Barrett's and Gerd

Hi,

I was diagnosed with Gerd almost 15 years ago and I've had maybe two or three flareups over the years. I'm going in for an endoscopy next week and have been stressing a bit about Barrett's esophagus (cuz that's what I do).

The things that's always seemed strange to me is that I really don't get heartburn. I just have a burning stomach that's kinda there all the time during my flare ups, but most of the time only comes on after I've had too much coffee or some other thing I shouldn't be doing.

Also, when I get reflux, which is almost every time I eat regardless of flareups, it's not the common acidic/bitter taste that most people talk about. It's basically just the food that I've just eaten coming up. It doesn't burn.

So those two things always seemed strange to me. No heartburn (which I understand is no too uncommon), and the non-burning, non-bitter, reflux.

Since Barrett's is associated with acid coming up, I wonder if that's a big danger given my symptoms?

Any thoughts?

thanks so much in advance,
Michael

[shaz71]

Have you ever had a ph study as this tells them how acidic the reflux is, apparantly some reflux isn't that bad. I think i reflux as i cough a lot especially after just normal drinks and sometimes food, sometimes people think i smoke with the amount of coughing i do but never smoked in my life. My two youngest dd's have been diagnosed with reflux one is nearly 3 and on 20mg of omeprazole the 7yr old as just been diagnosed but they want to do a ph study to see how often and how acidic which i am dreading they never did it on my younger child although they wanted to but they took her off her meds and she went down hill fast 24hrs she was barely concious so they put her on meds and upped them to the higher dose so she has never had a ph study done but like now with a chest infection her reflux as played up and has made her worse over night so i do know she needs the meds as her sleep pattern is every 20mins otherwise and that is bad. Hope your endoscopy goes ok. Sharon x