The Acid Watcher Diet Review

There is a popular book by Dr. Jonathan Aviv, titled The Acid Watcher Diet: A 28-Day Reflux Prevention and Healing Program. As the name suggests, the book is centered around the idea that most people have acid reflux without knowing it, and within 28 days of a two-phase eating plan, individuals can get relief from the symptoms. I’m going to review it today to help you get a better idea of what it’s all about and whether it’s worth reading.

The Acid Watcher Diet

This is a standalone book designed primarily for people who are struggling with symptoms of reflux, but especially people who might be dealing with heartburn or silent reflux and don’t necessarily know it.

To be clear, he has also authored a cookbook sold separately to go alongside this particular diet plan, though you will find some recipes and dietary guidelines in this one.

There are three key sections:

1. The first is general info about acid disruption and your diet. 
2. The second talks about the principles and lifestyle changes that you might need to implement. 
3. The third section is really a step-by-step playbook for changing your diet and your lifestyle

Section three is your blueprint for putting all of the content he wrote into play, including meal plans and recipes. This third section is where you get a lot of the real details, the stuff that most readers want to know: how to get rid of acid reflux. 

So what is the plan all about?

There’s actually a lot about this plan, and it can be a little overwhelming at first, but he basically breaks it down into two key phases. 

Phase 1: Immediately Neutralize Acid

The first phase is called “the healing phase.” This is a strict 28-day change to your diet, things like removing spices, including black pepper, only drinking water, changing the type of salt you (probably) use, and so on. 

This first step is done with a balance of three key macronutrients:

1. Proteins
2. Carbs
3. Fats

There is a lot of focus on vegetable-derived proteins as opposed to animal-based proteins, particularly things like beans, tofu, nuts, grains, oatmeal, spinach, and kale.

There are many small tips included in the book, like using cold-pressed vegetable oils, particularly extra virgin olive oil, as opposed to other cooking oils.

During this stage, you will basically have a complete change to your diet (unless you were already eating pretty healthy), and it can be jarring.

The point of this is to heal your esophagus from the damage that has been caused by reflux, getting rid of any remaining pepsin that’s still there. This phase is strict for a reason, namely the fact that your body is able to cure itself if you don’t continually exacerbate the problem with unhealthy foods and drinks.

It can be hard to stick to this long term, which is probably why he then transitions after that 28-day time frame into the second phase.

Phase 2: Relieve Inflammation from Acid Reflux 

The second is done with a balance of micronutrients:

1. Vitamins
2. Minerals
3. Antioxidants 

This phase, called the “maintenance phase”, is where you are a little freer to reintroduce things that you might have alleviated during the first 28 days, but with some restrictions. 

For example, if you alleviated all alcohol like you were supposed to, but you want the option to still drink in your future, he says that potato-based alcohol is fine, so drinking vodka on the Rocks is the best recommendation out of all alcohol options.

The book highlights things that are within your control using this 28-day method and things that are outside of your control. For example, the book discusses how you can’t actually change your blood pH with dietary changes because that is a self-regulating mechanism that relies on acid buffers like your lungs, kidneys, and blood. However, while you can’t necessarily change your blood pH with your diet, you can tackle inflammation relief and neutralize the acids that are causing a lot of damage.

What I Like About The Acid Watcher Diet:

• Credentialed author
• Has actionable guides for buying and making foods
• Gives you a timetable and what are effectively SMART goals 

The book is authored by someone with a lot of credentials, a leader not only in certain medical techniques but several publications and institutions that specialize in reflex conditions. 

I’m certain there are a lot of people, especially after reading reviews from customers, who don’t necessarily know the strong correlation between their gut health and reflux symptoms. I, for one, have grandparents and several younger family members who will automatically follow whatever a doctor says as though it is scripture. 

But as an adult, I’ve learned (thanks to my several doctor friends who confirmed) that a lot of general practitioners you might go through first are very general, hence the name. They might not know how to look for silent reflux symptoms, and it wouldn’t matter if they did, because Western medicine focuses on diagnosing a condition by ruling out any other conditions.

So if there isn’t a test for it, they won’t look into it. After all, they can’t bill your insurance for a test they can’t conduct.

Moreover, their goal is to alleviate symptoms immediately once they get a confirmed diagnosis or even a possible diagnosis, and that just means writing a prescription or giving you off-the-cuff advice for an over-the-counter product you can use at the same time.

So, I say all that to say that people like my family who might be struggling with the advice they are given by their general practitioner could benefit greatly from the content in this book, especially if those concepts are new to them. 

What I Don’t Like About The Acid Watcher Diet:

• Only the final third is action; the rest reads like a medical sales book
• The 28-day emphasis is designed to make it easy, but real changes should be sustained over a lifetime
• There is too much emphasis on doomsday potential if reflux isn’t addressed

I don’t like that this book really emphasizes what I would consider the worst-case scenarios. Now, to be clear, the author is very well credentialed and is an expert in his field, so he knows what the worst scenarios look like, particularly things like esophageal cancer. 

However, a lot of the taglines and other content relating to the book talks a little too heavily for my taste about how “silent” reflux is exactly that, silent, and if you don’t start changing your diet now, using his book and his recipes, you’ll basically end up with cancer.

That’s just not true.

Yes, a lot more people struggle with silent reflux than realize it because the symptoms often go ignored, and yes, untreated reflux can get worse, potentially leading to severe damage of the esophagus and cancer. However, there is so much room between one end of that and the other, and someone struggling with silent reflux would have to live a pretty unhealthy lifestyle intentionally for decades before they reached that end of esophageal cancer.

Good Natural Alternatives to the Acid Watcher Diet

So, one of the things that I didn’t like about the acid watcher diet was simply the fact that it focuses on a 28-day program, so less than 1 month, for the initial phase of healing your body. After that, you are given the freedom to bring things back into your diet that might have been causing you harm before, like alcohol or coffee, but in a slightly less harmful fashion.

That said, I believe that health changes should be sustainable over the long term, not just a quick, 30-day or 28-day solution.

That’s why I would also recommend considering good, natural alternatives to acid reflux and heartburn that you can incorporate into your lifestyle without such a strict change or a temporary one.

Some of my top recommendations are:

Chewing Gum

I would encourage anyone struggling with these symptoms to start small with chewing gum after meals. Chewing gum is an easy way to encourage more saliva production to help coat the esophagus and keep the stomach acid down.

Aloe Juice

For those with more serious symptoms, incorporating aloe juice into a weekly routine can be a simple way to counteract the inflammation caused by acid reflux. This doesn’t have to represent a massive change to your routine or an expensive one.

Ginger Tea

Ginger tea can help with a lot of silent reflex symptoms, dealing with the nausea or gut-related issues that might be worsening symptoms.

Antacids

Of course, over-the-counter antacids can help relieve acid reflux symptoms, though if you’re already looking at the Acid Watcher Diet, you may be more interested in a natural alternative, for example, Reflux Gourmet.  

Reflux Gourmet

Reflex Gourmet is a product line that offers chewing gum and gel packets to be taken after meals or when you are about to go to bed or otherwise dealing with reflux symptoms. These have the benefits of all my other top recommendations by incorporating natural ingredients like aloe for inflammation, ginger for nausea, and a proprietary alginate blend. The alginate works to do both the healing and the maintenance that are talked about in the acid watcher diet by coating the esophagus to help reduce inflammation and also building a gel-like barrier between your esophagus and your stomach contents.+

Summing Up

The acid watcher diet is a good place to start for someone who is looking to make a significant change in their symptoms, especially if diet is a key factor in causing those symptoms. I love that the book comes from such an authority figure and that it does give you some actionable steps near the end of the book.

However, it is a diet, and as the name suggests, diets tend to imply short-term changes that provide long-term results, and in reality, I think anyone dealing with silent reflux or other acid reflux-related symptoms should strongly consider incorporating small lifestyle changes and products to help with their symptoms, like Reflux Gourmet, chewing gum, ginger tea, and aloe juice.