“WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD”
I took my son and his friends to see the movie Southpaw. It was a great movie where each punch felt like I did when I had Acid Reflux.
The movie was about a championship fighter who lost just about everything. His wife was killed, lost his daughter and his wealth - all because he couldn’t control himself.
Upon leaving I asked my son and his friend what could be learned from the movie? The answers were the following;
1. How anger could cause problems.
2. Making bad decisions gets the results you don’t want.
3. How important family is
While these were excellent points I made a few of my own, which were;
1. Bad decisions limit your choices. Every bad decision makes the next one more difficult.
2. Being angry lowers you IQ, again leading to bad choices.
3. Do the small things right the big things tend to take care of themselves. When Billy started making good decisions things started to work out. Is that only in movies? I think not.
The movie is basically about a boxer who makes one bad choice in an instance and his life starts to spin out of control.
As the bad decisions started to take hold you could see his choices were dramatically limited till he had very little control because his choices became less and less.
So how does the movie Southpaw teach you anything about Acid Reflux and your health?
Just like the star in the movie #JakeGyllenhaal started out as a fighter who had all the wonderful trapping of success then went downhill, so is the person who had no Acid Reflux and doesn’t address the issue.
By the limiting of options, which starts with poor food choices, weight gain, eat big meals, go to bed to close to eating, etc. Low and behold Heartburn starts with a cough, then it progresses to burning in the chest once or twice a week and finally symptoms presents itself 2-3 times a week and before you know the person has full-blown GERD.
While I don’t want to go into what Billy Hope, the star of Southpaw, did I do want to describe the fight back from Acid Reflux.
Once you have GERD you are in a world of hurt, just like Billy. How to you come back from painful nights of not being able to sleep?
The second lesson is do the small things right the big things tend to take care of themselves. The easiest thing to do is take a pill, that’s a good start if your doctor agrees.
The next things will be education and a litany of things your doctor will tell you that will make your head spin.
You are not going to be able to take it all in at once, let alone implement his instructions right away. However keep one thing in mind, what you can do is lift the head of the bed, it could be the easiest small thing you could do to take care of the big problem of acid reflux. Lifting the head of the bed using a mattress could be an absolute game changer that can reverse the spiral and start to give you more choices.
Why is this so important? Lifting the head of the bed adds gravity to hold down the stomach content, and if it should escape the stomach it will drain quicker.
The key is simplicity. If you did what I did which was nothing because there were no under mattress bed wedges you will suffer until you had enough. However over 10 years later you need not suffer, you could just click here and take the first step in doing the first small thing to make the big things in your life work.
Good night, sleep tight, don’t let Acid Reflux bite!
