For many of us heartburn, (a/k/a acid reflux) indigestion, gas and bloating are a painful daily reality.  These are all the results of improper digestion. 

What is heartburn? 

Heartburn (a/k/a acid reflux) is the new normal.  Daily symptoms are experienced by 25 million people today, up from 15 million a decade ago, according to the American Gastroenterology Association.  Another 60 million say they have it at least once a month.  That’s a whole lot of people with tummy truouble.

Heartburn is a painful burning feeling in your chest or throat. It is called heartburn because when it happens inyour chest it feels like your heart is burning.  It happens when stomach acid backs up into your esophagus, the tube that carries food from your mouth to your stomach.

Turn 40 and suddenly conversations about digestive issues take on urgent facination.  Garlic just doesn’t sit right anymore.  Or Mexican food, maybe – or onions, or red wine.  Or all of the above.  You can add pregnancy and certain medications to that as special situations.  The frequence of acid reflux has turned it into a touchstone of middle-aged American culture, with over-the-counter medications seen frequently in TV commercials not to mention multiple online remedies.

Relax midlife Americans (and anyone who overeats regularly).  It’s not age.  It’s chronic overindulgence that leads to extra weight around the middle as a major culprit.  

Stomach (hydrochloric) acid is required to break down and digest food in the stomach.  Normally, stomach contents don’t flow back up into the esophagus because of a sphincter at the entrance to the stomach, which is only supposed to allow contents into the stomach.  However, if there is too much food in the stomach, the contents may back up into the tube leading into it.  Since the stomach contents are full of stomach acid and your esophagus is not protected from that acid (the stomach wall is protected) you will feel a burning sensation.  When acid gets in the esophagus it gets inflamed and feels painful, just like a heart that is burning. 

Unlike the stomach, which has a lining that protects it from stomach acid, the esophagus is not protected from acid.   

Treating heartburn is important because over time reflux can damage the esophagus. Over-the-counter medicines may help. If the heartburn continues, you may need prescription medicines or surgery. If you have other symptoms such as severe chest pain, it could be a heart attack. Get help immediately.

GERD, or gastro esophageal reflux disease, also refers to the reflux of stomach contents into the esophagus    Reflux is a fancy name for “backflow.”    GERD is a medical term for what we non-medical people call chronic heartburn. 

How frequent is heartburn?  Anyone can have occasional heartburn (as might occur after a spicy meal).  Frequent and recurring heartburn is caused when the opening between the esophagus and the stomach becomes looser or relaxes at the wrong times. Ongoing heartburn is called GERD.

When the sphincter between the stomach and the esophagus becomes loose or relaxes at the wrong time, the stomach contents can flow up from the stomach into the esophagus. This irritates the esophagus, which doesn’t have a special lining to protect it from acid like the stomach does.

The main symptoms of heartburn (acid reflux disease) are:

• A feeling of pain in the center of your chest
• Acid regurgitation all the way up to your throat, which is experienced as a sour, bitter taste.

Why is there acid in the stomach?
Acid in the stomach is a necessary step for food digestion.  The acid is hydrochloric acid, which is both necessary for food digestion and to kill a lot of bad bugs that might be found in your food.

The problem could actually be too little stomach acid and a poor digestive system.  If so, antacids aren’t a long term solution.

Heartburn drugs
Heartburn drugs are designed to shut down almost all normal stomach acid production.  While that provides temporary relief, it deprives the stomach of its ability to digest food properly, and that leads to other health problems.

A common misconception
is that heartburn is caused only by excess stomach acid that regurgitates back up into the esophagus.  The truth is that almost none of us actually have excess stomach acid, so why does heartburn occur?

A Primer on Digestion

Digestion begins in the mouth. 
The food you eat must be broken down into small pieces for cells to use as nutrition.  If you wanted to start a fire in your fireplace you wouldn’t try to shove a tree into it. You would cut the tree into kindling that would fit.  In the same way, your body needs to break down the food you eat into usable components.

Chew your food: 
Chewing activates salivary glands that release digestive enzymes in your mouth, lipase for fat, protease for proteins and amylase for carbohydrates.  That’s why you should chew your food well before you swallow it. Extra chewing helps to solve the problem. 

Chewing your food uses both a mechanical and chemical digestive process.  The more you chew your food, the further it breaks down into mush.  Food that’s not well chewed goes down your esophagus in chunks, and then may go through your system without being digested.

If you eat refined foods and sugars that are super easy to digest over an extended period of time you cause your own stomach acid and digestive enzymes to turn down their production.

When you eat fresh raw food, its live enzymes help your digestion.  You want lots of live food because cooking kills the digestive enzymes in the food itself.

Chew gum, fight heartburn
Here’s a simple way to prevent acid reflux.  Prop a stick of chewing gum into your mouth after a meal.  Chewing gum can reduce heartburn-related symptoms by boosting production of saliva, which is alkaline and helps neutralize stomach acid.  More saliva also means more swallowing which stimulates the muscle contractions that help digest food.  Do stick to sugarless gum 

How your stomach digests: 
Once the food drops into your upper stomach, salivary enzymes combined with raw food enzymes continue the work of digestion in the upper portion of the stomach.

The role of hydrochloric acid  
After about an hour, special stomach cells secrete enough hydrochloric acid (HCl) to acidify the predigested food to a low acid level (a pH of 3.0 to 1.5). 

This acidic pH temporarily deactivates the plant enzymes, and the predigested food passes to the lower portion of the stomach, from which cells secrete pepsin.  It is here that pepsin continues the digestion of protein.  Pepsin is a digestive enzyme that chemically digests, or breaks down, proteins into shorter chains of amino acids 

Adequate HCl is required to activate pepsin and maintain the low pH at which pepsin does its work.  If you don’t have enough HCl, you won’t have enough pepsin and your food is not properly digested.  The older we get the less likely we are to have enough hydrochloric acid in our stomachs.

Don’t overeat
The contents of your stomach will only back up into your esophagus if there is enough volume to make that happen.   So, cut down on your intake to avoid food backing up.

Reverse Stomach Acid Disorders
Certain herbs, digestive enzymes, natural stomach acid and nutrient supplementation can aid and help restore the natural function of the digestive process.  By taking a stomach acid supplement with your meals, your stomach can do its job more effectively.

Take digestive enzymes during meals – amylase, protease and lipase. 
They will help your mouth to begin the important digestive process. 

Take betaine hydrochloride (Betaine HCl) with each meal of the day and see if it doesn’t improve your digestion.  You can buy digestive enzymes and Betaine HCl at many health food stores and pharmacies. 

Gentian root is another supplement that can help to reduce digestive problems and flatulence.  It is a commission E approved medicine in Germany.

Take aloe vera juice, chew buble gum to stimulate mouth digestive enzymes, avoid caffeine drinks and foods, and avoid tight dlothes around the belly.

The small intestine
The small intestine receives the partially digested food from the stomach.  Here digestion continues, with the help of bile, pancreatic enzymes, and an alkalizing substance (bicarbonate) which reactivates the food enzymes, if there is proper alkalinity. 

The majority of nutrients from digested food are absorbed into the blood stream from the small intestine. These nutrients can only reach the blood stream by passing through the wall of the small intestine.

Assimilation into the cells
Once absorbed into the blood stream, food molecules must be carried to the tissue cells of the various organs throughout your body.  At this point they must be assimilated through the cell membranes of these organs.

Sometimes the cells won’t let the nutrient molecule in so it can be utilized.  Such is the case with insulin resistance – sugar can’t get into the cells of your body.  As a result the sugar stays in the blood stream where it circulates.  That’s a subject for another day.

Home remedies from our members

“Acidophilus capsules are inexpensive.  Buy them at a health food store, refrigerated variety is most effective. Cost is about $15 per month. Acidophilus is food, not a drug. It is the naturally occurring culture in yogurt. Instructions: Every day, take a few acidophilus capsules with water, that’s it!   Adding acidophilus capsules to your system may cure your problem altogether. There are no side effects because acidophilus is food culture, it is not a drug. It is the same as eating many servings of yogurt.“

“I tried a handful of almonds, roasted and unsalted. This seems to have done the trick.”

“Mix 2 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar in 8 oz water and drink. Take this any time you are suffering from heartburn.  It’s bitter but you’ll get used to it. It was the only thing that relieved the horrible heartburn I suffered when I was pregnant. It will save you money, AND it was safe for my baby.”

“I have found that heartburn and indigestion are cured within minutes of eating a slice or two of a Braeburn apple. It works every time.

My doctor told me to try celery, she swears by it for heartburn relief. I thought is sounded silly, but she said it is highly alkaline, which counteracts the acid. It works great! And almost immediately. Now I have a constant supply of celery in my fridge.

 “I’m in the early stages of pregnancy and I have suffered heartburn badly from the start. I never thought chewing gum would help but after chewing some (which I’m chewing as i am writing) its gone. Thank you for this, you’re a life saver.”

I have tried many things, but the vinegar is one of the best things I can recommend. Take a teaspoon and let it work. If it does not, feel free to repeat

Resource Center:

• http://www.heartburnremedytips.com/
• http://www.howstuffworks.com/home-remedies-for-heartburn.htm
• http://altmedicine.about.com/od/therapiesfrometol/a/heartburn.htm

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