I have atrophic gastritis diagnosed from endoscopy. As others said, it's not always symptomatic. When there is a flareup, I would feel constant aching pain in my epigastric area, worse after eating. If it really is gastritis, most of the time the pain can be alleviated by taking PPI on empty stomach twice a day. Need to do this for a few weeks. Even after that, sometimes I still get rebound pains when I wean off the meds. Long term use of PPI has been shown to associate with heart disease. So that's a balance I have to strike. My GI said it's very important to manage the symptoms (and not to tough it out). My biopsy also shows intestinal metaplasia. In an acidic environment, it's easier and quicker to develope into gastric cancer. But if you take PPI for a week and still not better, then I would talk to a doctor to work up alternative diagnosis.
hopefully, it is caused by what you consume. Alcohol, spicy food, wheat...eating late. analyze everything you put in your mouth. no sorbitol...
I have gastritis (caused by autoimmune pernicious anaemia) but it's asymptomatic. My mother on the other hand has had VERY painful gastritis (due to bile sneaking into her stomach - bile gastritis). It was by accident actually that she found out betaine HCL with pepsin supplements and digestive enzyme supplements got rid of gastritis pain. She was takes both supplements to prevent severe GERD but the bonus was gastritis pain slowly went away (took a year). The pain comes back with a vengance if she doesn't take the supplements.
Pepsin is a protease (enzyme that digests protein) but also the digestive enzyme supplement contains proteases as well. This is the key ingredient to helping with gastritis pain (if that is what you have).
I found an article on gastritis on the Enzyme Stuff website which explains it...
"there are lots of clinical studies which clearly show that taking proteases significantly speeds up healing of ulcers, gastritis, and wounded tissue. Which looks like you would specifically want proteases with gastritis."