Please do not do surgery until you try this instead.

1. Get off all PPI (Proton Pump Inhibitor) meds like omprezole, pantaprozole, Zantac etc. BUT you must do so gradually because of the rebound effect. Namely, your body, desperately trying to make sufficient acid to metabolize your food, particularly break down proteins, keeps making acid pumps, which the PPIs keep silencing. If you go cold turkey it will be holy hell. I know I have been there. The reason you have to get off PPIs is that they wreck havoc with your capacity to absorb nutrients because they deacidify your stock. Again I have been there. DREADFUL anemia that had to be treated with iron infusions to get me back to just being able to walk a block!

2. The basic "cause" of GERD is NOT excess acid, but insufficient acids for adequate digestion, most particularly protein breakdown into amino acids. Try this "test". Take 2 TBS of apple cider vinegar in half a glass of water after eating. Do you feel better or worse? I bet you will feel better which means, too little acid. SO take digestive bitters (by Gaia (2 dropperfuls in water) before meal. Experiment with Betain HCL Pepsin (Pure puts out qualify product) try 2 before meals, up dose it not kickback) to up to 6 before meal. I generally stopped at 6...still take them before a big meal.

3. Heal your gut lining. Zinc carnosine helped me. And black raspberry powder in water or yogurt for my Barrett's syndrome after years of GERDS.

4. Eat earlier. Most older people's digestion stops naturally earlier. Thus try to eat before 6 pm. If you go to bed early (10 pm) try to make that 5 pm. Lay off all alcohol for now. It makes GERD must worse.

5. If you must take something to relieve pressure, heartburn, try bicarbonate of soda in water. Try to get an aluminum free product.

It worked for me. My father suffered from GERD and hiatal hernia. I thought..hey it's my generic destiny. In my mid-40s...I started vomiting after meals! Hey my mother did that! So again genetic destiny. I started my regime of PPIs under doctor's orders and it never "cured" me and caused all sorts of knock off effects (probably even my breast cancer as a contributory cause)...and most decidedly all sorts of nutritive deficiencies. At 85 I have never felt better. No more GERD even at night. Weeks ago I had a late but light enough (Poke Bowl) meal at 8 pm preceded by 2 Cosmopolitans. Oh may God! The Demon GERD was back. I haven't felt that bad in years. I had to resort to the carb of soda, which worked.

So good luck. It can be done. The underlying problem, generally speaking, is NOT excess acid but inadequate acid to do the job of digestion. I don't know if Western trained docs are just oblivious or what. But their armatarium of PPIs sure don't work. And surgery is way too invasive and irreversible. Let me know if it works.