Your Stomach

Your Stomach

A Greenwich, Connecticut money manager in his early 50s has made a vast fortune. He is being interviewed by Vanity Fair magazine about the 30,000-square foot home he is building. As the interview proceeds, the money manager pops a powerful antacid pill and sips from a glass of lactose-free skim milk.

One wonders: Will the manager enjoy his new mansion (or anything else) if his stomach is always hurting? If he could choose between the mansion and a sound stomach, wouldn’t he choose a sound stomach? Wouldn’t anybody?

A Very Widespread Problem

It is not just rich people who are popping antacids continually, who are literally afraid to eat, and who dread going to bed after eating dinner. Evidence suggests that a majority of adult Americans have stomach problems to one degree or another; many of them lead lives of utter misery.

An estimated 40-44% of adult Americans suffer from a particular stomach malady called acid reflux. This is acid backing up the throat from the stomach, and is commonly referred to as “heartburn.” Chronic acid reflux may be diagnosed as gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD). GERD in turn is associated with throat cancer, which is America’s fastest growing malignancy, up six fold over the past two decades.

A Medical Mistake?

The irony in all this is that these millions of sufferers may be the victims of a medical mistake. Medical mistakes are not uncommon in history. George Washington seems to have been bled to death by his doctors, and there are many other famous cases. But rarely in history has a medical mistake affected so many millions of people, which appears to be the case today with stomach remedies.