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Lifestyle Modifications in GERD

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Diagnosis and Treatment of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

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Abstract

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is currently managed pharmacologically in the vast majority of patients. However, prior to the advent of highly effective medicines for GERD, the so-called lifestyle modifications are likely to have played a greater role in managing patients’ symptoms. Although less attention is currently being placed on these modifications, many patients and their family members and health-care providers will ask for advice about appropriate steps they might take to help control the symptoms of GERD. In this chapter, we aim to evaluate various modifications to lifestyle that either have been used traditionally or are still being recommended by some practitioners today. While many of these can be endorsed based on good clinical practice for the reasons of health maintenance and promotion, the evidence that they produce subjective improvement in GERD symptoms or objective improvement in measures of acid reflux is often unimpressive. Nonetheless, many of these continue to make sense for routine clinical practice; in essence, while they may reflect “bad science,” they often constitute “good medicine.” It is relatively rare that lifestyle changes alone will control all symptoms in a GERD patient to his/her entire satisfaction although there are some instances of this happening—for example, in pregnancy-related heartburn in a woman without preexisting GERD. However, for most GERD patients, lifestyle modification is, at best, only a sensible addendum to effective drug treatment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Divison of Gastroentrology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Suite H210, Memphis, TN, USA

    Ali Akbar MD & Colin W. Howden MD

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  1. Ali Akbar MD
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  2. Colin W. Howden MD
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  1. Department of Gastroenterology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Michael F. Vaezi

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Akbar, A., Howden, C. (2016). Lifestyle Modifications in GERD. In: Vaezi, M. (eds) Diagnosis and Treatment of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19524-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19524-7_4

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