GERD A Symptom

As a sufferer of GERD (gastrointestinal reflux disease), I've never seen the disease written about accurately.  To begin with, much of the time GERD is a symptom, not a disease.  It's a sign that other things are out of whack with your body and you need to fix them.

There are a lot of people who don't realize they have allergies.  If they do, they don't bother treating them.  What makes you sneezy, sniffly and drippy is histamine.  Histamine produces more acid in your stomach.  The more acid in your stomach, the more likely you're to have heartburn and GERD. That's what led me to start taking the over-the-counter heartburn medications.  One after the other, they all stopped working.  That certainly made me miserable, not wanting to move so that the acid wouldn't slosh into my windpipe.

I discovered that all the medicines I was taking to counter the acid in my stomach were acids such as Ranitidine hydrochloride (Zantac) and omeprazole hydrochloride (Prilosec). Prevacid is in the same pharmacological class as omeprazole, so it might be an acid too.  I think after a while adding more acid to the acid in my stomach was counter-productive.

This situation led me back to my allergies.  When my test results said I was allergic to yeast, I thought it meant candida, or the kind that grew on your body.  No, it was the yeast used in food.  I immediately dropped a lot of food from my diet:  the frozen dinners I was eating because of kitchen problems, bread, English muffins, bagels, doughnuts, and pastry. I discovered a lot of companies sneak yeast into processed food, so the list of those I can eat has shrunk quite a lot.  In addition, yeast is used or created in other foods like alcohol, barley malt, cider, and soy-based Asian flavorings.  I'm also allergic to maple trees, so I can't eat foods sweetened with maple syrup either.  I stopped eating these foods and very quickly started feeling much better.

The situation wasn't resolved completely, though.  Sugar is an acid.  That's why you're supposed to be brushing and flossing your teeth.  I had to cut out sugary foods.  This actually hasn't been very difficult.  I never ate a lot of candy, lost my desire for most cake, didn't have a strong sweet tooth, and tried not to spend money on sweets.  I've had to give up my favorite chocolate-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, though.  Dark chocolate is better for me as straight chocolate than as an embellishment, but I prefer it that way.

The change in diet has helped a great deal.  My heartburn hasn't completely gone away, but I haven't taken anti-acid pills in well over a year.  I have been using Gaviscom tablets but I don't like it because it has aluminum in it.  The nurses have given Mom baking soda in ice cream because her stomach is acidic.  I've been using that in sugar-free smoothies twice or so a week and find that very helpful.  Until I came down with the flu and then a cold, I wasn't using Gaviscom very often, either.  That is a big change.  I have also lost enough weight to got from wearing size 14 jeans to wearing size 12, and even my new jeans aren't as tight as they were when I bought them.

Here is what to think about if you have GERD:

1. Find out if you have any allergies.  If you have allergies, treat them to prevent histamine build-up in your body.  
2. If you have any food allergies , stop eating those foods. The allergic reaction and histamine they produce will produce more acid in your stomach.
3. Stop eating sugary foods because they are acidic and add more acid to your stomach. Bread and bagels aren't necessarily bad for you and you might not have to give them if you don't have my weird allergy.
4. I have trouble with fried foods, so try avoiding them as well.
5. You'll have to eat fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains instead, which is much healthier for you.  Many of the flavors you've been consuming do exist in the real world. 
6. If you buy your food from a local food co-op or farmer's market, it will be better for the local economy as well.
7. This should enable you to stop taking Zantac, Prilosec or Prevacid.
8. Chances are you should lose weight without a lot of effort. 
9. Your teeth will be better and need less care.

Colorful cardigans

I have been thinking about knitting lately.  I have so many other things I need to do first, it's all I can do.  I recently found some nice yarn in nice colors, so I was daydreaming.  Here are some colorful cardigans (in no particular order) I found on Ravelry that would be fun to plan and knit.

38-7 Jacket by Drops Design (dk weight)

Log Cabin Cardigan by Lynn Garrett (worsted weight)

My Comfort Jacket by Kennita Tully

Stash Stripes by Judith Shangold

Color Play Jacket by Fran Jepperson (Aran)

San Francisco Cardigan by The Blue Moose (Aran weight)

Sausalito by Susannah Lewis-O'Dea (worsted weight)

Colorfall Cardigan by Kirsten Hipsky (worsted weight)

An Epic Battle in My Home County

When I decided to celebrate my raise at work, I bought the 5-movie package of Ice Age animation movies and also the movie Epic made by the same studio.  It came out while I was unemployed and I didn't have money to go see it.

A little way into the movie I was amazed to see these scenes come up:

In the county where I grew up, Columbia County in New York State, there is an ornate mansion named Olana built by the painter Frederick Church in the late nineteenth century.  It's a state park and very popular.

If it was ever mentioned in local media that the mansion was being used in a feature cartoon film, I completely missed it.  I enjoyed the movie very much and I think it's kind of cool it takes place in Columbia County, New York. I was hoping to play the movie for my mother.  She would have enjoyed it once.  Now she has advanced dementia and can't handle violent episodes in movies.  

I thought the way the woods folk were represented was very cool.  I don't know why the clothing wasn't adapted for Halloween costumes.  They may be labor intensive.  I'm afraid my short, stout figure doesn't lend itself to the loveliest flowers.