A sore throat, chronic cough and bronchitis that just won’t go away. Think you might have a lingering cold? Maybe. But doctors at Mayo Clinic say for some people, those symptoms might actually be caused by acid reflux.

Mary Labrash thought maybe her symptoms were caused by an allergy to lilacs or some type of infection.

“Bronchitis that wouldn’t go away. A lot of the time it was like I had laryngitis,” she says,

So Mary was surprised when doctors at Mayo Clinic said her throat problems were not likely caused by a respiratory infection, but by acid reflux.

“I didn’t think I had acid reflux problems,” says Labrash.

No heartburn. No sour stomach. You see, most people with reflux feel it – that burning sensation caused by stomach acid splashing into the bottom of your esophagus. But…

“In a small subset of people, it travels even farther up and causes throat symptoms,” says Dr. Yvonne Romero of the Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Romero calls it supraesophageal reflux. Her research team studied whether certain symptoms -- chronic cough, the feeling that something’s stuck in your throat, hoarseness, sore throat, or constant throat clearing -- go away when you take a proton pump inhibitor. This medication is commonly used to treat heartburn. It works by turning off many of the pumps that produce acid in your stomach.

“A proton pump inhibitor will cut down on how much acid you make. The less acid you make, the less acid you have to reflux into either the bottom or top of the esophagus,” says Romero.

Labash’s symptoms decreased after she went on a proton pump inhibitor

The laryngitis is gone. So now she can talk with her granddaughter Madison as they craft bouquets.

For more information on acid reflux, go to the Mayo Clinic web site.