Hiatal Hernia - Editor's Choice

The last 2 weeks for me have been absolute hell.

I've been waking up with this strange feeling in my stomach/lower chest that I thought was a tumor everytime I try to take a deep breath. Felt like my insides were out of place. I haven't slept much at all in the past 2 weeks because of acid, constantly burping and tight chest that would make it difficult to breathe laying down. I usually sleep like a baby. It got so bad one night last week I went to the hospital(and if you know me, I don't step foot in those places or see doctors unless I think I'm dying) I was burping for 4 hours straight. When I say burping I mean belching like I've been drinking pop all day and never drink that garbage. I couldn't stop and it was affecting my breathing. The pain from this hernia was there when I was trying to breathe as well but I didn't know what it was. I thought my lungs were just inflamed. I have asthma that acts up sometimes depending on how much I vape but never requires a puffer or actually worries me.

In the past few days I've gone from thinking I have GERD, COPD, cancer/tumors and a bunch of other stuff.

Ive started taking glutathione, msm, Apple Cider Vinegar with baking soda in the last few days. I've had some minimal relief from those but the pain to breath wasn't going away and feeling like my insides are out of place has been constant.

I tried this finger technique quickly (not truly believing I even have a hernia) and that breathing pain is gone!!! Not sure even sure I did it properly. I'm shocked. I'm going to continue doing this a few times a day or as needed.

Thanks again and God Bless this site. I'm writing this in 2022 and it unfortunately seems like this beautiful site is dead. The pharmaceutical industry has ruined health and internet censorship has made finding natural cures nearly impossible. Thank you Earth Clinic!

What HAS worked for me is to use a rebounder, a mini-trampoline, several times a week for 8 or 9 minutes while I listen to a short podcast. I also have been taking some prebiotic supplements to aid and heal the digestive tract. Using the rebounder often sends me to the bathroom afterwards. I have not had an incident with the hernia since I started using the rebounder.

There is something you are eating and drinking that is keeping it aggravated. It is 100% a food allergy, or more likely, FOOD ALLERGIES!

Eating; for me it is all wheat and gluten, all dairy, all soy, all Allium plants (garlic, onions, etc), and I am finding Balsam of Peru and Balsam of Tolu hidden under "NATURAL FLAVOR". Keep a daily food journal and eat simple foods that you read the labels for and prepared yourself. Eat potatoes with nothing on them and wait 6 or 8 hours. Stomach feels good? Then it is probably ok. Then say, the next time you eat a potato with sour cream on it and it bothers you, you know that it wasnt the potato, but SOMETHING in the sour cream. Eventually you can narrow it down this way, might take years though. A skin prick test or patch test at a doctor can help somewhat narrow down food allergies, but they are not 100% reliable with foods, and many foods might show you are not allergic, when you actually are.

Drinking; DO NOT DRINK ANYTHING WITH MEALS OTHER THAN WATER, AND EVEN THEN ONLY SIPS! Do not drink much for the next 2 - 4 hours after eating other than sips here and there. NO carbonated beverages, EVER! If I have to have a soda, I get bottles of it and beat it on my hand or the table and slowly release the pressure and repeat until no more carbonation remains. Tastes flat, but has the flavor you crave if you have to have one. Unflavored unsweetened coffee and unflavored alcohols seem tolerable on an empty stomach, they can bother me a bit, but never drink them on a full stomach.

I always keep a bottle of water handy. If I can feel it bothering me, I drink a big mouthful or two and try to wiggle/stretch my chest around to get it to release while trying gently to burp. Then I repeat this until I start feeling better. Sometimes and rarely, I will sip like 1/8th teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate in a 16 oz glass of water (pint) and try to burp. If you can get the trapped air to release, it wont push on your heart and cause you to feel like you are dying.

I discovered that OFTEN you can actually little by little swallow MORE air into your stomach and get it to pull down the stomach and then you can burp out the swallowed air plus what was previously trapped. But this is trick is hard to learn when to do it, and when it will make things worse. I only mention it because often it works for me to help things out.

Drinking a 16 oz glass of water (pint) and immediately rebounding on a trampoline on an empty stomach daily can help train it to stay down where it should be, especially if you are avoiding the foods it does not like and drinks it does not like.

Breathing exercises, like the one where you suck in through a tiny straw or breathe out through the same straw can help strengthen your diaphragm.

Sleep with a bed wedge under your bed, or bricks under headboard. DO NOT eat a big meal within 4-6 hours of going to bed! I can do small snacks that do not bother me, but I generally avoid even them within 2 hours of bed time if I can.

DO NOT bend over or lift ANYTHING with in 4-6 hours after eating! You cant always avoid it, but unless your stomach is empty, you are asking to make things worse, both immediately AND long term.

I feel confident that you can potentially live a fairly normal life if you do as I have done. You may never have a 100% normal diaphragm again, but the trampoline and breathing exercises can help strengthen it so that it will keep your stomach where it should be more normally, especially if you avoid your personal food allergens and avoid the drinking situations that I mentioned.

I just read your article about the ACV and gave him 1 and 1/2 tblspn in 8oz of water and he finally fell a sleep feeling the pain go away. A million thanks to this article. I don't know how else to express this huge tip.

I have always hated hospitals so I refused, I cured myself by not eating and drinking anything with acid eg: tomatoes lemon, oranges, beer, no white bread or pastries that was doughy. I only ate brown bread and veggies with meat no gravy not much fruit but I did add peppers to all my food.

After 6 months, my hiatal hernia was healed and my stomach ulcers gone.my doctor scratched his head. He had never known that one could heal hiatal hernia as the valve had been stretched open and surgery was the only option.

It is now 2015 and I do not suffer ulcers or hiatal hernia. Ulcers is sores in the stomach breeding on bacteria, kill the bacteria and the sore heals. I believe pepper did the trick.

First, a Simple Test:

It's not foolproof, but some doctors have their patients take a deep breath and hold it for 40 seconds. If you can't hold your breath for that long, and there are no other problems,then a hiatus hernia is a possibility.

A Simple Fix

If the top portion of the stomach is stuck up above the diaphragm, then the obvious answer is to get it out. This can be done in two steps:

Drink about a glass of either room temperature or slightly warm water when you get out of bed first thing in the morning. (No coffee, no tea, no juice, no cold water, just warm water.)

Then, while standing, bring your arms straight out from your sides and bend your elbows so that your hands are touching your chest. Then stand up on your toes as high as possible and DROP down onto your heels, rather like a weightlifter's squat! You should force a pretty good jolt. Drop down like this 10 times in a row. Then, while standing with your arms up, pant short quick breaths for about 15 seconds. That's it.

The warm water acts like a weight in the stomach. Warm water doesn't cause the stomach to cramp, but instead it relaxes it. Spreading your arms stretches the diaphragm and opens up that hole in the back. Dropping down on your heels jerks the stomach out of the hole, and the panting tightens up the diaphragm muscle to close the hole.

You need to do this exercise every day - not just until everything feels normal. This will also strengthen the area, and make the hiatal hernia less likely to come back.

Try it! It costs nothing.

I can't believe this worked for me. I really thought I'd tried everything (AVC, aloe, charcoal, PPI's, slippery elm, blowing balloons, everything - I was seriously considering surgery), and this simple exercise is the only thing that brought relief. If anybody else gets the same relief from this exercise, I'll be even happier. Good luck.

So I went back to the Internet to research my affliction again. Now, I dont want to take the credit, and I cant remember the site where I read my finding. So I give all the credit to that person who posted their results. But what I found and tried was too simple to ignore and that was ORANGE PEEL seasoning. Thats right! Just the very same Orange Peel Seasoning you can buy off your supermarket's shelves. Its somewhat expensive at $5-$6 for 1.5 oz's but a single bottle has lasted me nearly 2 months. I found a 16 oz bottle for less than $20 while searching the net. Well anyway, I use just a sprinkle on my breakfast cereal in the morning, and I sprinkle a little on my toast also, and I'm good for the day! All together the amount I use must equal to no more that a 1/2 teaspoon.

I also have two cups of Chamomile Tea a day, one at 7 AM with breakfast and one in the evening around 7 PM. The Tea works wonders and settles me down. I find I really only need the Orange Peel once a day but twice a day wouldnt hurt I guess. So I'm really interested in other people's experiences with the orange peel so please write and share your findings. If you are as desperate as I have been in feeling normal please give this a try. I'm glad I did :-) Thanks

I started xray school right after my daughter was born and during the 1st semester of training I saw all these people having Upper GI tests and were prescribed medications but people kept coming back because the meds weren't helping and that's when I decided to look for a solution naturally. I was told if you took a tablespoon of ACV when you had heartburn and the heartburn went away then you needed MORE acid and not less and the pills the docs were giving people STOPPED the production of acid, but you need that acid to help digest your food. I also assummed I had a hiatal hernia because sometimes my food felt like it didn't want to go down and stayed in my throat. After learning about the ACV treatment I did that for about 3 months. It was hard to drink it everyday but I did. I also cut out sodas, sweet tea, and tomato products as these things caused severe heartburn. I kept searching and talking to people and found a company that made food enzymes. I switched to food enzymes for about a year. My hiatal hernia and heartburn went away and I started sleeping flat again. That was in 1995 and I haven't had the problem again. I've told lots of people to try the ACV or food enzymes because I now know for sure that the meds people are put on are not the solution - oh I know it fixes some for a while but then the body is unable to get the vitamins from the foods they are eating and they come back to the hospital for a CAT SCAN to see what problem they have now. Since I work in a hospital and see the day to day problems that people have due to medication or Drs. who are simply overworked and most know nothing about nutrition, I go the natural way for everything. This is a great website and at least when people are searching for a solution they will try it, but I find that people look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them a simple solution to their problem, especially if it is going to mean they can't just take a pill and the problem goes away.