January 31, 2005
Thanks to a minor problem* I have pretty consistent acid-reflux problems. Basically, if I eat dinner less than four or five hours before I go to bed I wake up not too long after with horrible heartburn. So I basically take a Zantac every evening.
Zantac works by shutting off the acid production factory in the stomach, as opposed to just chemically neutralizing the acid like the Tums I keep around for emergencies. On the downside it takes a while to kick in, because it has to be absorbed into the blood like any other drug, but it lasts long enough to get me through morning.
Oh, and there's the other downside, the one that I'm taking the long way around to bitch about: If I overeat a little bit at dinner, I get that over-full feeling I'm sure you all are familiar with. Well, with the acid production shut down, I actually manage to hold on to that over-full feeling for several hours at a time. I'm going on three hours now.
I really don't feel like moving at all. And I'm probably going to feel like this until well after I go to bed. Yay.
* Namely, whoever the asshole is in charge of assembling humans was either drunk or stoned when he put me together. Instead of the diaphragm muscle pinching off the bottom of the esophagus like in a normal person, my stomach actually protrudes through the diaphragm a bit (it's called a hiatal hernia). Since the stomach is very tough and muscular, where the esophagus isn't, it can't be pinched off. Long story short, when I lie down there's nothing preventing the acid from rolling back into my esophagus (which has no protection from hydrochloric acid like the stomach does) and giving me the afore-mentioned horrific heartburn.
