I am male & in my late twenties.
About a year ago, I had my first really bad experience of symptoms associated with GERD and my sleep became absolutely terrible. The extreme symptoms subsided after two or so weeks, but the bad sleep lasted for months. My doctors kept telling me it was just my anxiety.
After three months, I started pepcid to manage symptoms for about a month, and was eventually switched to pantoprazole because the pepcid wasn’t quite cutting it.
I also had a stomach ultrasound and EDG. Ultrasound revealed a mildly enlarged prostate, EDG revealed mild GERD.
Because the GERD was “mild” at the time, I was told to wean off of pantoprazole and started taking one every other day, before wiping it out completely.
I lasted about a month before symptoms started getting severe again, and sleep issues came back.
I am now back on pantoprazole daily, but now I fear it’s affecting my prostate as prostatitis/BPH symptoms are getting worse.
I too have really bad anxiety and am somewhat of a hypochondriac, as I’ve discovered many on this site experience as well.
I found this NIH article online Proton pump inhibitors promote the growth of androgen-sensitive prostate cancer cells through ErbB2, ERK1/2, PI3K/Akt, GSK-3β signaling and inhibition of cellular prostatic acid phosphatase - PubMed and now I’m worried that the pantoprazole is negatively affecting my prostate.
As for IBS - I’ve experienced some symptoms, but I’ve found that its largely dependent on what I eat. When it’s more of a meat-filled diet, no IBS. When I eat a high fiber, veggie diet, super IBS.
I do need to be more strict with my diet and will go back to totally wiping out alcohol and my GERD triggers, and once again wean off of pantoprazole.
I’ve also heard that the book “Plant Paradox” is largely helpful to those navigating GERD diets.
Is there any hope for me being healthy again? I workout daily and am otherwise pretty fit, but it seems like no matter what I do, my health is deteriorating.
