Thanks for all the tips. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who has this.
I've been very low carb for over six years now--don't think I can go any lower.
Yes, I've communicated about this with my doctor. She offered to have me come in, but thinks I'm on the right track. I'll be going in for a checkup soon, so we can discuss it more.
I tried ACV a bit (with the mother). The proponents of this on youtube and elsewhere sound so convincing, but other sites have convinced me it's a placebo response. But you never know.
One problem is that there is a good amount of variability in my symptoms. You can eat pretty much the same thing on two different days, and get the same amount of coughing. But I think my experiments will find out what works for me (just added ice to the set of variables, based on W2R's input).
Yes, I've tried omeprezole, and it did improve things somewhat.
Some things I don't get:
1. The esophagus is long, and it's not a big, wide-open tube like the trachea.
So I don't get how stomach acid can splash all the way up to the epiglottis area. OTOH, one can burp and taste food, so ...
2. If I eat at 4:30, how could I still have problems at 10 PM?
3. It seems that after a period of coughing/throat clearing, the problem is gone. So, sometimes after 20 minutes, I'm fine. But the conditions haven't changed much, so why is it better?