In the early part of 2010, I was constantly going to my doctor's office complaining about burning in my chest and sharp shooting pains near my heart.
I was also constantly burping -- sometimes violently.
I was worried.
I was obese and I thought maybe my weight had caught up to me and I was having heart problems.
I attributed the burping to anxiety over the more serious heart condition my body was having.
I think I'm a bit of a hypochondriac.
My doctor wasn't helping me very much.
The first time I went in, the doctor said that I must have a stomach bug.
He said it would pass in a day or so, but I was also placed on a prescription of pills which, according to the doctor, "disassociated my intestines from my nervous system.
" Sounds fun, right? It really wasn't.
I took this medicine a single time and -- as elegantly as I can describe it -- I started freaking out.
My body started shaking.
When I tried to lay down, I couldn't stay in bed because I had an acute perception of my skin.
My skin felt uneasy and tingly.
It felt like I was trying to crawl out of my own body.
I got out of bed and stayed up for a while, trying to coax my body out of the awkward state it was in.
I did finally manage to go to sleep (hours later if I remember right), but I threw the bottle of pills away the next morning.
The "bug" never went away.
And back to the doctor I went.
This time my doctor said I had GERD.
He placed me on Prilosec (Omeprazole).
"Twice a day.
Every day.
Oh, and Prilosec is over the counter now.
See you in a few weeks.
" Prilosec being over the counter meant that my health insurance wouldn't cover it anymore.
Just great.
I went to Walgreens and discovered that, over the counter, Prilosec isn't cheap.
I bought three boxes -- it was a few dollars cheaper to buy them 3 at a time -- and it did make me feel marginally better.
The strange thing was that I read on the box that it said to take a maximum of one Prilosec every 24 hours.
I called the doctor to verify this and he said that if I started feeling worse, I could go up to 3 Prilosecs a day.
He said it was safe -- that's how many the front desk nurse was taking.
My symptoms did go away for the most part.
Sometimes I would feel so good that I felt I could decrease the dosage or even stop taking them which always turned out to be a big mistake.
My symptoms always came back and it always took another 48 hours on Prilosec to make them to go away again.
I Googled for GERD relief.
I looked in every place I could for alternative or home remedies.
I did not want to keep spending what was amounting to hundreds of dollars a month on Prilosec for the rest of my life.
WebMD? HealthCentral? Yahoo! Answers? All of these places were more along the lines of "Which medication can we put you on? Prilosec didn't work? What about Nexium? Or AciPhex? Pepcid? Protonix? Proton Pump Inhibitors? Antacids? Why don't you try them all?" I didn't want to try them all.
I didn't want to have to take anything! It was around this time that I was reading around on the internet that I found, in a forum signature, a link to the benefits of the Paleo Diet.
The forum member who posted this signature had a picture of himself as his avatar.
He looked very fit and healthy.
The site he linked discussed how the Paleo Diet helped to treat a lot of common diseases and ailments -- including indigestion and heart burn.
It really piqued my interest.
The site, to me, made a lot of sense.
It talked about how humans are meant to eat natural foods and that the manufactured, chemical-laden foods we predominantly eat today are harming our bodies.
I showed the site to my wife.
She became interested when she found a lot of other sites and even videos that linked the Paleo Diet with treating an ailment she had been struggling with since her early teens - Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).
We decided to change our diet.
It couldn't hurt, and if it allowed me to stop taking twice daily medication, I would try anything.
The transformation was almost instantaneous.
Within just a couple weeks of starting the diet I took my last Prilosec and I haven't taken another one since.
I feel great.
My heartburn is gone.
My constant burping is gone.
And I've lost an enormous amount of weight.
My wife will tell you that her PCOS symptoms have also disappeared completely.
If you are struggling with any of the symptoms that I was, I would seriously recommend checking into the Paleo Diet.
I can't guarantee the Paleo Diet will cure you, but why not try it? If it frees you from the shackles of daily medication, it's at least worth that much.
If you do try it, I'm confident that you'll feel a million times better.
I do.