Lower esophageal sphincter (LES) strengthening exercises leading to significant symptom reduction

[pinkgem1]

(i'm going to copy paste my reply to something else on here as a separate post in case it can help others)

My dad's chronic, years-long night-time acid reflux went away after doing the LES strengthening exercises I taught him back in Dec. He's had a couple times where it kind of came back, but it quickly went away again with avoiding triggers and doing the exercises again. However, I looked at other studies and accounts, and water is safer to be used in my opinion, and that's what me and him have used.

My case of reflux has been more severe and needing a more multifaceted approach and I've had some symptomatic relapses so I'm back to the drawing board and have to be very careful for a 12 week timeframe (til around early May), but I HAVE definitely found benefit in doing the water drinking LES exercises when I wake up (must be fasting ie. no food/drink beforehand for hours), and even more so with preceding it with dry swallowing (only saliva) with my lower half resting upwards (i have a steep incline pillow so i basically lay on it, stomach above my esophagus) for 5-15min (I go on my phone so I lose track of time (also I'm now debating as time goes on, that I could increase that maximum time), and then I follow up with water exercises- propping myself up on my elbow, taking a sip of water, swallowing, then quickly reverting to a bridge position (no pillow used), and i do 10-15 sips. Also, the head of my bed is inclined with bricks under the leg posts lol; truly last resort method for me so I could sleep, as pillows didn't help me and everytime I slept flat even on my left side, the acid would just wash back up my throat.

Among other things, my diet is very bland and non-dairy and non-red meat, and non a lot of things. I take my pantoprazole and wait 40min before having a big breakfast, then later when I'm hungry (never when i'm not physically hungry) I eat a decently sized lunch as well, then later on a small dinner. After a meal and with a meal, I have veryyyyy minimal water. The idea being, the less water, the better what little acid there is in the stomach can do its job at digesting (otherwise if you drink more water, digestion could take longer so the stomach could produce more acid, which will not bode well for you). I stay sitting/upright for at least 1hr after a meal, if not 1.5hr. And I also chew my food soooo well, especially compared to in the past when i'd just inhale stuff, and this also helped me a lot. But anyway, the exercises are really lifechanging though, if there are no personal contraindications for you

I should also note, I've only had this reflux issue since last year. But I'm optimistic I can cure mine, as I've barely had any symptoms in 3 weeks.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pr...

reddit.com/r/GERD/comments/...

Mentions dry swallowing - where I got the idea from - but moreso is about the swallowing rather than strengthening the sphincter itself:

link.springer.com/article/1...