In a comment on an old post — in which I described how a friend’s acid reflux was greatly alleviated by kombucha — Dave Schulz says he had a similar experience:
My heartburn occurs daily unless a) I stick to a strict diet with no carbs, dairy, or greasy/fatty food, like the Paleo Diet or b) I drink kombucha daily. It’s not always possible to do a), so kombucha has literally been a life saver for me.
Daily kombucha eliminates his heartburn for long periods of time, not just for a few hours after drinking it. Due to the current ban he can no longer get it and his heartburn came back. He got the idea from a friend. Before kombucha, he’d tried many remedies that didn’t work. The three doctors he saw were no help.
On the Mayo Clinic website a doctor says that “until definitive studies quantify the risks and benefits of Kombucha tea, it’s prudent to avoid it.” This is what the Protestant Reformation was about: Speaking directly to God rather than waiting for “definitive studies” by experts that “quantify the risks and benefits”.
Where is the ban on kombucha? Might be worth a post! Sounds ridiculous.
Well, in the case of the Protestant Reformation both parties were essentially speaking into the void, so it made no difference if the experts were right or the reformers. In medicine there is a quantifiable difference between the effects of various treatments. For example, I assume you would agree about the inefficacy of something like homeopathy, which is essentially a belief-based treatment.
About three years ago, my wife developed upper-GI problems, including GERD and sporadic nausea. I started brewing my own kombucha a few months ago because of information I read on this blog. My wife has found that drinking kombucha significantly alleviates (but doesn’t quite eliminate) her GI disturbances. Tums, Prilosec, and other drugs had no effect. Eating soy yogurt also had no effect. Sucking on candied ginger has a moderate effect on reducing nausea.
Alex, sporadic nausea and upper-GI symptoms are often related to gallbladder scarring. Kombucha appears to have some liver effects (from the small amount of alcohol and maybe other things we don’t know about).
Brewing kombucha is very simple if you can get a live scoby, requiring about the same amount of time as making sweet tea, and avoids the ban. I’m brewing some as part of self-experiment. I have autoimmune thyroid disease and I want to see if eating lots (lots!) of fermented foods offers any symptom relief.
Can anyone speculate how kombucha might have this effect on heartburn?
I used to have acid reflux and it ended about a week after starting to drink kombucha. Can’t find GT’s any where in New York so I have started drinking BAO a local brew from the Westerly Market
Steven, you should brew your own. It’s fun and allows you to experiment with various flavors and techniques.
I had a few months of extremely serious heartburn – the acid would migrate upward during the night, which induced throat-spasms that almost suffocated me to death a few times. A year and a half after curing it, I still cough more than I used to.
The doctors didn’t have a clue what to do about the spasms, but they prescribed omeprazole for the heartburn. This eventually stopped the spasms. I didn’t want to take medication long-term, so I experimented with diet and discovered that wheat was primarily responsible, and stopped eating it. Once the problem was 90% gone and I no longer needed medication, I tried eating wheat again and found that it’s seemingly a lottery whether I suffer any acid and how severe the acid is. It doesn’t depend on the amount of wheat consumed. Eating ice cream or drinking milk seems to reduce the symptoms a great deal, but it’s not perfect.
Other things trigger occasional heartburn but nothing so much as wheat. Oats come second. I will try to get my hands on some of this kombucha stuff and see whether it gives me a bit more dietary leeway.
I grew up eating wheat every day… To get this problem just out of the blue – it’s annoying, and I was disappointed to learn how little this sort of thing is understood or treatable.
Seth – something I don’t understand is, how does promoting healthy bacteria in the intestine reduce acid-production prior to that stage, in the stomach?
I have several members in my friends and family circle who have suffered from acid reflux/heartburn. They’ve collectively tried a few different brands and LOVE the BAO tea, hands down above the rest. Unfortunately it’s only available in NYC right now. We buy it by the case to bring back to CT whenever we can make it down there.