The best advice I can give you is to try to treat yourself well and remember, in time, it will get better. I had a difficult time and yes, it did effect me emotionally, physically and mentally. However, with a lot of TLC I am in a totally different place now than I was when I started out with what I thought was "just" gastritis.

Hang in there, try to have courage and most of all no matter what remember you have support and friends who care.

I read somewhere a way to break up the mucous in the chest is to drink pineapple juice, then lay on a bed, face down, with your upper torso hanging off the side and cough it up into a trashcan. But due to the gastritis, maybe the juice isnt a good idea. I think you can do the same thing with a hot watterbottle on the chest. Another method, you could try is to get a bowel of hot, steaming water, place your face ubove the bowl, put a towel over your head to trap the steam, then inhale the hot steam through your nose and out your mouth. You probably need to keep your immune system up. Eating oranges are out of the question, so some vitamin C tablets, Zinc tablets, and multivitamins are probably your best choice. I hope you get well soon!

Hi Jackie well I have a facial sauna and I put that on with a drop of tea tree in it. Ive spent two days off and on it. Im trying to keep warm as its very cold and snow outside. I have had some pineapple juice funnily enough. Ive a heating pad,electric one but I need to find it out. Its horrible when it goes onto the chest. How are you now? I bet we are all fed up of winter too.

Oh no, personally I LOVE winter and cold seasons. I live in Southern California in the desert, in a rinky-dink town called Blythe. Seriously one of the hottest spots in the world. Its the place where you break down in between LA and Phoenix. It can and usually gets up to 120 degrees (F) in the summer. (In Celsius I think that's 48 degrees...?) It rains about 5-10 days in a year total, and never snows. Sometimes we get crazy freak monsoon storms, that bring hail, but that's only happened twice in my lifetime living here. So yeah, I would move to the UK in a HEARTBEAT! It's so green and rainy over there, heheh.

And since you ask, I'm doing okay. so-so. Healing from surgery has got me very sore and tired. I take 2-4 hour naps every day AND sleep from 8pm-7am. Low grade fevers, but the doctor said that's normal when healing...so, i've just been taking it easy.

Btw, the best thing to do, is when you have that gunk in your chest, try to cough it up and spit it out, so you get it out of your body. And Keep away from dairy products, because they tend to make more mucous.

My fibromyalgia and other neuro problems, as I've mentioned somewhere before, seem to kick up the gastritis.
Yes--one battle is quite enough. The good news is that I'm slowly finding I'm getting more 'good' days more frequently.
Best of luck and prayers for all!

Thanks for your help Jackie. It sounds very hot where you are,I couldn't cope with that. Ive never been to America the only view of it I get is in films. The weather varies so much here. We could do with a warm drier summer. One year we had a bit of a drought and it didn't rain for weeks. I remember it as my brother had an allotment and the water was scarse. Im glad you are healing and able to take it easy. Ive been in the house not doing much because of my chest. Ive been in the bath with aromatherapy stuff which is good. Ive got more soreness on the chest than gunk now so its improving.

I cope with other illnesses and it makes the gastritis worse at times. What I have is already enough, I don't need more!

I'm also dealing with IBS which actually is more of an issue for me than the gastritis. I watch my diet to suit both issues. My first thought when eating is always the gastritis. If a new food is safe it is then a matter of working out how much of it the IBS can tolerate. I'm also lactose intolerant but that causes me no issues and that diagnosis actually opened up milk to me again broadening my food options. I drink LF milk. My intolerance is low so I'm fairly lucky.