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I had acid reflux for 20 years after the birth of my second son. I lived on Rolaids all that time, but eventually even they wouldn’t keep it away. Baking soda didn’t help either. I finally asked my family doctor for help. He prescribed Nexium, and referred me to a gastroenterologist. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven once I’d started on the medication. The gastro doctor diagnosed with GERD and Barrett’s esophagus without dysplasia. I am required to have a Gastroscopy at least once a year so they can keep an eye on it. Acid Reflux isn’t anything to fool around with since it can develop into cancer if left unchecked.

I had an extremely long 9cm segment of barrets with low grade dysplasia. For context, a typical segment of Barret's is like 2-3cm. My doctor was worried that with my length segment, there was a good chance I could start towards high-grade dyspasia and theyd miss it because they can only biopsy so much when they did my regular scopes. So she put me into a study for a technique called cryo-ablation where they use liquid nitrogen to freeze / kill the barrett's cells. Took them like four treatments to do it all since they can't hit that long a segment in one shot. But thankfully it worked and I'm free of Barrett's / dyspasia. And thanks to nexium I'm free of heartburn too.

I'm pretty open about my situation since it required me to be out of work a lot while these treatments were going on and you'd be surprised how many people say they have chronic reflux and/or Barrett's too. It's a lot. An epidemic almost, that hardly anyone even knows about, even people who have it don't realize how common it is.

Did you know that sleep apnea can create gastric reflux issues? It’s due to constant diaphragm stimulation during sleep because the airway gets obstructed and the body responds to grasp for more air. Sleep apnea is often under diagnosed and under treated but it’s a serious detriment to health issues. For those who sleep alone may not even know they have it.