How to Heal Gastritis? It depends!
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to healing gastritis. People ask me every day on TikTok how to heal gastritis, and I respond with the same sentiment each time: it depends!
I think it’s one of the reasons I’m really struggling with creating TikToks to help people; I can provide general advice all day long, but whether or not that advice will actually be useful to the people who stumble across my videos is uncertain. I try to add disclaimers in each of my videos to reinforce that "what works for me might not work for you” and “only follow these strategies after checking with a doctor,” but people on TikTok want to hear a solution without nuance and disclaimers.
When I first started addressing my healing, I read the Gastritis Healing Book by L. G. Capellan (which I loved). I read it front to back and over and over to make sure I thoroughly understood the condition and was following the guidelines to a tee. But 6 months after starting the protocol, I was still dealing with digestive issues that disrupted my sleep and were causing me to believe that this was just going to be forever.
But gut health issues are often more complicated than “just gastritis.” It turned out that the inflammation in my stomach affected my digestion speed (slowed motility) and was causing bile irritation, which made it even harder for me to heal the gastritis. This explains why even 6 months of a strict diet didn’t “heal” me.
This gastritis and bile reflux combination slowed my digestion, which caused bacteria overgrowth in my small intestine, otherwise known as SIBO. SIBO tends to worsen symptoms of gastritis and bile reflux, so I found myself stuck in this vicious cycle of healing, plateauing, getting worse again, then healing again.
I’m ready to break the cycle.
I’ve been dealing with this since the fall of 2023, and I’m done. It’s apparent to me that the underlying issue is slow digestion, so I’m implementing a few habits to improve digestion without using medication:
Eating every 4 hours to allow the Migrating-Motor Complex (MMC) to function properly (I’m going to miss snacking, but I’ll survive).
Supplementing with Phosphatidylcholine (PC) to help repair my stomach from bile damage and make bile less corrosive.
Starting each morning with warm water. This can help things move along without relying on coffee.
Walk for 10 minutes after each meal. This is such a small habit that makes such a big difference.
Maintain a gentle diet without extreme restriction. The only things that are actually off limits for now are: alcohol, coffee (though I have other forms of caffeine occasionally), deep-fried/greasy foods, and excess processed sugar.
It’s important for me to adopt changes that I know I can maintain long-term. Too many restrictions cause me to burn out and create more stress, which in turn worsens digestion.
There is no template.
Sure, there are basic guidelines: get tested for h. pylori first, stick to a gentle diet for 3 months, manage stress, etc. But a specific problem requires a specific healing protocol, and it’s really hard to deliver that message on a wide scale.
I guess what I’m trying to say is 1) healing is possible, but 2) it can vary tremendously from person to person. Don’t just buy every supplement I talk about on my TikTok; understand why and how it might work for you. Don’t just eat everything I show myself eating, because we’re two different people and as I always say…
what works for me isn’t always going to work for you.