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I have had heartburn from time to time over the years. Then I married a man who was always positive that his health was far better than mine - or anyone else's. In fact he talked as if I had one foot in the grave at the age of 32. He was always trying one obscure allopathic drug, remedy, herb, etc. He had read about a juice that according to a magazine of case studies that was produced by a company that sold the juice, it was such a miraculous health elixir that it could even cure cancer if taken in large amounts. All he talked about for a year was that juice and how I needed to try it. It was expensive and that was my excuse for a while. Finally I decided to humor him and drink the juice. If it didn't improve anything then at least I would hear no more talk of it. If it did improve my health overall then I would be a believer. The dosage of this juice was 1 - 2 ounces per day, but my husband insisted that I drink 16 ounces per day - because I was in such bad health (which was not true). I drank the awful juice and immediately had fire-breathing dragon heartburn. It was extremely painful but my husband insisted that it was the toxins coming out of my body - I should just stay with it and the heartburn would subside and my general health problems will disappear. The juice tasted like dilled blueberries but was supposedly made from some rare fruit on an island called noni fruit. I humored my husband at the expensive of my own personal discomfort of dealing with continual - non ending, severe heartburn day and night. After 4 cases of the juice had been consumed and there were no health benefits shown, but one new health problem (severe heartburn) I told my husband enough is enough - I will not drink that fire-breathing dragon juice ever again and I don't want to hear a single word about it ever again. I stopped drinking the juice but the severe heartburn did not go away. I gave it some time - to get it out of my system. Still had it - though not fire-breathing, scorching hot as before, but still severe. I began drinking baking soda mixed with water to ease the pain, but this only lasted a few hours at best - same with antacids. My doctor prescribed Previcid and that helped. It was great to live without heartburn but then I stopped taking the prescription because I do not want to take a pill every day for the rest of my life - that surely would damage my liver over time and cause a serious health problem. It has now been years since my last sip of the noni fruit juice and I sit here at 4 AM telling you my story because I went online in search of a home remedy for acid reflux that is longer lasting than baking soda and a better alternative than pills but instead found this site - saw you were looking for answers on why there is an increase in the cases of GERD over the last 30 years and thought I'd offer my personal experience of how an abundance of a juice making fantastic claims changed my life by giving me a permanent health issue - GERD. I believe if we expose ourselves to the wrong foods/drinks/ingredients over an extended period of time, we can cause a great variety of harm to out digestive system. What is wrong for one person may not be wrong for another. We are all different and I think we have come to assume through the practice of medicine and self medication from the readily available plethora of over the counter medications, we have begun to ignore the natural signals our bodies use to alert us to problems. After the first 1 - 2 days of fire-breathing dragon heartburn that began immediately after drinking the juice until it later became constant, I should have listened to my body - not my husband and stopped drinking it. There was obviously an ingredient in that juice that was reacting with my normal PH levels or something else within my stomach and/or esophogus in a very bad way.
