Coffee and Acute Gastritis

JHCCoffee

Well, I am diagnosed with acute gastritis and I read that I should not drink coffee, not even decaf, until I am recovered. This is a drag, as I just received my Decent. 😔

Anyone with any experiences in this? No coffee? 😠

I am in any event headed to the health food store to buy every gut health enhancement on their shelves. Diet is also headed towards low fat and natural.

Also no alcohol. 😠

Boring 🥱

JammyDodger

Hi JHC,

I am loathe to recommend asking for any medical advice from an online forum. You need to see your own GP as they will know lots of things we will not, such as your medical history, family history and current medication. They will also be medically trained, which I am sure we can all agree is a plus.

As a general overview though, being a GP myself and therefore aware of how much pressure your GP will be under, I would suggest a few pointers:

‘Acute’ is often misused. It refers to duration, not severity. Therefore acute = sudden or of short duration (as in ‘acute angina’), chronic = long term (as in ‘chronic pain’).
Gastritis is a condition caused by inflammation of the lining of your stomach. Anything with the suffix -itis indicates inflammation (eg tonsillitis or appendicitis).
This inflammation, and the reflux that can accompany it, can be caused by many things. The common ones are as follows:
• Diet - spicy food, chocolate, alcohol, caffeine, acidic foods such as citrus, tomato etc (all the nice things).
• Lifestyle - eating late at night.
• Stress.
• Medication - aspirin, NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, SSRIs, antibiotics, anticoagulants and steroids.
• Helicobacter pylori, a type of bacteria that can live in your stomach.
The above list is not exhaustive, and it is likely that it is not going to be a single one of the things listed above on its own that has caused the problem. I commonly see patients who present with gastritis after an increase in stress at work. This stress, it transpires, has caused them to increase their alcohol consumption as a coping mechanism, and therefore also need to take ibuprofen as a consequence of increased hangovers. If it was just the increase in stress or increased alcohol or ibuprofen use, they may not have developed gastritis, but everything together is too much for their gastric lining to cope with.

So what to do? I would usually suggest a four-week course of a medication called OMEPRAZOLE. This is a proton-pump inhibitor which reduces the acidity of your stomach acid. This makes your stomach a less hostile environment, and therefore easier for your stomach lining to repair itself. As part of your treatment, it is also worth taking a look at your diet, lifestyle and medication to see whether any of the things you are doing, eating, or taking may be making your symptoms worse.

If you can’t get to your GP for a few weeks in order to trial omeprazole, you could consider GAVISCON bought over the counter as a short-term solution whilst you wait to see them.

I wouldn’t suggest spending your hard-earned cash on health supplements without knowing the reason for taking them and being confident they are going to help you. Most have a pretty dismal evidence base, and you’re better off saving your money.

You may not need to stop or change all of the potential causative factors to help improve your symptoms. I say this as you may find that if you can reduce, for example, stress and alcohol (if these apply to you), you may be able to have coffee without it causing you symptoms.

As always, the usual caveats apply:
• If your symptoms persist or deteriorate despite treatment go back and see your GP. They will want to know, and will have a plan in place of what to do/investigate next should this happen.
• MOST IMPORTANTLY: Do not take medical advice from someone who isn’t your doctor, and especially not a stranger on the internet. For all you know I could be a snake oil salesman, or majority shareholder in the company who makes Gaviscon.

EDIT: To answer your question regarding decaf coffee. It’s going to be better than non-decaffeinated coffee by virtue of the reduced caffeine.

JHCCoffee

JammyDodger I am loathe to recommend asking for any medical advice from an online forum. You need to see your own GP as they will know lots of things we will not, such as your medical history, family history and current medication. They will also be medically trained, which I am sure we can all agree is a plus.

Thank you kindly for the advice and I fully agree with all. I have seen my GP. While the likely cause is travel stress and poor diet during a recent weeklong family wedding event, we are undergoing testing to confirm cause, severity and treatment. In the interim, I am on Pepcid. And am also working to reestablish my “gut biodyme” with kimchi, sauerkraut, kambucha, etc. There have also been some studies indicating benefits from garlic extract and raw garlic, brocolli and also manuka honey. So we will try them.

Beyond the above, we are going onto a higher soluable fiber, low fat diet.

And I will stay on decaf coffee.

DavecUK

My own personal experience and also some from my mother who had gastritis.

In the UK 3 main ones are prescribed:

Omeprazole (preferred (cheaper I think, but heavily used in hospitals, because of the contraindication in 2 below)
Lansoprazole, acts faster than omeprazole, but not as effective in raw ph reduction, dosage is lower, not good for pregnant women.
Pantoprazole (not as commonly prescribed (didn’t agree with my mum, same with Omeprazole, so she took Lansoprazole)
Oh I forgot Rantidine, which you can pay lots of money for over the counter! (it’s not a PPI, but a Histamine antagonist if I remember correctly). I personally wouldn’t bother with it, unless your GP reckons it’s a good idea.

They all have potential interactions with some other drugs and although in the class of PPIs, the drugs they can interact with are NOT the same. Ensure you check with you’re GP if you are on other drugs (and some over the counter e.g. Lansoprazole and Gaviscon). For short term use (4-6 weeks) and healing they can be great….if you go on them long term then stop, you will get “acid rebound”. This passes, but can make it very difficult to get off them. GPs sometimes give up trying and simply do the repeat prescription under patient pressure.

This seems innocuous, but long term PPI (proton Pump inhibitor) use can cause cardiac issues….that said my mum is 88 years old and been on Lansoprazole for over 15 years!

To my own experience….I suffered very very badly with acid reflux, so bad I would wake up coughing stomach acid out of my lungs, I pretty much lived on antacids! I noticed that every time I went on a low carb diet, within 2 weeks the reflux went away completely. Now I’m not saying carbohydrates give you reflux,, for me it was certain foods…wheat based stuff like bread, pastries etc.. which I loved, used to sit in my stomach like molten lava. Last November I started my new weight loss program and as before with the cutting out of carbs (so no bread, pastries etc..)…I have not used 1 antacid tablet since. I don’t drink, but I was never much of a drinker, so it had to be diet. I drink a lot of coffee and it doesn’t affect me at all, although it might affect you.

I would suggest it’s well worth looking at your diet as suggested above (plus all the other things of course) and look to cut out foods/lifestyle you can possibly associate with acid/reflux etc..

P.S. My father was the same, lived on Antacids…he didn’t cut out the bread and pastries, I always wonder what would have happened if he had….genetics…

JHCCoffee

DavecUK My own personal experience and also some from my mother who had gastritis

Thanks for the excellent advice Dave! Most appreciated! Appreciate the insights.

Amberale

DavecUK

Virtually a mirror image to my conditions Dave with the exception that I do drink.

I am not a celiac but carbs, especially high processed ones like wheat flour products give me almost instant reflux.
I only need look at a sausage roll and my gut churns. :(
Within a couple of days of changing to a low carb diet my reflux disappears.
Basically I stop eating white things and drinking alcohol.
Potatoes, bread, pastry, cereal, sugar, rice, flour.

JammyDodger

JHCCoffee While the likely cause is travel stress and poor diet during a recent weeklong family wedding event, we are undergoing testing to confirm cause, severity and treatment. In the interim, I am on Pepcid. And am also working to reestablish my “gut biodyme” with kimchi, sauerkraut, kambucha, etc.

Ah well done, it sounds like you are in good hands. Whilst improving gut flora is a good idea for all of us, it has no direct benefit on gastritis. Gut flora exist in your bowel, whereas gastritis is a condition of your stomach. By all means take steps to improve the former, but it will not have an appreciable impact on the latter.

My concern with kimchi, sauerkraut and kombucha is they are all relatively acidic foods, which could exacerbate gastritis. I would discuss them with your doctor and advise against taking these until your gastritis improves

drdre89

Look into Organic Moringa Leaf powder for inflammation.

Emc2

Feel for you . I was off coffee and alcohol for about six months due to gastritis. Not fun.. it did settle eventually after 3 months on omeprazole. The OTC medications didn’t do anything. Not sure if it made a difference but I was drinking Actimel daily to improve gut health.

Even now I can get stomach pain with coffee occasionally. The frequency of this has reduced after I started adding sodium bicarbonate to the coffee.

Cuprajake

@Grahamsphillips knows alot about this from memory

Grahamsphillips

sleep. Stress. Alcohol. Processed food and esp carbs are the main causes. Yes in theory coffee could be a minor gastric irritant but it would be last on my list. Not first. Keep a really accurate food diary. Also reflux is surprisingly responsive to a small amount of weight loss. If you are going to take a PPI my pet is lansoprazole before it’s fast acting and long acting. Most PPIs are OTC now. But that doesn’t make them safe. Use short term and sparingly.

coffeelover

There’s a lot of information referring to nutrition and gut health on ‘ZOE Science & Nutrition’ podcasts or on YouTube. I’ve link the ‘Heartburn’ episode that is quite interesting.

JHCCoffee

You guys are, as usual, fantastically helpful and considerate. Thank-you 🙏🙏🙏

scwheeler

I would echo Graham’s advice to use PPI sparingly. I was on them for many many years for reflux, ultimately because I was very overweight and it was a quick fix. Eventually a great GP proactively called me and said he didn’t want to continue prescribing them, so I weaned off them, lost 5 stone and magically PPI’s were no longer required.

Unfortunately even though I am 20x healthier now, during this time my otherwise bulletproof constitution has been reduced to a very temperamental IBS mess. While they may not have been the sole cause, I do believe the PPI’s played a part in that.

As an aside, I also recently took Zoe’s gut health test and after 10 years trying to fix and thousands spent on probiotics, prebiotics, homemade daily kefir, kombucha, kraut, kimchi, my microbiome score is rubbish and my diversity is very low. Sigh…..