Cause of Heartburn – An Explanation

If there are was a disease that you could call American, heartburn would have to be it – 20% of America goes through it. At least once a month. And for the few who suffer from the disease known as GERD, heartburn is something they suffer through every day. Most people think that they know all about every likely cause of heartburn – spicy food, being overly indulgent with rich food, too much chocolate. The truth though is that heartburn isn’t just about what you eat and how much of it you knock back. If heartburn seems to be something that keeps looking in like some best friend, perhaps what you need is to do a little bit of detective work – to find out what seems to be behind all the trouble.

Heartburn is what you get when the valve that separates your food pipe from your stomach doesn’t do its job well enough and lets stomach acid to back up into the food pipe. The pipe isn’t built to handle that kind of abuse. The basic thing you need to keep in mind fighting heartburn is that you don’t want to do anything that affects the integrity of that valve. Do that, and you should succeed in keeping every cause of heartburn well away. Let’s start with one of the worst agents of stomach valve weakness – smoking. Smoking weakens all kinds of valves in the digestive system: the one between the food pipe and the stomach and the one between the stomach and small intestine too. It also makes it more difficult for your saliva to wash away any acids that get into your food pipe – mostly because once you start smoking, there isn’t as much saliva anymore. If you ever needed one more reason to quit, heartburn should be it.

What with all the stress and anxiety that the economy and a tough work situation put everyone through, people end up using a class of popular painkillers known as NSAIDS these days a lot more than they should, for their headaches – ibuprofen, naproxen and others. Staying away from those pain killers isn’t all you need to do either. There are all kinds of other drugs that contain those pain killers – some blood pressure medicines, certain antibiotics, and certain osteoporosis drugs. If you take any of these drugs and you’re experiencing heartburn, you do need to know that these drugs are a leading cause of heartburn. You need to talk to your doctor for help finding a drug that doesn’t do this to you.

Everyone loves Omega3 fatty acids these days. They are promoted as the best natural way to beat depression, heart problems and all kinds of other situations. Fish oil, a popular source of omega-3 fatty acids also acts as a cause of heartburn. There is just something about the oil. The fish it comes from is pretty safe though.

One of the best resources for natural treatment of acid reflux is a product called heartburn no more

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