Short answer: a homemade alginate raft can work in principle — the chemistry isn’t complicated — but getting it to match Gaviscon Advance is much harder than it looks, and for most people it isn’t worth the effort. A real raft needs three things happening at once: sodium alginate …
Short answer: yes, fungal overgrowth in the gut can contribute to reflux, including the throat-based silent reflux (LPR) many of us struggle with — but it’s an indirect player, not the main event, and it’s badly oversold online. SIFO (small intestinal fungal overgrowth) means too many fungal organisms, usually …
Most people who fail to come off a PPI fail for the same reason: they stop too fast, get hit by rebound acid two weeks later, and conclude they needed the drug after all. The rebound is real, it’s predictable, and it passes — but only if you know …
PPI Taper Schedule: A Week-by-Week Plan to Come Off Read More
Of all the long-term PPI safety concerns, this is the one with the best evidence behind it. It’s also the only one confirmed by a large randomized trial: over three years, people taking pantoprazole had significantly more enteric infections than those on placebo. Every other outcome that trial measured …
PPIs and Infection Risk: C. diff, Pneumonia and SIBO Read More
Long-term PPI use is associated with a modest increase in fracture risk — somewhere around 20–30% in relative terms for fractures overall, with the strongest signals in people who already have other risk factors for breaking a bone. But here’s the finding that reframes the whole question, and that …
PPIs and Bone Density: Do They Really Cause Fractures? Read More
The kidney question is the strongest of the PPI safety concerns — stronger than the dementia one, and worth taking seriously. Several large observational studies have found that long-term PPI users develop chronic kidney disease at higher rates than non-users, with hazard ratios generally in the 1.2 to 1.5 …