The Low Acid Coffee

Disclaimer: This post is not to promote any product. Me not paid to do so. :)

Lest doing so brings me to the hospital’s emergency room bed again, I have long since stopped drinking coffee. As mentioned in a post about my first ER experience, I have this annoying gastric condition which the doctors call the Acid Peptic Disease. It was only diagnosed in May last year but I believe it has been existing since college days. It was circa 2008 when abdominal pain and vomiting started, if I’m not mistaken. Boy did I binge eat those days due to stress and inability to eat on time. I blame my university professors for this condition of mine. I’m not even kidding.

If you Google it, APD is not a unique-and-hard-to-explain type of illness. Though there are many types of it, I wasn't able to attend the follow-up check up then so the specification is still for me to find out but basically, APD is an ulceration caused by a stomach that secretes excessive acid. This results to a weakened lining of the stomach which in effect gives us discomfort and even unbearable pain when it's not digesting anything. This is why it is advised that a patient regularly lines his stomach with food. In my case, I eat every 2 hours. Aside from eating more frequently, there have been certain restrictions to my food and drink intake too.

APD prevents me from drinking and eating anything, really. First, those that are too spicy, so I bid my favorite super spicy Lucky Me pancit canton farewell years ago. Nothing sour, which isn't really something I miss because I don’t love that taste either. I just hope I could still eat ripe yellow mango and not have a bitter after-taste in the mouth (that’s a sign of acidity, folks). I find it weird though that I can eat all green mango I want and don’t get any abs pain attack. That’s a consolation to my already awful predicament because losing mango and bagoong (shrimp paste) would be another blow I wouldn't take. I was also asked to avoid anything acidic, obviously. This means I had to avoid soda which isn't so bad because I never loved soda. But what pains me the most is that I can never have coffee anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I was never the coffee addict. I’m not one of those who resides in Starbucks. And I’m not my mom who uses coffee to beat boredom when there's no household chores to do. I don’t even use it to keep me up when I need to pull an all-nighter because that just doesn't work for me. Coffee to me is like milk, it actually brings you to bed with a good dreamy sleep.  I really just love the taste of it and I was good with 1 cup a day. Unfortunately, APD has taken that away.

Now I have recently discovered this yet-to-be-proved amazing thing in the market. It’s Kopiko’s L.A. Coffee. Kopiko brown used to be my home brand back in the days. This enough makes me giggle of excitement. L.A. stands for Low Acid. Sounds good right? It promises wonderful things: (1) Special low acid formula, (2) Controlled roasting process (I don’t even know what that means), (3) High quality coffee beans. And it’s main tagline? GASTRIC FRIENDLY. Now, show of hands. Who says that’s awesome?! Lol.

I have yet to try it though. I’m just too scared. I remember trying something decaf from Starbucks almost a year ago. It still made me want to purge because the stomach pain was just too much to bear. Since then, I have never believed that decaf thing anymore. It made me realize, as long as there’s coffee in it, it’s no good for my stomach. Now this L.A. Coffee is something. What if there’s hope to my situation? Maybe this is it? I wouldn't know until I try, right?

If you have a condition like mine and have tried this product yet, hit me! I would love to know! Kthanks :)