My GERD is Cured! Low-carb Hits the Mark

It's a good day for paying your bills

And it's a good day for curing your ills

So take a deep breath and throw away the pills

'Cause it's a good day from mornin' til night

A low-carb diet has cured me of GERD! Thanks to the work of Dr. Norm Robillard, author of Heartburn Cured, I no longer have acid reflux--and I don't have to avoid "trigger foods" like onions, caffeine, chocolate (in the form of baking cocoa), mint, tomatoes and fat.

This is a big change from the Body-for-Life program I was on just a few months ago. Body-for-Life involves eating (among other things) six small servings of "authorized" carbs like whole-wheat bread, pasta, fruit, beans, brown rice and winter squash per day. Now I mostly eat meat, eggs, nuts and non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and green beans.

Low-carb diets defy just about every official dietary guideline out there. How often do you hear "eat plenty of healthy whole grains," "drink milk" and "eat plenty of fruits and vegetables"? Grains, milk and fruit are high-carb foods. What's the long-term result of such a diet?

One of my relatives grew up eating biscuits, having gravy at every meal, and potatoes every night and continued the high-carb theme through her adult life. She has been obese over half her life, even though I always observed her to eat in moderation. She has type 2 diabetes. Her GERD is as bad as mine was, even though she takes a proton pump inhibitor. She's suffered from a number of other health problems.

To use a local historical example for contrast, the Plains Indians traditionally ate bison, wild game, and native plants. My educated guess is that they ate mostly meat. Plants here on the Colorado plains are dormant six months out of the year. Summers are hot and dry and fruits are small and only briefly in season. But bison, antelope, rabbit and other game were plentiful. According to a study done at Ohio State University,

Equestrian Indian tribes on the American Plains in the late 1800s were the tallest people in the world, suggesting that they were surprisingly well-nourished given disease and their lifestyle, a new study found.

Average height is a good way of measuring health in populations...especially nutritional status, as determined by diet minus claims on the diet made by work and disease.

...the Plains Indians ate a varied diet that included a variety of native plants, as well as buffalo and other game that typically roamed the Great Plains...

I know these facts don't prove that a high-carb diet is bad. After all, my relative's husband eats far more starchy, sugary carbs than she does and is in better health. (Part of the reason for his health is that he takes a lot of medications.) And I have a slim, healthy friend in her 50s who can frequently eat pasta without gaining weight. Nevertheless, I've been encouraging this member of my family to avoid starchy, sugary carbs. She finds that when she avoids them, her blood glucose level stays down and her stomach acid stays where it belongs. It only takes a little bit of bagel, a few bites of apple sauce, a bowl of oatmeal, to send her blood glucose sky-high and bring up the stomach acid.

This tells me that for some people (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Robillard), eating more than a little carbohydrate is like putting gasoline in a diesel engine.