If you keep a food diary, marking down everything you eat, with a place to comment a couple hours after eating, you can often discover the food or foods which cause the problems, Often it is one of your prescription medicines which bring on the GERD. It was for me. Soon as I quit using that med, the GERD went away. I really did not want a ppi, because that had to have been what caused my husband to get pernicious anemia. It affects your stomach lining. He got very fatigued and never recovered from that fatigue, no matter what we did.