Gastritis Support Group
Gastritis is a medical term for inflammation of the lining of the stomach. It means that white blood cells move into the wall of the stomach as a response to some type of injury. Gastritis has many underlying causes, from infection with the bacterium H. pylori, bile reflux, or excessive consumption of alcohol or certain foods or drugs like aspirin.
Can folks take a quick moment and type up in here what the typically eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Just some examples if its too long. As well as some snack ideas you do!
To get back on topic currently my typical meals are as follows:
Breakfast
Porridge made with water with chopped dates & maple syrup.
Or
Puffed Rice with Soy milk & chopped dates
Lunch
Rice with steamed veg (eg, spinach, carrots, squash). Sometimes with scrambled eggs, avocado or cottage cheese.
Or
Baked potato with small amount cheese
Dinner:
Potatoes, Sweet potato or rice with cooked veg & chicken or fish
Snacks:
Dates, Macadamia nuts (well chewed!), rice cakes, melon
Drinks:
Water or Rooibos tea
Other things:
Occasionally I will also have biscuits, cakes, flapjacks, bread, pasta, noodles, cheese, ham, custard. Sometimes salad (cucumber, celery, carrots, lettuce, black olives, plain cooked beetroot (not pickled)).
I avoid the following:
Most fruit (too acidic), sweetcorn, peas, beans, (fibre), tomatoes, onion, garlic, fizzy drinks, juice, coffee, tea, alcohol, honey, jam/jelly, mustard, pickles, spicy food... & loads of other stuff I'll recall later!
When I have a bad flare-up or ulcers I stick to mainly rice, sweet potatoes, oatmeal. Also used to have lots of bananas (not now due to IBS).
As I mentioned before, my philosophy is about avoiding acid & eating foods with high pH. I also try & have plenty of soluble fibre which soothes both the gastritis & IBS. I struggle with insoluble fibre.
Also I read that carbs provoke least stomach acid, fat provokes bit more & protein provokes biggest production of stomach acid. With this in mind I always make sure I eat small amounts of fat & protein with plenty of carbs.
eg, Protein (meat) on it's own gives me lots of pain whereas ok if have small amount with lots of potatoes! Also an avocado eaten alone hurts my tum, but ok if mixed with plenty of rice.
However the good news is that duodenal ulceration means highly unlikely to be on the "cancer pathway".
H pylori in the upper portion of the stomach is more likely to cause low stomach acid issues & stomach ulcers (rather than duodenal).
I am very interested in what you wrote about ppi weakening/loosening the LES. I suspect this happened to me as my LES was not mentioned or noticed the first time I had an endoscopy, but it was loose the second time (after approx 2 years of ppi's). I assumed it was damaged from non-stop burping!
I don't weigh food etc because I cheat enough on my diet to not worry about calories & I'm not underweight anymore. It is definitely the ppi which allows me to "push my dietary luck" sometimes which is good in some ways, but definitely a false sense of security!
What is weird is that I felt really good two months ago after a regimen of low acid foods/acidophilus/pepzin GI until I overate and had tons of fried food and yogurt and many more meals + salt etc.....tried to eat normally i guess. It surprises me you all have all these symptoms with PPIs and mild gastritis, yet i managed to get better with just pepzin GI and low acid foods. If I took those PPIs i'm sure my symptoms would be completely gone but at this point it's not worth the side effect for me (loose LES/no sleep from acid) so I'll probably go with pepcid and worst case scenario zantac but fortunately I am getting better again /pepzin gi with this diet except it's really slow because I eat a lot of meals (too skinny) If I ate three times a day the recovery would be faster in my case.
I know of someone who had h pylori developed "EROSIVE ATHROPHIC GASTRITIS" and had regurgitation so Bad after the aftermath he puked blood and food yet after 2 years he got 100 percent better he took antiacids for 6 months though.
What about Pepzin GL? Do you take that?
I have I guess mild gastritis due to anxiety/worry.
Tested last spring for H.Pylori and was neg.
Yeah when i started eating normally i stopped taking pepzin GI, i guess that contributed to my downfall. Now I don't know what to do I was so close to getting better one mistake and it's all over....all the hard work gone...i'm scared of not being able to lay down/sleep with antiacids.
I'm at a point now of not really knowing what ongoing "symptoms" (like burping) are just side effects of Zantac & Nexium! Equally I have IBS & scarring (from ulcers) in my duodenum & my Consultant mentioned visceral hypersensitivity there. Also he thinks the chronic antral gastritis can't ever be "cured". Of course symptoms can be minimised with medication & diet, but I'm not expecting to ever "heal" from this. What I mean is once you've had gastritis or ulcers I think it will always need to be carefully managed in some way... eg, no coffee or coke ever! I might be wrong though... I guess it depends on what was the cause & whereabouts in the stomach & what cells are affected.
I don't take Pepzin GI at the moment. I tried it a few years ago & it had no effects. However everyone on this forum raves about it so perhaps another attempt is needed!
The guy who had athrophic gastritis has "atrophic" gastritis for life as you know it is pretty much a destroyed stomach for life and your endoscopy will always show all the erosions and athrophic stomach yet he manages to eat/drink whatever he wants he was on the h pylori forum. As for me I don't mind eating bland for life but i'm just mentioning him as an example.
Don't believe your consultant. A good way to know if your GI doctor is good or bad is if he WARNS you about PPIs and puts you on Histamine blockers first. Mine didn't , he messed me up, he didn't even tell me to wean off slowly had I done that I would have avoid a weakened LES and the acid rebound I suffered before.
If I have to take antiacid I will make sure to slowly wean off of it this time.
Your LES can gain back it's strength if you do the weanin slowly (train it like a muscle) I read in some forums even after 2 years of PPIs they managed to get off of it and cure their heartburns with diet but everyone is not the same though, PPIs might not be dangerous for most but for me it really is :S so maybe youll be fine with them some even need it for life to avoid cancer.
Occasionally cauliflower, broccoli or parsnip, but these are not quite right for me.
The worst for me are beans, peas & sweetcorn.