1. < Digestive Health

Why does GERD cause chest pain?

Posted by baguette @baguette, Feb 16 7:35pm

Sometimes I get chest pains while walking quickly or doing abdominal exercises. Is that actual reflux (I don't feel it as reflux) or, if you have a hiatal hernia, the stomach popping thru the hernia? Or another reason? (I already know that abdominal exercises can cause issues with GERD. I am trying to modify them to accommodate my condition). TIA!

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Digestive Health Support Group.

baguette | @baguette | Feb 18 9:38am

For anyone following this thread, I may have a workaround that works for me:

This morning, I ate about a dozen almonds and drank a lot of water about an hour before doing abdominal exercises. That was my breakfast. Immediately before doing the exercises I drank Gaviscon Advance. This routine, for this day at least, worked. No chest pain. I think I have to keep my stomach fairly empty while having some food-derived energy and hydration and plug up the stomach before starting the activity. If I start later in the day, I probably should refrain from eating for three hours. The experiment continues .......

REPLY
samcal9977zz | @samcal9977zz | Feb 18 4:47pm
In reply to @baguette "Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into the yoga breathing exercises. They sound similar to..." + (show)
@baguette

Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into the yoga breathing exercises. They sound similar to the Iqoro exercises I already do but still worth researching and trying.

I use ENTs Aviv and Koufman for advice and the low acid, low fat whole food diet has worked fairly well, as long as I stick to it. Koufman has a decent web site with a lot of information, they both have books on GERD and diet/lifestyle approaches. There is a FB group that has a lot of low acid recipes based on Aviv's work.

The Doctor Yourself link you offered had a suggestion of eating fresh pineapple for its digestive qualities. That's a no go for those of us on a low acid diet if anyone else looks into that. The eating almonds to calm a reflux attack was something I haven't tried before. Maybe almonds before abdominal exercises will keep the chest pain at bay. I will find out!

BTW, another non-drug option to keep chest pains away during exercising is chewing sugarless gum. That has worked for me in all aspects except the abdominal exercises.

Jump to this post

Pranayama, or breathing exercises have helped me a great deal.

When Hatha Yoga "met" the West, it met the exercise ideas of the West.

By that, I mean that Western exercise is sometimes based as a kind of competition to excel at the greatest levels.

It's a gung ho approach that is not really what Yoga is about.

Because of that, when engaging with breathing exercises, the West has some idea to do these harder and harder and harder breathing exercises. Not only is that not necessary, if you get into breath locks and such, you can cause yourself some real problems. So, don't do the most extreme stuff.

Back in India, those kind of exercises are only meant for the kind of "professional athletes" of Hatha Yoga. They are really not meant for everyone. And they are really not meant for folks fighting medical problems.

Here is a version of breathing exercises from Dr. Andrew Weil, MD. Even these can be a bit much...you can do a lower repetition that will help just fine.
https://www.drweil.com/videos-features/videos/breathing-exercises-4-7-8-breath/

REPLY
View MoreView Less
Please sign in or register to post a reply.