Heartburn and Acid Reflux Natural Remedy

Here is some information on DGL studies from Astrid Pujari, M.D.”In terms of relevant studies, the two that I know of were published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were small, and didn’t meet the ideal criteria we now use for research studies. These scientists didn’t study heartburn specifically, but found that DGL helped to accelerate healing in people with ulcers.

While the data on DGL for heartburn is fairly skimpy, licorice has been safely eaten as a food, in reasonable amounts, for hundreds of years. Without the glycyrrhizin, the risk is even lower. Given that, it may be worth a try — as long as your doctor agrees.”

This is very close to my experience. DGL is claimed to be a proven heartburn remedy by many web sites but there is very little ground for that.

For more information read entire article in Seattle Times.

According to recent review released by the Food and Drug Administration patients who suffer from heartburn are not at increased risk for heart problems as a result of taking Prilosec or Nexium. The FDA and its Canadian counterpart began reviewing the drugs, used by tens of millions of people, in May.

The drug’s manufacturer, AstraZeneca PLC, provided them with an early analysis of two small studies that suggested the possibility of a risk.

The agency said its review of that study as well as 14 others indicated no increased risk for patients.

“FDA recommends that health care providers continue to prescribe, and patients continue to use these products as prescribed,” the agency said.

Well it is a great news for us - heartburn sufferers. We can take our Protonixes, Prilosecs and Nexiums without worrying about consequences too much .

I hope they will do more research regarding all other concerns related to long term PPI treatment like malnutrition, potential lung diseases, etc. For example:

Abstract:
Reduced serum vitamin B12 (cobalamin) levels have been documented occasionally during long-term treatment with a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) in selected groups of patients. This has largely been confined to patients being treated for Zollinger-Ellison syndrome who have sustained drug-induced achlorhydria, which does not ordinarily occur during treatment with a PPI. An appreciation of normal cobalamin metabolism and the pharmacological action of the PPIs adequately explain the mechanism for this reduction. PPIs do not promote the development of pernicious anemia.

Milk is a very popular home remedy for heartburn. Well it may work fine during the day to soothe the stomach after heavy meal. But don’t use it before sleep to prevent nighttime heartburn. The problem is that milk is only effective for 30 or 40 minutes. Since it is a high calorie food which requires quite some energy to be digested your stomach will produce even more acid than milk originally neutralized. That is why if you had some milk before going to sleep to treat your heartburn you can expect a sleepless night.

I strongly recommend to replace it with water since it will dilute the acid and get it out of stomach faster.

Don’t try to get rid of heartburn by eating something (there are lots of beliefs that eating something will help heartburn). If it is something high calorie it will produce even more acid.

Best recommendation is to stay awake for 2-3 hours after your last meal. This will guarantee that you will go to sleep with an empty stomach and zero nighttime heartburn.

If you cannot stay awake for that long I strongly recommend getting wedge pillow. It will elevate your body in a way preventing acid from getting to your esophagus. Wedge pillow could be uncomfortable for some people but you don’t need to sleep on it entire night (except a case when you have a severe chronic heartburn which needs to be treated for several months). Usually you will need it only for first 2-3 hours of sleep.

To celebrate 1 year anniversary of Manage Your Heartburn I created an overview of “How I cured my Heartburn” in a form of a short article so every visitor of this site could read it in 5 minutes and get a good overview on how I did it. Check it out here

Wow! I started creating this site during November 2006. It was just a small experiment to see whether non-biased and non-business oriented information about heartburn is interesting to the users.

Well after 1 year this site proved to be useful to many people. I’m very happy to hear your positive comments about information available on this site.

Traffic has grown from 10 users per day to 500 users which is quite a lot. Also this site got to the first page of Google for the “heartburn” query. So I’m really starting to think that opening a forum here might be a great idea. If you want to participate in it and be a moderator please drop me an e-mail to webmaster(at)manageyourheartburn.com. I would love to chat.

Thanks again for all your support and I wish you a Very Happy No Heartburn Christmas !
And I promise to write more frequently!

Sorry for the delay in writing - I was on short vacation. I hope you find my blog interesting and useful. Even though it is not very personalized I try to put as much useful information here as possible.
There were a couple of occasions recently when I was drinking beer or wine. Usually when I drink it over some certain amount I’m guaranteed to have night time heartburn. Usually my limit is 1 glass. Anything more than that = pain (usually minor but still pain).

So I tried to come up with some idea on how to reduce this pain even when you overindulge. I though that when you drink much you usually have alcohol staying in your system for some time. I read that alcohol usually stays from 1 hour to 10-12 hours. So the goal is to get rid of this alcohol as soon as possible. Doing this has two benefits. First it will reduce the night time heartburn (or hopefully it won’t show up at all). And second it will reduce the hangover.

So here are couple advices.

• Eat food while you drink. Food, especially high protein food such as meat, cheese and peanuts, will help slow the absorption of alcohol into your body.
• Drink water 1 hour before going to sleep (after being done with drinking). Alcohol pushes out water from the body. At the same time water pushes alcohol from the body too. This will also reduce morning dehydration and hangover (if you were drinking way too much)
• Incliner Sleep Wedge is an innovative sleep solution. It was scientifically designed just to help acid reflux sufferers. It relieves acid reflux by elevating your head, shoulders and upper body as doctors recommend. It helps you to sleep in a natural position for controlling heartburn, respiratory problems and digestion ailments. An alternative to sleep wedge pillow is Mattress Genie™
• Over the course of living with heartburn and acid reflux I found only one herbal treatment which is very effective. It is Slippery Elm. I mostly use it in the form of the powder and make a tea out of it. Tea isn’t very tasty but it covers stomach and esophagus with gel like liquid which protects them from acid. Usually one cup of tea is good enough to have zero heartburn through the night and in the morning.

When it comes at night (hopefully it won’t) don’t suffer in the bed. Stand by and sip some water. This will dilute acid in your stomach and also help your stomach to clear up. Also wait for some time 10-20 minutes before going to sleep again. Water and acid will leave stomach sooner when you’re standing or sitting.

I hope these advises will help you to win a fight over the heartburn!

I always thought that the only way to get non-prescription heartburn drugs like prilosec, zantac or tums is to go to the nearest grocery or drug store. How big was my surprise when I found out that you can easily get them on eBay and for considerably cheaper prices!

Even though shipping might eat some money you still can be in a win situation and save some money.

I was playing with different smoothies recently to figure out what works and what doesn’t work for me. So here is my list:

Milk, banana, protein - no heartburn but taste is so-so…

Milk, banana - no heartburn - but it is just a banana… Boring!

Milk, banana, strawberry - no heartburn and tastes very nice

Milk, banana, strawberry, peach - don’t overdo with peach, it can add nice taste pattern but also can cause minor heartburn. So experiment here.

Milk, peach, strawberry - risky one. But still worth a try if you don’t like banana. Try to start small on peach since it is quite acid.

I want to try to add some kiwi to my smoothies since they taste delicious. But they are the most acidic (not counting lemon probably)…

If you see any of the smoothies causing you constant heartburn stop it and try a trusted “no heartburn” one. Then slowly add very tiny pieces of fruit you like and see what happens.

Experiment and you’ll find it!

Constant heartburn usually requires more attention than occasional heartburn. Constant and frequent heartburn could be a symptom of more severe condition called GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).

Symptoms of constant heartburn:

- Pain or discomfort that starts in the middle of the chest and can then move up through the throat 

- Chronic cough

- Burning in the throat - or hot, sour, acidic or salty-tasting fluid at the back of the throat.

- Difficulty swallowing.

- Feeling of food “sticking” in the middle of the chest or throat.

- Sore throat

- Chronic hoarseness

Read the rest of this entry »

According to Food and Drug Administration study started in May Prilosec and Nexium don’t cause any heart problems.

Manufacturer AstroZeneca rised this concern when two small studies compared patients who underwent surgery with patients on a drug regimen. These studies found that patients on a drug regimen suffered from heart related issues more frequently than those with surgeries. It turned out that these studies were biased. Patients who underwent surgeries were significantly yonger when compared to ones who were treated with drugs. So higher rate of heart related issues could be easily described by older age of the patients.

Also FDA looked at 14 additional studies about Prilosec and Nexium and found that those people who took heartburn pill versus dummy pill had lower chance of heart related problems.

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