thinksense

Heart Burn....

On another string on this forum several people mentioned that they had repeat episodes of “Heart Burn”. As is usually the case with medical subjects, there is no real lay person understanding of what causes heartburn (it is not too much acid in most cases, but rather too little), and what a patient can safely do about it.. If you want we can get into a prolonged technical discussion, but I’ll start by giving you some quick, safe things you can do about it, right away, today.

Ant-Acids are very unhealthy, and can make the overall problems worse over time, so you might be smart to avoid them.

If the problem comes on after lying down (going to bed ) you can help yourself by eating no closer than 4 hours of bed time. What is wrong, is that the opening at the bottom of the esophagus (the Cardiac Sphincter, which is always open a little to let you burp up air that you swallow) is staying open enough so that as the stomach squeezes and kneads the food, mixing in acids and other digestive chemicals as it does to start digestion, some food is pushed back up into the esophagus, which does not have as much mucous protection lining it’s walls as the stomach has to protect against the acids, and so the acids can burn the esophageal walls. This can be very dangerous if the acid erodes into varicose veins in the esophagus causing bleeding.

But above I said your problem was probably too little acid, why would acid burn your esophagus if there is too little? The answer is that in order for your stomach to release the food into your intestinal tract the food (called “chyme” at this point) needs to have reached a certain acidity level. If it takes too long to reach that level because you haven’t enough acid, the food will continue to stay in the stomach and be there still when you lie down, and it gets pushed back up into the esophagus.


When you get that burning in the esophageal area you can immediately try the following.
Try eating a raw, organic apple. It will relieve most people of the burning pain within 20 minutes or less.

Is the problem, as I mentioned a lack of sufficient acid? You can check this by mixing a glass of water and vinegar, 50/50 and sipping it as you eat. If the food you have eaten usually gives you heartburn, and doesn’t when you take the vinegar, you can bet you will need more acid, not less with your meals. Go to the health food store near you and purchase some HCL tablets. Follow the directions on the bottle carefully, don’t over do.

One more tip. Many people suffer heartburn from eating ice cream and other sweets that are filled with artificial sweeteners, colorings, and or MSG under one or another of it’s many names . And they eat them just before bed.

Nough said?