I’m having problems with acid reflux and it’s limiting my training. I spend time feeling sick and weak and with headaches and some nausea after training/racing but not usually during (plus heart burn). It’s been going on now for about a year and a half and my doctor(s) are still working on the root cause but have been content with using prescription medicine to control it.The problem with medication is during any kind of decent effort in training I experience worse stomach problems with headaches and nausea (but no heart burn!) and I’m not able to digest food while on the move.
It started after I began to train for the half iron distance (may be a coincidence) but I noticed it then after my “long” bike rides. I also began using a carb/protien high calorie drink back then. Now it happens all the time.
Just looking for someone who has a similar story or any ideas that I can use to heal this and get back to training for real. My doctor(s) have good medical advice but don’t really grasp this whole “triathlon” thing and have little to offer to me concerning how to deal with it and train. Thanks!
The problem with riding longer (and swimming longer) is that while in the aerobars your torso is near parallel to the ground and the acid in your digestive tract will hang out around the bottom of your esophagus and cause significant irritation. Medications may work for you, they didn’t for me, not even the prescriptives. I had to identify the foods that caused the issue (still working on that to some extent, but mostly dairy) and I also rely on my accupuncturist and her herbal remedies. She has a set of herbs that absolutely “fix” my symptoms within 15 minutes. I love her.
Perhaps you should consider whether the headaches and nausea are related to the reflux. It sounds a lot like the symptoms of dehydration or glycogen depletion.
In my own case, certain flavors of gatorade will bring symptoms on. Track what you drank and ate during the sessions.
Full strength Gatorade is on my “do not touch while working out list.” I was trying to race with it when my symtpoms were gradually getting worse until I thought I was having a heart attack, it was bronchial spasms brought on by the reflux.
I’ve had these issues and have spent the last six months working on them. I’ve pretty much got it licked.
For starters, I did learn that I’m lactose intolerant. Cutting out the dairy helped me in many, many ways.
Initially, my doc put me on a prescription called Aciphex. It’s awesome stuff. It fixed me up. But it’s VERY expensive. I heard that Prilosec OTC was a very similar kind of thing and I switched to that. It was good, but not as good as the Aciphex. Finally, I decided I didn’t want to just keep taking drugs. My wife is really into herbal stuff and came home from the health food store with a product called FloraMore. It promotes growth of beneficial digestive bacteria and it’s an acidopholus (sp?). I take a couple of those a day and don’t have any problems anymore.
Hope this helps some.
Bob C.
I’ve always had reflux issues, and when I train really hard (especially running), it’s worse. I’ve found a couple of things really help:
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I got a prescription for Nexium/Prevacid – both do the trick. I initially had to take one every day for about 6 months; now I only have to take one on mornings I plan to go really hard (or after nights of spicy food).
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Eliminate alcohol & caffeine from your diet. (THIS INCLUDES MORNING COFFEE!) While difficult, I found eliminating coffee in the mornings was the single, most helpful thing I’ve done for my reflux problems. I had to switch to decaf for a while, because I just enjoy the taste of coffee more than the effects of the caffeine.
Hope this helps.
I stay away from caffeine (1 coke at lunch is enough to keep me up 2-3 extra hours at night!) and I don’t drink so I have those 2 taken care of =)
I’ll have to check out Floramore. I’ve already been on nexium,prilosec (this was the worst for digestion I was puking in races), Aciphex and now Protonix which is the first to actually stop the heartburn.
fiddlesandbikes what did the spasms feel like excatly? I’m not a doctor but bronchial sounds like lungs?
Thanks for all the info guys!!
It felt like a heart attack without the numb fingers. Like someone hit you really hard square in the middle of the chest and then wouldnt let you breathe. Scared the hell outta me. Both times.
I have this problem too sometimes. Gatorade is the worst!
You might try incorporating more alkaline foods, and fewer acidic foods, into your diet. Unfortunately, a lot of processed foods (including sports bars) are highly acidic. So are some unexpected items such as hard cheeses, rolled oats, and fish.
Alkaline foods include most fruits and vegetables.
If you have the book “Going Long,” it talks about this on pages 194-195.
I take a Zantac pretty much before every swim and run. I use Hammer products for nutrition ( Gel & Perpeteum) and they seem to digest well. I don’t do coffee anymore or much dairy and cut most products containing gluten out. 
I’ve struggled with hearburn/reflux for 4+'s years and am finally going in for an upper endoscopy soon, just to make sure I haven’t caused any damage. Sound fun huh?
Good luck!
I have had acid-reflux for years, and an upper endoscopy had revealed that I had Barrett’s Esophagus. The doctor told me that I was extremely young to have this condition (I was diagnosed at age 30). We have found that medications don’t really work all that well, so I was persuaded to get the anti-reflux surgery known as the Nissen Fundoplication (Google it to get a better description). I would not give this operation rave reviews, as it seemed to work for approximately six months, and then the symptoms started to reappear. Mostly, I was never a big heartburn sufferer, but I would often get lots of burping.
I have found that most of my burping symptoms happen during the swim. I definitely agree that you should avoid coffee or orange juice (not that you would normally be drinking these things during a triathlon). It is very hard to figure out which kinds of food to eat more (or less) of to minimize the burping and/or other reflux symptoms.
I’m now on Nexium and having maybe just a little bit of improvement, but so far I have found that neither medication nor surgery has been a long-term success. I may double up my daily dose to 80 mg/day.
The Nissen isn’t for everyone. It can cause you to change your eating and training habits for over a month and people do end up back on meds a lot of the time. If you have had return of your symptoms so soon then I hope you returned to your Surgeon or GI doc for reeval. If the wrap slips then you may have return of the symptoms. (I assume you are having your Barretts followed with EGDs.) If you wrap has slipped or is loose you may benifit from a reoperation by a Surgeon who has experience with reoperative laprascopic fundoplications. The first case is an advanced case a reoperation is for VARSITY Surgeons.
I’ve also had spasm episodes, but they were esophogeal, not pulmonary. I haven’t heard of lung spasms from acid reflux before now. My esophogeal spasms felt so much like a heart attack that I headed for the hospital. Leading up to that, I was thinking that I was having lots of little arrythmias and if you look at threads on this website relating to arrythmias, you’ll see where I’ve posted in many of them. I thought that’s what was going on. I was quite relieved to learn what was going on and, since I had no clue about it, it was easy to make some corrections to my diet that have helped a lot.
But those spasms are quite uncomfortable and scary. They mimic a heart attack very precisely … including numbness up in the jaw region and the feeling of crushing weight on your chest. Initially, they may be short little episodes like an arrythmia. But ultimately you can have a larger event where the pain sets in and lasts for several days … right in the sternum area.
When my episode happened that caused me to rush to the ER, I had just finished reworking the front end of my bike for a much lower and more aggressive position. It was December and I just dashed out on it for a 30-miler. When I got home, I dashed off to the ER.
Bob C.