Is this a Cause of Heartburn?
If there is a disease that you could call American, heartburn would have to be it – 20% of America experiences it. At least once a month. And for the few who suffer from the disease called GERD, heartburn is something they suffer through each day. Most people think that they know all about every probable cause of heartburn – spicy food, being overly indulgent with rich food, overmuch chocolate. The truth though is that heartburn is not just about what you eat and how much of it, you knock back. If heartburn looks to be something that keeps looking in like some best friend, possibly what you need is to do a little of detective work – to check what seems to be behind all the problem.
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 primary 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 among 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 come in your food pipe – mostly because once you start smoking, there isn’t as much saliva any longer. 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 everybody 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 painkillers is not all you need to do either. There are all kinds of other drugs that contain those painkillers – some blood pressure medicines, certain antibiotics, and certain osteoporosis drugs. If you take any of these drugs, and you are 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 does not do this to you.
Everybody 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 act as a cause of heartburn. There is just something about the oil. The fish it comes from is pretty safe though.
