If you didn’t know silent reflux is a form of acid reflux where acid refluxes up from the stomach. The clear difference for someone with silent reflux is that is primarily affects their throat with symptoms like throat burning, hoarseness etc. In more serious and rare cases it can affect breathing and even your inner ears. The reason is it called silent reflux is because it doesn’t have the other typical symptoms of someone with regular acid reflux like heartburn for example therefore it is deemed as “silent”.
The more medically accurate name for silent reflux is Laryngopharyngeal Reflux (LPR). The thing with silent reflux is that some people are often being affected by it and they never know the root cause is actually because of acid reflux. Knowing it is related to acid reflux isn’t typical thinking which makes it harder to diagnose. Even if the doctor does think it is related to acid reflux it can often be confused with the likes of GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease) which in fact needs to treated in a different way.
If you have been affected by a sore throat or things like hoarseness consistently without any clear root cause it may be worth considering you are being affected by silent reflux. I wanted to provide this article to help make everyone aware that this is in fact a possibility that could be affecting you. If you know the possibility of it happening, then if it does happen to affect you then you will consider it a possibility which is an important step. Believe it or not for a lot of people, it may end up affecting them for years on end without them ever considering that it could be related to acid reflux.
As I suggested a lot of doctors often treat LPR as if it where GERD which often won’t be an effective way to treat the problem. Luckily if you are affected by LPR there are ways that you can prevent it from happening and allow it to heal if you are already affected. There are a couple of mains ways that are effective for helping and healing LPR symptoms. The first option I would recommend is following a diet plan that is specially tailored for someone with LPR like this LPR Diet.
The same kind of anti-acid diet that will people with more common acid reflux can help someone with LPR though for someone who is being affected more seriously they should consider a diet that is aimed for someone with LPR because there are a few differences which are extremely important. The main difference for a diet that is tailored for someone with silent reflux is that it should be an alkaline style diet that avoids certain foods below a set base line of acidity. The point of avoiding these more acidic foods is because if you do eat or drink more acidic foods/drinks then this can directly irritate the throat which would further damage it and prevent it from healing which we want to avoid.
When it comes to medication there is a lack of knowledge on silent reflux even amongst some doctors – for example a common technique that is used to treat silent reflux is from a medication called PPI’s which are basically a strong kind of anti-acid pill. The reason this is worth mentioning is because this kind of medicine as a treatment choice is usually ineffective. In fact, there have been studies which show it as an ineffective treatment for silent reflux.
Fortunately, there is a good alternative which you may already know called Gaviscon Advance. It’s important to note that the UK version of this Gaviscon is the best medicine choice. The reason you want the UK version instead of the US version is because it has much more of the important active ingredient than the US version. This important ingredient is called alginate. How alginate works is it basically creates a layer on top of the stomach contents which works incredibly well at preventing acid from refluxing up. Because of how great it works to prevent reflux this allows the throat to properly heal and any acid reflux symptoms to be greatly reduced!
