Acid Heartburn - Do We Just Have to Live With Acid Heartburn?
Quentin Norris
It begins in your chest, that burning torture that warns of future agony. But here, at this crossroads of pain, you have to tread lightly and carefully, because getting it wrong could mean either life or death.
After all, this searing pain could be the onset of a heart attack. This fear subsides before it has time to take root in your paranoid mind.
You know what you are feeling now is not the start of a heart attack. You've felt this agonizing pain before. It's the return of your old pal "acid heartburn."
You know what did it...
That "hearty" breakfast this morning, with all that fried greasey food. Could have been your first cup of coffee -- black with no sugar -- that sent the invitation to your acid heartburn flare-up.
Or the second cup. What about the chocolates you stuffed down your esopahgus during lunch?... And here you are, hours later, and the antacids are not cutting it.
The sad part is that these habits are leading you further into more permanent damage, more acid heartburn trouble down the road.
There are plenty of experts out there telling you how to cure acid heartburn, what acid heartburn is, and why you are suffering from it. This article will go into just a light dusting of these concepts, and will hopefully help you to clear up any misunderstandings about acid heartburn.
First of all, what is acid heartburn?...
It starts in your chest, usually after you've eaten. It is a burning sensation, near the heart region, hence (dare I say it?) the name "acid heartburn." The burning is your stomach juices backing up like a clogged toilet, sifting into your gullet and up into your esophagus.
The burning you feel is acid burning through the tissue of your windpipe. See,your stomach can take this onslaught of stomach acid but, your esophagus can't.
The cause of acid heartburn, of this backing up into your esophagus of all that stomach acid, is a little doodad we all have called a lower esophageal sphincter. It is also known by the acronym LES.
This is the character whose job it is to keep the contents of the stomach in the stomach and not racing up the windpipe to keep you up at night.
But sometimes the LES gets lazy, or is distracted, and lets it's guard down.
The LES works more alertly in some people, less than perfect in others. This explains why some people can go their whole lives without even the slightest hint of acid heartburn.
Boy, are those people lucky. If there was a way we could outsource their LES and fire yours, I'd be the first in line to sign up for this service. But, alas, our LES's are our own, so we might as well keep going to the drug store for antacids and other acid reducers.
But, using these "cures" may not be so good for you.
If they aren't the cure, what is? Am I saying that those who suffer from acid heartburn are just going to have to get used to it? Absolutely not.
Living with your acid heartburn problems is not the right thing to do. You would be aggravating an already irritating problem, making it worse and eventually causing irreversible damage.
The trick is to find the cure that will lead to your LES doing its job, and doing it all the time, not just when it feels up to the task.
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