Intermittent fasting seemed like a good idea at the time.
Skipping breakfast made sense when I realized I was eating enough snacks and desserts after dinner to count as a fourth meal for the day.
Once I started intermittent fasting, I became ravenously hungry for about five minutes around 10:30 am for a few months. After that, it was smooth sailing.
I researched drinking coffee on an empty stomach at the time, and most of the information I found suggested that it wasn’t a problem.
So, I drank a big cup of coffee each morning around 8:00 am followed by lunch around 1:00 pm.
That was five years ago, and I never looked back.
However, about 18 months ago, I started developing heartburn in a way I’d never experienced before, and it wasn’t fun.
Heartburn wasn’t new to me. There was always a roll of Tums in my medicine cabinet, but the roll would usually last a long time.
Now, I found myself eating them every day, always right before bed because I started waking up around 2:00 a.m. each night with severe discomfort. I’d even have to pause while eating because I was getting distressed with every bite.
Heartburn—sometimes known as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or “agita” in my Jewish-Italian Brooklyn neighborhood growing up—occurs when stomach acid backs up into the esophagus.
It was gross to discover that what was waking me up in the middle of the night was stomach acid regurgitating into my mouth. Fun!
For better or worse, I’m not someone who frequently visits doctors. I have my health issues (Hepatitis C and Bell’s Palsy), but I take good care of myself and, outside of the heartburn, I generally feel great.
When I contracted Hepatitis C in 1983, it wasn’t even recognized as a diagnosis. It was referred to as Non-A/Non-B. It was so new It didn’t even get its own name until years later.
Back then, Interferon was the drug used to combat Hep C, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. You had to take it for six months, and it made you ill in its own way, with extreme fatigue and exhaustion as side effects.
Still, I wanted to explore my options, so in 1995, I visited a liver specialist at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. He told me that since I was asymptomatic, there was no reason to start Interferon. He also felt confident that within twenty years, there would be a single pill to heal the liver.
Thirty years later, there isn’t a single pill yet, but the treatment is now down to three months, with a 100% success rate and little to no side effects— according to the second doctor I saw. The internet, however, tells a different story, with anecdotal evidence pointing to headaches and exhaustion.
Which is why I saw the first doctor. After all these years, it was time to get rid of my long-time companion. For whatever reason, they wouldn’t let me go straight to a liver doctor, so I had to make an appointment with a general practitioner.
This is where the story takes a dark turn.
In walked my doctor, whose name I won’t share. Aides had already weighed me and taken my blood pressure. If you’re curious about the results: I need to lose a few pounds, but my blood pressure is great.
The nameless doctor briefly glanced at me before focusing on his computer monitor.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“I’m interested in learning more about Hepatitis C treatments.”
“I’ll refer you to a liver specialist,” he said. Annoying, but fine.
“Okay.”
“Anything else I can help you with?”
“I’ve been getting heartburn a lot lately.”
“Alright, I’ll write you a prescription for Prilosec. Take it for three or four months, and we’ll see how it goes. Have a great day”
Dubious but willing to try something to stop the heartburn, I decided to give it a shot. It seemed like a benign drug that half the world was taking. My brother has been on it for years.
Doc didn’t ask me anything about my diet, which I thought was odd, but whatever. With the appointment finished and the prescription filled, I rushed home for a call with clients in one of my programs. During the call, I mentioned my decision to take Prilosec, even though I often express my loathing of medication.
The reaction was swift. One person shared a horror story about her brother, who had a nightmare of a time getting off Prilosec. Another person warned me that although the drug works, if you stop taking it, the acid can return worse than before. Oh joy!
I took the medication anyway, and within three days, it worked like a miracle. The relief was exquisite. For three days, I had a happy esophagus. But during those three days, I also continued researching others’ experiences, and those horror stories freaked me out.
True to my clients’ word, stopping after three days, the acid returned with a vengeance I wasn’t prepared for.
Now, I was really freaking out. I wasn’t going to take Prilosec again, but I had to find a way to be done with this misery.
So, I Googled “coffee on an empty stomach” again, and once more, I found the same information claiming it was basically harmless.
The problem was, I hadn’t made many other lifestyle changes in the last few years that could account for the heartburn.
First, I tried returning to breakfast, but I hated it. It weighed me down and felt terrible. Over the past few years, I’ve gotten very used to drinking coffee and working out on an empty stomach in the morning.
So… coffee hit the chopping block. Don’t get me wrong—I love coffee and have been drinking it daily for 40 years, but something had to give.
I think you know where this is going.
It’s been 10 days since I quit coffee, and the heartburn began to subside immediately. It woke me up for the first few nights, but that passed. Today has been my first completely heartburn-free day in what feels like forever.
Look, I’m not here to condemn the medical profession or the use of medications. They are miraculous and save millions of lives every day.
But I am here to condemn a doctor who would prescribe me medication for heartburn without even asking about my diet and lifestyle. There’s something deeply amiss in that.