An ongoing self-tracking project
Tracking GERD, and analyzing what the data reveals.
I log every meal, symptom, and daily habit, then analyze the record the way a researcher would: running the statistics, testing the usual trigger foods, and looking for the patterns memory can't hold onto. This is where I share what the data turns up.
The analysis
Was it the food, or the day?
FlagshipI expected trigger foods. Instead, the two factors that predicted a bad day were stress and how sedentary I'd been. Food categories showed no significant effect.
Why does stress trigger reflux?
EvidenceStress nearly doubled my odds of a bad day. The research says it isn't extra acid, it's a lower threshold for feeling it. Eleven studies, tested against my own 564 meals.
Which kind of movement helps reflux?
EvidenceMy most sedentary days had triple the symptom rate of my most active ones. The wider evidence agrees moving helps, but not all movement does: weightlifters reflux far more than cyclists.
I found a trigger food. It was fake.
MethodSweets looked like they cut my reflux almost in half, and the result survived every correction I applied. It was still wrong: my sugar intake was downstream of how much I'd moved that day.
My reflux ignores the night shift
EvidenceI sleep on an inclined bed, on one side, eight hours a night. Three of my 95 symptom events happened overnight. The other 92 clustered around meals, which is the more common reflux pattern and the one nobody writes about.
More analyses will follow as the data grows.
Your memory edits the story. Your data doesn't.
The most useful thing you can do for your own reflux is start writing it down. Log your meals, symptoms, and daily habits for a few weeks, and the patterns start to show themselves. The template I use is free — copy it and start today.