A little over a year ago, I was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).  It’s basically acid reflux, only the acid refluxes into your throat and occasionally into your trachea and lungs.  I was diagnosed, after I had a severe attack during my Oceanside 70.3 race, last April.

There are medications for this issue, but the better way to solve it is through diet.  There is a long list of foods that can potentially trigger the acid reflux condition; you need to avoid eating them.  To recover last year, I omitted everything on that list from my diet, for several weeks.  It fixed my symptoms.

The problem is, everything on the list of ‘do not eat’ foods, is food I really like.  I went weeks without coffee, cheese, citrus fruits, chocolate, any kind of fast food, pizza and alcohol.  Eventually, you can introduce these foods back into your diet in a controlled manner, and watch for symptoms.  If you are lucky, you find the food items that ‘trigger’ the acid reflux, and then just avoid those.

I eventually figured out that my ‘trigger foods’ were chocolate, red wine and to some extent coffee.  Even then, for the past year, I have been able to eat these trigger foods in moderation and not get symptoms.

So what happened?  Well, a week or so ago, I started to wake up in the middle of the night with slight stomach pain.  Then I started to get a burning feeling in my throat, and eventually irritation in my trachea.  All classic symptoms, that my acid reflux was back.  I think I have been drinking too much coffee and red wine lately, courtesy of the whole isolation, work from home events.

So, as of two days ago, I am back on my highly restricted diet.  That means no coffee.  It’s not the coffee that’s the issue, it’s the caffeine.  That in turn means, I am now having major caffeine withdrawal symptoms; I’m tired, irritable and having headaches.  This happened last time, but it only took 3-4 days to pass.  Based on that experience, I should start to feel better tomorrow.

While this issue is not great, I do know that when I recovered last year, I felt super healthy and full of energy. I am therefore looking at the positive side … if I can kick this thing again, I should be in great shape to race … whenever that is.