By taking two twelve-dollar pills each day for fifty years
They’ve spent billions to convince me so now I realize
Progenatorivox beats diet and exercise
Quite a few years ago, I was driving to work when I felt this tightness in my chest, radiating up to my neck (but not down my arm). I thought it was a heart attack, so I check with my doctor. Luckily, it wasn’t. Instead, I was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, and what I was experiencing was an esophageal cramp. My doctor addressed the problem by putting me on omeprazole (generic for Prilosec). This solved the problem, as well as addressing other chronic indigestion problems (such as significant acid kickback from corn products).
This has been working fine for a number of years (I’d guess at least 3 or 4 by now), although looking back, during the time I’ve been on omeprazole I’ve had an increased number of headaches. I’ll note that the side effect information for omeprazole notes that the most common adverse reaction to the drug is headaches, in 6.9% of the samples (compared with 6.3% for placebos). I didn’t think about this much, as the headaches seemed to be more sinus headaches or proto-migraines than anything else.
Recently, I had a sinus infection, and when I came off of the antibiotics, the indigestion was back (I’ll note I had also just refilled my omeprazole prescription, and had started the new batch). I’d also noticed increased indigestion when I’ve been on business travel of late, but I’d written that off to eating fattier foods during business travel. In short, it appeared that the omeprazole was no longer controlling the indigestion.
As an experiment, two weeks ago, I decided to stop the omeprazole. I’ve been controlling my indigestion since then with antacids (Tums, Alka-Seltzer Gold, and good old Baking Soda), combined with H2-blockers such as cimetidine. Guess what? I’ve only had one headache in the last two weeks, and that was a day I didn’t get my caffeine. I’ve also noticed I’m eating less, and craving less junk food.
Why am I writing this? First, I wanted to get down what was in my head, so that I could write it down for my doctor to get his opinion and suggestions for ways of dealing with the acid. Secondly, I wanted to see if any of my readers had run into something similar.
