Archive for August, 2011

Heartburn Prevention: How to Prevent Heartburn

It is always much easier to prevent something than it is to stop it once it has already started, and it is no different for heartburn. In this article, you are going to discover how to prevent heartburn through a variety of methods, from choosing certain foods, cooking your food in one way over another, and even adding in some powerful acid reflux remedies at mealtimes in order to reduce reflux.

How to Prevent Heartburn: Foods

There are two things you can do with your food choices in order to prevent heartburn: choose certain foods and avoid others. Two of the best foods you can eat to help prevent heartburn are pineapple and papaya. These two tropical fruits contain powerful digestive enzymes which can help the body break down protein. This may aid digestion and help reduce acid reflux, especially after eating meat or plant proteins.

Protein in general tends to be a good food for preventing heartburn. When protein enters the stomach, the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES) gets tighter. Heartburn or acid reflux occurs when the LES loses tension, as this muscle is what constricts to keep what belongs in the stomach in the stomach.

Additionally, you can help prevent heartburn by avoiding certain foods. Some of the top foods that are known for their ability to cause heartburn are tomatoes, coffee, chocolate, spicy foods, and alcohol. For a full list of foods, check out our article on acid reflux foods to avoid.

How to Prevent Heartburn: Lifestyle

There are actually a lot of things you can do aside from changing your diet in order to reduce heartburn, including losing weight, cooking differently, and kicking bad habits. Losing weight is perhaps the best way to prevent heartburn, as no matter what your genetic background is like it seems that obesity is the only constant among heartburn triggers for all people.

Another thing that may help you is by changing the way you cook. Try making sure all your vegetables are cooked (steamed or boiled), as this makes them easier to digest than raw vegetables. Additionally, try cooking meat in a crock pot or marinading with vinegar or red wine, as this helps break down the meat as well.

These cooking alterations are especially helpful if you take a proton-pump inhibitor or H2-blocker to reduce stomach acid. The reduction in stomach acid can make digesting foods harder, so cooking vegetables and meat more thoroughly can make digesting them easier.

Another thing that is important is chewing your food. People who have acid reflux are much more likely to inadequately chew their food. Chewing your food gives more surface area for digestive chemicals in the stomach and intestine to work on, making digestion much faster. This is another reason why thorough cooking can reduce heartburn as it makes it much easier to chew.

Taking a step away from food, bed wedge supports which will raise your the head of your bed by 4-6 inches can be very effective at reducing heartburn as well. These allows you to lie on a slight incline when sleeping which will help keep acid down in the stomach. You can use something as simple as wood blocks or stacked up magazines to put under the bed posts at the head of your bed to put it on an incline.

Finally, you want to make sure that you drop the bad habits that are drinking alcohol and smoking. While there are some studies that suggest that drinking a glass or two of wine a night might be helpful for heart disease, it is certainly not helpful for heartburn. Try to limit drinks to a night or two a week and when you do drink, avoid having more than a few drinks at once.

How to Prevent Heartburn – Heartburn Remedies

There are also a few special tricks you can use to help prevent acid reflux. If you have been on this site before, you know that we are big advocates of using chewing gum. This helps stimulate saliva production (the body’s natural defense against acid reflux) and promotes digestive motility. After eating, chew on a stick of gum for 10-15 minutes and you will be surprised at just how effectively it can prevent heartburn.

If you need some extra heartburn-fighting firepower, try taking a spoonful of vinegar immediately prior to eating. This helps stimulate a large flow of saliva and can help digest your food. This is not something you want to do every day, but if you are about to go to a bull roast or buffet and know you are in for heartburn later, this can be an effective tool to use.

Another good option for the same situation as vinegar would be a supplement which contains papain (papaya enzyme) or bromelain (pineapple enzyme). Both of these are powerful digestive enzymes can help promote digestion which may help reduce heartburn, particular heartburn that is the result of eating too much.

How to Prevent Heartburn – Conclusion

You now have access to a lot of simple ways to prevent heartburn. Whether it is changing your diet, losing weight chewing your food, raising your bed, or adding in some good heartburn remedies, there are a lot of effective ways to prevent heartburn that do not rely on costly treatments.

If you are still experiencing acid reflux two times per week or more even when following these tips, you will want to see a doctor and let him (or her) know about the symptoms you have been experiencing.

Top 4 Reasons for Heartburn

Acid reflux, and the heartburn that accompanies it, is a very uncomfortable condition which tens of millions of people around the world suffer from each day. In this article, you will find out what the top 4 reasons for heartburn are so you can avoid these in the future.

While we know that we get acid reflux when stomach acid leaves the stomach and enters the esophagus, and this occurs when the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (the band of smooth muscle which normally seals the junction between the stomach and esophagus) is not functioning properly.

The real question is – what causes this malfunction in the first place? What are the real underlying reasons for acid reflux?

Reason for Heartburn #1 – Obesity

The primary reason for the number of heartburn and GERD cases exploding in the last 20 years is due to the growth in obesity. Out of all the lifestyle factors linked to heartburn, obesity has by far and away the strongest link between acid reflux and heartburn.

Obesity causes more than just heart problems as it is one of the major heartburn causes. If you are overweight and you are getting acid reflux, that might be your body’s way of telling you it is time to lose weight.

Reason for Heartburn #2 – Diet

I do not think it comes to a surprise to anyone that the foods you eat may be triggering heartburn. However, you may be surprised to know that the perfect acid reflux diet is not just based on eating the “good” foods and avoiding the “bad” foods.

Everyone responds to foods differently, so a list of foods that are “safe” or “bad” will not be applicable across the board. There are huge variations between individual people. Some people get heartburn when eating fatty food while others get heartburn from sugary foods. Some people can handle spicy food and cannot have diary, whereas others are the exact opposite.

Perhaps the biggest way diet leads to acid reflux is in the amount of food you eat. Most people do not respond favorably to being very full. Overeating causes the stomach to expand, which increases the pressure inside of it, which leads to more pressure against the Lower Esophageal Sphincter as food tries to push its way out the top of the stomach and cause acid reflux.

On the plus side, adding in certain nutrients may actually reduce heartburn. Using supplements like fish oil in addition to make sure your salt is iodized may improve acid reflux over time. As mentioned in our article on heartburn every morning, a high protein meal can also help reduce acid reflux.

Reason for Heartburn #3 – Smoking, Alcohol, and Caffeine

These three substances are the vice of many (personally I love coffee – in fact I am drinking a cup as I write this!) but all three of them can lead to heartburn. There are some ways we can manage our vices and still reduce acid reflux.

Having a drink or two with dinner on Friday nights is not likely to give you heartburn that night, let alone all week. Alcohol becomes more of a contributor to acid reflux when drinking is regularly (a few drinks every day), excessive (a 8+ drink binge), or both.

Smoking will likely always be a problem and causes heartburn on two fronts: through nicotine (which is thought to stimulate acid production) and through cigarette smoke, which triggers inflammation.

Understand that nicotine is not a healthy substance and if you are a smoker you should look to quit immediately. However, if you have no intentions of quitting smoking, consider picking up an electronic cigarette. You can get these online and they are fairly inexpensive. While you will still get the side effects of nicotine, the lack of cigarette smoke will cut down on inflammation in the body and may help reduce heartburn related to smoking.

If I drink coffee on an empty stomach, I get acid reflux. However, I cannot give up on coffee so easily. I have found that adding in a positive factor, in this case a protein shake (protein tightens the LES), I can drink coffee with no issues. This may be something you want to try if you are not ready to give up on coffee.

Reason for Heartburn #4 – Medication, Illness, or Injury

While these may not seem related, these are three of the top causes of heartburn that appears “out of the blue”. It is not uncommon for example to get acid reflux as a side effect from medication. Alternatively, some people experience reflux after getting sick, particularly with a stomach virus, food poisoning, or the flu. A third option would be to have some sort of internal injury such as a hiatal hernia, which increases your chance of getting reflux significantly.

If you have no history of heartburn then all of a sudden you start getting very regular heartburn, you need to see a doctor and mention this immediately. Make note of any medications you may have started recently, including over the counter medications and even supplements.

Reasons for Heartburn Conclusion

There are a lot of reasons why people get acid reflux, but this top 4 list covers the usual suspects. You can reduce heartburn significantly just by losing weight (should you be overweight), getting your diet and vices under control, and paying attention to any sudden changes in your health. See a doctor if you get acid reflux two times per week or more.