These are my thoughts & there may be other factors... but in my mind the restoration of a damaged stomach lining is an ongoing uphill battle because of the acidic conditions & enzymes like pepsin that are produced in the stomach. Also just general chemical & mechanical irritation from food.

It's like having a wound on your arm that you're trying to heal... except every single day you're pouring on acid, aggressive enzymes & rubbing in food & drink.

So as quickly as the mucosa repairs itself... something is always there to compromise it again.

I think we control what we can - we suppress our gastric acid with meds to minimise irritation & Pepsin activation. We follow a bland, low acid diet. We coat our linings with things like slippery elm... But eradicating every single potential irritant is impossible, so the battle goes on & on... 1 step forwards, 2 steps back.

Also in some cases, certain cells may be permanently damaged in the stomach so they produce excess acid making the battle even harder. Or perhaps the mucus producing cells are damaged?

I'm actually really interested in this topic if anyone else has more info on it. I'm interested in the fact that white blood cells have moved into the lining which give the inflammation - like the body is attacking itself. How do you get those white blood cells out?

My experience is that GI drs are mostly clueless for cases like ours where gastritis causes prolonged symptoms despite a careful diet and medication. If it isn't cured by a PPI in a few weeks they are like fish out of water.

Smile.. I was wondering the same thing you are thinking about the cells! No surprise there!

I wondered why 2 years after a mild (? I do wonder how they come up with the mild definition??) short episode of gastritis I got it again and it was way more mild but it was still there. I am sure the stomach works very hard to heal itself. So I questioned the same thing myself. What is getting damaged. Is it the lining or the cells or is there some nerve issue there as well?

I dont know.

Do you want to research that one???

Also goodenos.. Whatever you do. Make sure you take the road that will heal this issue as quickly as possible. That is the key to achieving the best outcome possible with gastritis. Treat it effectively now! Dont allow the inflammation to continue!

No, somebody else can research all the white blood cells stuff.

Any takers?! :-)

I will check it out when I get a chance.

What I say applies to my heart maybe for gastritis too. Ihad chronic inflammation in the heart maybe i still do but the tests dont show it i dont have symptoms as long as I don't trigger the inflammation back up, i get arrhtymia chest pain, etc. My triggers? anything that sets off the inmune system to go wild: weather,mood,some chemicals (h2blockers) and even some foods. I spoke to an specialist about this a long time ago he said the key was to wipe out the inflammation he liked to say "nip it into the bud" so that the body forgets the fact that it think there's a foreign "organ" in your body "the inflamed one" and the inflammation doesn't come back when you make your inmune system go wild.

I am assuming it is the same for some cases of chronic gastritis...his treatment for the heart inflammation was nip the inflammation into the bud then taper off all medicines, then go back up if the inflammation comes back , and come down again when it calms down, until its gone with 0 medicines.

I read about a guy with a damaged stomach from HP "athrophic gastritis" he is in the HP forums. He is in japan (salty food) eats w/e he wants, I am assuming he "nipped" the inflammation into the bud and he no longer needs to worry about "triggering" the immune system. So I am hoping the same thing happens with us at some point, remove the cause, triggers and nip the inflammation into the bud for a while then we might be a lot better than we are and we wouldn't need antiacids.

The inmune system right now is very alert of the stomach is my guess, the more inflammed it is, the easier it is for it to attack it inflame it more, so if you throw some triggers, it will blow up from the acid+the inmune system. Of course this is for some cases of gastritis, i think it's my case too as i was feeling really good without PPI or anything at all eating tons of stuff i cant now for a few months, no heartburn, no gerd, no nothing. Now I am so bad I don't know if its possible to go back to that state....hopefully that train hasn't left the station yet.

Thanks for the responses folks. My assumption was that the mucosa layer that protects the stomach is eroded leaving the stomach lining exposed so even when the inflammation is reduced through diet/ppi's etc., as soon as we eat the "wrong" thing, the stomach immediately becomes inflamed. I guess this will continue if or until we have re-built the mucosa layer? I could be wrong....