Kicking the Omeprazole / Nexium / PPI Habit

So, lately I've been wondering if it would have been better to not stop my nexium/omeprazole (started on Nexium) medication.  I went on a hunt to see what other people found to work best.  In reading, I found that simply stopping the PPI or H2 blockers because this may cause a sudden and nasty rebound effect.  It seems that gradually stopping may work best.  Take a look at the following schedule that was suggested for stopping Omeprazole:

1.

Week 1: Alternate 20mg of Prilosec (Omeprazole) with 100mg Prilosec
Week 2: 10mg Prilosec
Week 3: Alternate 10mg of Prilosec with 80mg Pepsid (Famotidine)
Week 4: 80mg Pepcid
Week 5: Alternate 80mg Pepsid with 40Mg Pepsid
Week 6: 40mg Pepcid

2.

Week 1 : alternate 10 mg Prilosec with 20 mg Pepcid
Week 2 : alternate 20 mg Pepcid with 10 mg Pepcid
Week 3 : same as week 3
Week 4 : 10 mg Pepcid
Week 5:  Use Apple Cider vinegar, DGL Licorice & ginger.

3.

Week 1: 40mg Omeprazole
Week 2: 20mg Omeprazole
Week 2: Alternate 20mg of Prilosec (Omeprazole) with 10mg Prilosec
Week 3: Alternate 10mg Prilosec, 40mg Pepsid
Week 4: Alternate 40mg Pepcid (Famotidine), 20mg Pepcid
Week 5: 20mg Pepsid, 10mg Pepcid
Week 6: 20mg Pepsid, 10mg Pepcid
Week 7: 10mg Pepsid
Week 8: 10mg Peps, Off (take DGL Licorice, apple cider vinegar at night, ginger)

4.

Take your Omeprazole/Nexium/Etc. capsule and begin to remove 1, then  2, then 3,  then 4, etc., of the capsule's content every day, until you're down to none.  This takes some effort, but has been known to work.

GERD Causing Foods to Avoid

Tangy Citrus Fruits

Oranges, grapefruits and orange juice are classic heartburn foods

Tomatoes

They're highly acidic and are likely to trigger your GERD.

Garlic

Onions

Spicy foods

Peppermint

Cheese

Nuts

Avocados

Greasy redmeat (rib eye)

Alcohol

Caffeine

Chocolate

Carbonated Beverages

Fried/Fatty foods

Vinegar 

Excluding apple cider vinegar which has been known to help some GERD sufferers

High sugar foods (including fruits) 

My GERD Cause: Eating Too Little, Eating Too Much

My hate of food goes back to when I was young, being told I wasn't skinny enough.  So I started starving myself.  Unfortunately, my love of food would call me back and I would eat and eat a lot.  I'm not sure if I was a binge eater per se, particularly during my college years.  I was quite thin and eating was just something you did between all the other stuff going on.  This all changed when I came back home and started to work.

Once you're working, going out to eat becomes a big part of socializing.  You eat, you drink, and sometimes you eat some more to sober up before you pass out.  However, as I got older and exercised less, while still going out then I started to put in more pounds.  This is when I discovered lemonade cleanses (which most people I knew used as a diet really).  At some point I lost 20lbs doing that cleanse, just to be told by my doctor that I was much too weak because I had lost so much muscle mass.  I also suspect that doing those lemonade cleanse (ie. starvation diets) led to other health complications, which I wont go into right now.

At some point I just couldn't do the lemonade cleanses, so I started doing crazy calorie diets, trying to stop myself at 1,000 a day; though 1200 was the very minimum they recommended for me.  This is when my binging really started.  I would devoutly keep my diet but once I was off the diet then I just lost all control and would buy like $20 worth of candy, ice cream, and cookies.  I wasn't a big chip person, all sugar for me.  You'd laugh now but I was quite good at eating right during the day, organic, local, all that bs that at night I completely forgot.  Also, I'd control myself all day, whether by choice or because I was busy, then just eat as much as I wanted at night, which was always too much.  Then I'd crash.  I think going to bed with my stomach twice the size of what it should be was an every day thing.  I blamed it on my scheduled: work was at fault for me working late hours so of course I have to eat late then go to bed full.