Is There A Treatment For Chronic Heartburn?

If you suffer from chronic heartburn, the best treatment is the one that eliminates heartburn from your life. What’s the best way to do that? Would it be medical, using some prescription that you may be reliant on for the rest of your life? Or is it a natural remedy, a way of changing your lifestyle so that you work with your body instead of trying to fix the damage.

Before talking about heartburn treatment, let’s review what causes heartburn. Usually heartburn is causes by a weak lower esophageal sphincter (LES) muscle. Heartburn is causes by that muscle being weak or relaxing when it shouldn’t. If that happens, acid from the stomach can rise back up into the esophagus, and give you that awful burning feeling.

Foods That Make A Difference

There are foods that aggravate heartburn, and other foods that can help heal the esophagus and relieve chronic heartburn. A great treatment is to eat foods that are less likely to result in heartburn.

First let’s take a look at the foods that can damage or weaken the LES. These include chocolate, greasy or fried foods, peppermint, fatty foods, caffeinated drinks, and alcohol. Also, smoking is a no-no for the LES – the nicotine in the cigarettes weaken that muscle. If you needed a reason to stop smoking and suffer from chronic heartburn, this treatment might be a great reason to quit.

Other foods can irritate the esophagus. These include citrus fruits or juices, black pepper, tomatoes or tomato-based products, and chili peppers.

Behaviors That Make A Difference

There are things you can do as a treatment for chronic heartburn. First of all, after eating, avoid bending over and lying down, as both can increase the incidence of heartburn.

Drink a small glass of water that is just warm (or herb tea) after eating can help dilute the stomach acid.

Also, saliva is a great help for chronic heartburn treatment. Saliva neutralizes stomach acid. It also helps with peristalsis – the movements that scoot the food along the digestive tract, including moving food from the stomach into the small intestines. How can you increase saliva? Chewing gum! You might try sticking in a piece of gum right after a meal and see if it helps.

Finally, eating smaller meals more frequently is better for you than eating fewer, larger meals. This is because the larger meals press against the stomach and the LES muscle, making it more likely that there will be leakage of acid. Also, eating more slowly can help as a treatment for chronic heartburn.

Nissen Fundoplication (medicthree.com)
Cure For Acid Reflux The Heartburn No More Way (slideshare.net)
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Battle against acid reflux begins with dietary changes (nationalpost.com)
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World Trade Center Workers Have More Cases of Acid Reflux (nlm.nih.gov)
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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 8:35 am and is filed under health source daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.