undergo testing. I can’t think of anything else they might uncover that would change my treatment plan. I have a great doctor in another state (I’m in the US, sorry about that—it’s just that the US medical system is much more simplified compared to the UK), and he’s willing to try things empirically, but even his suggestions—like speeding up motility to get things moving through my gut—don’t seem likely to help at this point.

So right now, I’m kind of stuck, just watching and waiting. As I mentioned before, the few foods I can eat (see my earlier reply) are low in vitamins and calories, so I’m starting to worry about malnutrition. That might get me before the ulcer bleeds, or some other complication happens.

Just trying to hang in there.