Originally Posted by
Sloppy Joe
Whatever his AIDS are/were, tor think that a 'mouth rinse' is the panacea is laughable.
The docs clearly realized that simply coating his throat with saline satisfied his WebMD detective work, which lessened his anxiety and made him a manageable patient.
The placebo effect is a real phenemenon, and they likely bled him financially to get him there.
But he feels better so no harm, no foul. All in the game.
The dry mouth rinse's success was a surprise.
I tried a bunch of solutions prior to that -- some medical, some "alternative", and all of them failed. A lot of these I came in with high hopes because people on the internet gave them praise. "Everything else failed, I tried this, and it worked!!!" Then I'd try it, and... no help. If there were ever a placebo effect potential, it was there, but (unfortunately) my mind wasn't buying any of it.
I only used the dry mouth rinse because I had mentioned to my griflriend, "Oh, and my throat has been dry lately, too, which is annoying", and she got that rinse when she was at the store, without my even asking.
Then I tried it, believing it would only help with the dry throat (and not the LPR sensation or the choking). I didn't even have an outside hope that it would do anything for the LPR. I just used it for the dry throat.
I fell asleep quickly. I said to my girlriend the next morning, "This is going to sound weird, and maybe it's a coincidence, but I fell asleep quickly with no choking, and the only difference was using the rinse."
I then used it again, and I noticed from then on that things were significantly better for a few hours each time.
It's annoying and dismissive when people say "it's just anxiety" or "it's just a placebo" when you know that's not true at all. The dry mouth rinse actually worked for a logical reason. My LPR was largely due to a dry throat problem I developed (and still have). Since that's not most people's cause of LPR, the solution eluded me for awhile, even after very extensive reading about it. I've since suggested the rinse to others, some of whom also found success from it (and interestingly, the ones who did were also ones who had no reflux issues.)
BTW the "docs" didn't bleed me financially at all. They didn't suggest the rinse, nor did I tell it to them after the fact. I realized that the "docs" would be useless to treat the LPR after exhausting the standard reflux-type treatments for it, finding that they failed, and reading online that LPR is really, really poorly understood, and that for many there is no relief. At that point I used the doctors more to do tests and rule out potentially bigger problems, and not to solve the LPR. I solved it myself, albeit by accident.