Hi there. Kathy Pirtle’s substitute blog writer Paul Yeager has resurfaced for the 2nd of three days that Kathy Pirtle is away at the Weston A. Price Conference in Chicago!

Today I’d like to write about erosive gerd / acid reflux.

Just how erosive is erosive GERD? Is it really more erosive than nonerosive acid reflux? What defines it as more erosive? Is nonerosive gerd really *completely* nonerosive? Or is one just more erosive than the other? Just how advanced is modern science in making these kinds of distinctions? Well, I was interested in understanding the answers to these questions, so I started searching PubMed for some solid research literature.

Surprisingly like many things in modern science, I found the “most cutting-edge” answer I could find to be puzzlingly full of seemingly circular logic, with hordes of observations seeming to be made based on assumptions with little or no reference material. It surprises me that such studies even make it into PubMed, but then again, how scientific is science? Is science not based fundamentally on observations, or perhaps more often *our perceptions*?

For instance, Sir Isaac Newton and others found the acceleration rate of gravity to be quantifiable as 9.8 meters per second squared. He could throw an apple up into the air 10,000 times and predict with reasonable certainty that it was going to accelerate towards the earth at that rate. But then Einstein came along. And then Niels Bohr. And Schroedinger, etc. They–and then we (by going to space, studying eclipses, etc.)–discovered that that “law” had only been the result of living within the confines of our earth’s gravitational field–it still of course had an application, but it wasn’t *completely true* everywhere, all the time.

And such is HARDLY the case concerning distinctions such as those between erosive gerd and nonerosive gerd–here we’ll find that the conclusion simply completely contradicts the initial assumptions. At least with Newton, he started out with the “hunch” that there was something uniform about gravity and then found out he was pretty much right. Here we start out with the assumption that erosive gerd is more erosive than nonerosive gerd (or better yet that erosive gerd is just plain erosive and nonerosive isn’t) but we seem to find out, well… I won’t spoil it just yet. I’m just going to copy-paste the study I found below:

”

Relevance of ineffective esophageal motility with erosive and nonerosive gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Foroutan M, Doust HM, Jodeiri B, Derakhshan F, Mohaghegh H, Mousapour H, Poursaadati S, Kiarudi MY, Zali M.

Department of Gastroenterology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. swt_f@yahoo.com

INTRODUCTION: Ineffective esophageal motility (IEM) is a frequent finding in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). It is responsible for delayed acid clearance as it affects esophageal emptying and saliva transport. Since erosive GERD is a more severe disease than nonerosive GERD, it may be associated with IEM, which delays esophageal clearance. Objective : We investigated the role of IEM in patients with erosive and nonerosive GERD. METHODS: We enrolled 100 patients with heartburn and a primary diagnosis of GERD referred to the GI motility department of RCGLD of Shahid Beheshti University between January 2002 and January 2005. Based on endoscopic findings, the patients were classified into two groups of erosive GERD and nonerosive GERD. Manometry and 24-hour ambulatory pH-metry was performed in all patients. RESULTS: Seventy-seven patients completed the study: 31 (40.3%) with erosive GERD and 46 (59.7%) with nonerosive GERD. IEM was present in 38.7% of patients with erosive GERD and in 28.3% of those with nonerosive GERD (p=0.18). A low lower esophageal sphincter pressure was present in 45.2% of patients with erosive GERD, and in 45.7% of those with nonerosive GERD (p=0.97). Abnormal acid reflux was present in 32.3% and 41.3% of patients with erosive and nonerosive GERD, respectively (p=0.42). CONCLUSION: There was no difference in the prevalence of IEM between patients with erosive and nonerosive GERD. IEM could be an integral part of GERD and may not always be associated with mucosal injury.
”

Now wait a minute. The study says at the top “Since erosive GERD is a more severe disease than nonerosive GERD, it may be associated with IEM, which delays esophageal clearance.” But WHY is erosive GERD a more severe disease than nonerosive GERD?! The study just assumed that was known right off the bat! And then after making such assumptions, the study actually winds up proving that this IEM (“ineffective esophageal motility”) is actually only a little more than 10% more prevalent in the erosive gerd control group?! So first we have an assumption that erosive gerd is more “erosive” than nonerosive gerd, and then we have evidence to show that nonerosive gerd is actually ALMOST AS EROSIVE AS EROSIVE GERD!

This is entirely broken circular logic!

Here’s why I suspect the logic is broken: because as the study clearly provides statistics to support (which is the statistic showing that 28.3% of the supposedly nonerosive gerd group HAD “ineffective esophageal motility” aka EROSION), nonerosive GERD is actually VERY EROSIVE!

And what would happen if that many more people with gerd (which we know from Kathy and John Turner’s ebook on a true diet for acid reflux make up 1 in 5 people in the population at large) were to be told by doctors that their “plain ol’ not-a-big-deal gerd” (which they’re currently happy swallowing a purple pill for) is in fact EROSIVE–yes, only 10% less erosive than “erosive GERD” (har har, yah whatever) but EROSIVE all the same? Actually, erosive would be a more apt description for GERD altogether…

They might think “woah, this is a serious disease!” And guess what? This IS ALREADY a serious disease, because as the above study clearly proves, nonerosive gerd is “erosive.” Just 10% less erosive than “erosive gerd.” 😉

So what can we do about this erosion, both of our GI tracts and of our ability to think clearly (with its attempted subversion by the poor logic in studies such as that above, AND by inferior food choices)? This is another reason many doctors might not want folks to think their gerd is creating erosion, because what we CAN do is change our diets.

We can start eating nutrient-dense, traditional foods consisting of the building blocks of optimal digestion and optimal assimilation, these being the true cornerstones of good health all around. These foods are the foods that countless ancestors of traditional isolated peoples have been eating for millenia: saturated animal fats high in cholesterol and therefore GOOD, bone-broth from cartilaginous and marrow-rich bones with its high content of colloidal stomach-acid-ATTRACTING (yes, that’s GOOD for gerd! not bad!) properties, truly lacto-fermented foods with its high content of probiotics, enzymes, and lactic acid, plenty of high-quality protein from pastured animals, and a wide array of plant-based vitamins and minerals from seasonally-attuned veggies like squash, zucchini, collards, kale, etc.

We can make these changes now, regardless of whether our acid reflux has been labeled erosive or nonerosive–which as we have seen, is largely a misnomer anyhow, possibly even designed simply to keep people thinking their nonerosive gerd is no big deal.