Terre Pruitt's Blog

I wasn’t feeling well, something was bothering me, but I let it go for a while (months).  Finally something else — a new thing — made me go to the doctor.  She told me I had heartburn.  She also said I was congested.  I laughed when she said that because that would be the normal state for an allergy sufferer.  I didn’t believe her regarding the heartburn.  It helped that she ordered some tests.  Which made me feel better.

Because I did not believe her I started looking things up online specifically regarding heartburn.  Before my appointment I looked up my symptoms and basically with that route I had everything from a simple infection to coronary disease.  (Eyes rolling)  So looking at it from the diagnosis to the symptoms I was shocked.

I don’t eat spicy foods.  Ask any one of my Spicy-Is-My-Middle-Name Yelper Friends, they ALL know I don’t do spicy—not even black pepper—at all.  Also, I had never heard of coughing and shortness of breath as being a symptom of heartburn.  Also, I thought heartburn arrived after you ate and left in a few hours, I didn’t know it could last for a week.

I was almost convinced that it was age.  I was disappointed thinking it might be that chronic kind of heartburn.

So I researched. What did I find?  In general there are two types of heartburn, one you get every once awhile (or often)* or there is GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease).  GERD usually occurs because of an actually physiological situation.  Gastroesophageal reflux occurs when the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) — the muscle connecting the esophagus with the stomach can’t do its job of keeping stomach acids from flowing back up.

*(I’m seeing information saying if you have heartburn once a month is is considered mild, once a week moderate, and every day severe.  So to me if you have it, your body is off balance and needs to be kept in balance to not have it at all!)

But I am just talking about heartburn that is NOT actual GERD.  So what are the causes?

Some foods:  onions, peppermint, chocolate, citrus fruits or juices, tomatoes, fried and fatty foods, alcohol, coffee, sugar, legumes, dairy foods, carbonated beverages,spicy foods, black pepper

Practices: smoking, eating large meals, eating before exercises, eating before going to bed

Lifestyle: unhealthy stress

Other things: tight clothes, bending over, obesity

I realized that I was the cause of this.  Totally and completely I take responsibility for the imbalance of acid that was going on in my body.  It was my practices.  Due to my current schedule I always found myself realizing I need to eat and it always ended up right before I worked out.  I would GULP down my coffee in the morning, eat late into the night.  I had just began eating a lot more onions.  Just started eating beans and tomatoes.  I was making my system unbalanced. Well, DUH!  I will also share with you that I was totally stressing myself out over doing my routines.  I wanted to do them perfect so I would stress out over that.  So not the entire idea of Nia.

So needless to say I did not fill my prescription for whatever the doctor prescribed because I can fix this by changing my habits. The video I shared in my last post also helped me realize what was really going on.  It was posted to FB the same week I was learning all of this.  To me that helped a lot.  It reminded me that my body is programmed to be in balance and I—me, my fault, my diet, my habits, my practice, my lifestyle was the thing that was making my body work so hard it could not even manage it.

Thank you for listening to what I learned.  I would love to listen to what you have to say.  Please comment, let me know.