I seem to have caught something of a zeitgeist. Every second post in r/asthma seems to be, “why do I cough at night/after eating/drinking milk/constantly”.

And the answer is always the same: you have silent reflux.

Thats silent as in, “doesn’t erode your oesophagus”, because constant coughing sure as hell ain’t silent.

Even seen one claim that 75% of asthmatics have reflux. Not clear how the correlation/causation thing works here. Maybe reflux causes asthma because of hydrochloric acid irritating the airway? It seems plausible.

As a teenager I would wake with a raging sore throat every morning. I assumed it was normal. At school they called me “death breath”. I was aspirating my stomach contents, constantly.

Anyway, I wish I’d known about this thirty years ago when my arsehole father thought the way to stop me throat clearing and coughing was “yelling at me” rather than, “seek medical help”.

Not that medical help has been particularly forthcoming when I did finally seek it. It’s taken over a decade of push push pushing and being handed from ENT to respiratory to ENT to allergy to ENT before finally getting to gastroenterology with my own money and someone who actually helped.

And the solution is so bloody simple: drink Gaviscon. Has it stopped yet? If not, drink more Gaviscon.

Dust off and Gaviscon it from orbit.

And stop eating gluten and cut right down on milk because my guts and stomach hate those things.

But mostly, drink the clever aniseed alkali drink.

All this trouble over a little bit of stomach acid.