Client testimonial for addressing reflux by Joe Quigley, Pittsburgh, PA
For 15 years I have struggled with chronic reflux. I have been to many doctors and specialists and have taken large ongoing doses of H2 blockers and PPI medicine over this period of time. The medicine would work for a while but I would have to keep increasing the dose for it to remain effective. The medicine also produced undesirable side effects. Eventually the medicine did not work well even at large doses.
I had a Linx magnetic device inserted around my esophagus sphincter three years ago. This was very effective in the beginning but then the reflux would return due to scar tissue interfering with the magnet. This scar tissue was treated with a surgical endoscopic inflation of the magnetic band. I had this inflation procedure repeated three times, always helping in the beginning with the reflux always returning. While the surgery and the medicine always helped to control the symptoms, I could never escape the fact that the reflux would always return, for me mostly at night.
I was introduced to the work of Norm Robillard via his book “Fast Track Digestion” and began to follow this diet about one year ago. I noticed a significant improvement in my reflux symptoms on this diet and was able to reduce my use of the reflux medicine. While my reflux was reduced on this diet it would still return occasionally at night.
Four months ago I signed up for the consultation service and started receiving more specific advice from Dr. Norm. With a little tweaking to my diet I made very rapid improvements and have now been two months with zero reflux and zero medication for the first time in 15 years! More important I feel that now for the first time I am understanding the root cause of my reflux and feel that this understanding will be of enormous benefit to managing this condition in the future.
It was the consultation service that made the most improvement for me. The suggestions I received from Dr. Norm were spot on and immediately effective. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have this individual consultation service available. In my case it made a big difference. For anyone suffering from chronic reflux, I would highly recommend this consultation service and the books and theories that Dr. Norm has produced.
Hello Norman,
Could you please tell me your opinion – how it is possible elemental diet to cure sibo when maltodextrin is main source of energy and according to Elaine from breakingtheviciouscycle.com maltodextrin is undigestible and more ferment able than lactose?
Hi Pesho, Here is my current understanding: Maltodextrin used in ED is efficiently digested by brush border enzymes giving it a GI of 100, the same as glucose. Some time ago, someone emailed me some information about another form of maltodextrin that is not easily digestible. I don’t have my notes handy on this at the moment, but this could potentially explain the discrepancy.
Hi Norman,
Thank you for your reply!
I like your theory for jasmine rice but i dont see how it will work for serious cases of sibo – isn’t it true that digesting even amylopectin still needs working pancreas – or lets say that salivary amylase will do its function but then again you still need glucoamylase and alpha-dextrinase – which will probably not work in damaged small intestine and even jasmine rice will remain undigested? If brush border enzymes were working all this sick people should have no problem with sucrose but this does not seems to be the true. So the only safe carb source in the diet remains glucose, dextrose and maybe rice syrup?
Hi Ivan. In every case, lower FP carbs (easier to digest) are better than high FP carbs. But your points are valid and that’s why the trouble-shooting sections indicates that for challenging or persistent symptoms, even the easy-to-digest carbs may need to be restricted for a time. And this also includes glucose. We know that extensive SIBO, potentially reaching the proximal end of the small intestine can even access glucose. That is why glucose can be used to detect SIBO in breath tests.
Also while you’re correct in that brush border enzymes (sucrase in this case) are needed for the breakdown of sucrose, there is also the issue of free fructose uptake which is hampered by needing to use the glut 5 transport protein via facilitated diffusion as opposed to the transport of glucose using more than one transporter and occurring both by facilitated diffusion and “active transport” utilizing ATP.
Can the Fast Tract diet be used as a gastroparesis diet ?
(keeping the fat intake somewhat lower) I eliminated heart burn by tracking
then instead of heartburn have occasional nausea and very slow motility.
Each time I had gone slightly over the 45 for the day.
Now I am wondering if through the years I had a slower motility problem and that was why
I would have heartburn after a big dish of spaghetti. On fast track my big dish days are over.
I am only referring to very mild gastroparesis…not some of the horror stories out there.
Bonjour Dr Robillard,
J’ai acheté votre livre il y a plusieurs mois et j’ai éliminé les ingrédients qui ont un FP plus haut que 8. Je remarque une certaine amélioration. Mais malheureusement je j’ai perdu ma voix. Est-ce que cela pourrait être causé par le reflux gastrique ou par une autre cause? J’apprécierais que vous me donniez votre idée à ce sujet.
J’aime beaucoup votre livre. Merci à l’avance.
Hi Lucein. Hopefully, this Google translation is accurate:
Hello Dr. Robillard,
I bought your book several months ago and I eliminated the ingredients that have an FP higher than 8. I notice some improvement. But unfortunately I lost my voice. Could it be caused by gastric reflux or some other cause? I would appreciate it if you could give me your idea on that. I love your book. Thanks in advance.
It’s not possible to answer this question definitively without more information. In general loss of voice can be due to LPR but there are also other cause such as voice strain, viral infection – cold/flu, etc., and rarely bacterial infection. But LPR does take some time (2-4 months) to respond to diet changes.
Hi Norm, I have been reading your website and your book. I have also been reading ‘Why Stomach Acid is Good for You’ by Jonathan Wright. Although there is many points of agreement in your info, as you would know, the main digression is on how important/relevant stomach acid production is with regard to GERD development and cure.
I have read you article where you dismiss stomach acid levels as an issue for most GERD sufferers, and looked at the studies. It is convincing. When I relook at WSAisGFY’ and reread some of Doctor Wright’s comments then it becomes less clear to me. E.g. “I have found that more than 50 percent of children who come to me with asthma can have their wheezing cured simply by normalizing their stomach acid and properly administering vitamin B12, with no bronchodilators and no corticosteroids.” & “From the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, researchers regularly reported that the number of people with anacidity (total or near total absence of stomach acid), also known as achlorhydria, and low acidity, also called hypochlorhydria, increased with age from a low of about 4 percent at age twenty to as much as 75 percent after age sixty.” & “when we carefully test people over age forty who’re having heartburn, indigestion, and gas, over 90 percent of the time we find inadequate acid (and presumably pepsin) production by the stomach. Hydrochloric acid and pepsin supplementation relieves the symptoms, further proving the point.” & “In cases of mild to moderate heartburn, “acid indigestion,” bloating, and gas, actual testing for stomach acid production at Tahoma Clinic (see page 133) shows that hypochlorhydria (too little acid production) occurs in over 90 percent of thousands tested since 1976. Even in severe cases diagnosed as GERD, actual testing also shows hypochlorhydria in over 90 percent of cases.”