Heartburn affects many people every day, and some suffer from it all day every day. However, there are preventive measures you can take to relieve heartburn symptoms and problems. Heartburn can often be a symptom of gastroesophageal reflux disease, so it is important to check in with your doctor if you cannot relieve heartburn with preventive measures and over the counter medications.
Prevention to Relieve Heartburn
There are certain foods that have a tendency to increase the amount of stomach acid present in your stomach. If there is excess acid in your stomach, you will experience heartburn. To relieve heartburn, you will need to determine what types of foods or beverages are the worst for producing excess acid in your particular situation. Generally, foods such as fatty or fried foods, tomatoes or tomato sauces, citrus fruits, including juices, chocolate and mints can all lead to excess stomach acid.
To relieve heartburn due to certain foods, you will initially want to cut out all acid causing foods and juices from you diet. Adding them back into your diet, one at a time, can lead to discovering which foods are the worst ones for your particular case. Once you have determined which foods are bad for your stomach, cutting them out of your diet or at least limiting your intake of them can help your situation quite a bit.
Once you have determined which foods cause you problems, you can relieve heartburn that you do experience with over the counter acid reducers; the most common types being antacids. These relieve heartburn by neutralizing the acid in your stomach. The other type of over the counter medications available, such as Zantac and Prilosec, work not only to reduce the amount of acid in your stomach, but also to reduce the amount of acid your stomach produces on a daily basis. Taking an antacid or other medication as a preventive measure before eating can help quite a bit to relieve heartburn before it even starts.
The ability to relieve heartburn is quite easy to do on your own at home. By watching what you eat, when you eat, and by taking over the counter medications in a timely matter, you can relieve heartburn fairly quickly and hopefully prevent it in the future. It is always important to talk with your doctor if you can’t seem to gain control of your heartburn problem. Constant, persistent heartburn can be a sign of a more serious problem that you will probably want to see your physician about.
