GERD Sufferers: How to make a homemade "tablet" or dry powdered version of Gaviscon Advance at a fraction of the cost (article 2/2)

In the first article I detail how to make your own homemade version of Gaviscon Advance at a fraction of the cost.  The article also suggestions which ingredients are needed and how to obtain them.  You will need the same ingredients below. 

Part 2 discusses how to make an equivalent to Gaviscon Advance tablets - a dry form of the antacid that travels and keeps well.

Gaviscon Advance Tablet Duplicate

Recipe - Tablet Version

In the comments below, commenters were asking if it is possible to make something similar to the Gaviscon Tablets. You probably can't make a tablet but you can make a powder or paste very easily that works just as well as and is more easily portable than a bottle full of liquid. Extended discussion below--here is the basic recipe:

ONE SERVING (2 tablets equivalent):

• 1/3 teaspoon sodium alginate (1g)

• 1/10 teaspoon calcium carbonate (200mg)

• 1/25 teaspoon Potassium Bicarbonate (200mg)

• 2 teaspoons Benefiber powder (4g)

• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon water (2.5-5ml) (Mix dry ingredients first, then add water to make paste.)

Equivalent of 2 Gaviscon tablets. Recommended dosage on Gaviscon label is 1-2 tablets.

10 SERVINGS (20 tablets equivalent):

• 3 1/4 teaspoon sodium alginate (10g)

• 1 1/8 teaspoon calcium carbonate (2g)

• 4/10 teaspoon Potassium Bicarbonate (2g)

• 20 teaspoons (~7 tablespoons) Benefiber powder (40g)

• 5-10 teaspoons (~2-3 tablespoons) water (25-50ml). (Mix dry ingredients first, then add water to make paste. You may want to save dry ingredients and add 1/2 - 1 teaspoon water to each individual serving just before taking.)

This makes 10 servings. Each serving is the equivalent of 2 Gaviscon Tablets.

Mix dry ingredients well. Add about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon (2.5-5ml) of water per serving to make a thick paste.

You can pre-make the entire recipe as paste (but see important note below!) or just make the dry powder and add a few drops of water to 1 serving just before taking.

Because Benefiber is an organic ingredient (made from wheat fiber) I would be even more concerned about mixing this with water and leaving it unrefrigerated for any period of time. As a dry mix, it should store well. As a wet mix--probably not well at all.

Extended discussion and experiments for creating a dry powder/tablet version of the antacid

A user on the original Reddit thread where I posted the recipe for "do-it-yourself Gaviscon Advance" asked if it might be possible to make a tablet version of Gaviscon Advance.  Here is my reply and suggested recipe:

I figured that Gaviscon Advance tables must have some kind of a binder included to make the tablets, along with the active ingredients of alginate and antacid type ingredients. Looking at the ingredients for Gaviscon Advance tablets, the main binder seems to be Macrogol 20,000 (see ingredients list here - section 6.1). Macrogol is a kind of non-soluble fiber of the type you might find in Miralax or similar. Different formulations of it are also used as a nontoxic/inert filler in tablets and the like, and I think that's what we're seeing in the Gaviscon tablets.

So I didn't have anything like that on my kitchen shelf but I did have a bottle of Benefiber which is a generally similar type of thing.

So I mixed up a serving of Gaviscon ingredients (1 g alginate, 200 mg potassium bicarb, 200 mg calcium carb) along with a 1-2 teaspoons of Benefiber.

Unlike the straight alginate, with the addition of the fiber you could take like a small spoonful of this in your mouth and swallow it, much like you would the Gaviscon tablets.

However, here is what works even better: You take a small amount of water and mix it up with the resulting powder--maybe 1/2 to 1 teaspoon water.

The result is a thick paste. You can take a bite of this & manipulate it through your mouth & down your throat without getting any kind of gummy goo coating your mouth. I took the resulting concoction in two bites, which was very very similar to taking two tablets of Gaviscon Advance except that I didn't get ANY gooey gummy alginate stuff stuck to my teeth etc.

Taking a bite of this "Gaviscon paste" reminded me very exactly of taking one of the Gaviscon tablets, except it actually worked *better* thanks to the fact that it was pre-moistened into a paste. The consistency was almost exactly the same as a Gaviscon tablet after you've chewed it up just a little bit.

Anyway, this might be an interesting option for anyone who likes the convenience and portability of the tablets. You could carry the dry ingredients mixed up and then just add a few drops of water to create the paste in order to take it. Or you could pre-mix this rather thick paste and carry that. Either might be easier/more convenient than carrying some kind of liquid.