GERD: Super Secrets to Control Your Heartburn
Have you ever wondered exactly what process causes heartburn? There’s a lot of research into the whole deal and how different treatments work to control your heartburn. I’ll be explaining how it all works in a bit of detail, shouldn’t be too technical but it’ll give you an in depth look at what’s happening.
First of all for a bit of anatomy, at each end of the stomach you’ve got a sphincter which is like a valve that controls the flow of food into and out of your stomach. At the top of your stomach you’ve got the LES (Lower Esophageal Sphincter) as in at the lower end of the esophageus. And at the other end of the stomach is the Pyloric Sphincter. Now the Pyloric Sphincter has to open to let broken down food through into the duodenum (the top part of your intestine) and what controls this is acid receptors or sensors at the bottom of the stomach. These receptors respond to the acidity reaching a certain level which means that the food has been broken down enough.
But what happens if the acid isn’t strong enough to trigger the sphincter to open? Well then, the food and stomach acid stays in your belly and churns around and it all begins to ferment! This process releases gases and that increases the pressure inside the stomach. All this time the body is trying to get the food to go on down the digestive tract and so the stomach is contracting to get things moving, but if the pyloric sphincter won’t open…
At the end of the day the LES is weaker than the pyloric sphincter so the build up of pressure will go up the esophageus rather than down the gut. So the burping and acid reflux is the end result of this whole process. Bit of a process I know, but I hope this makes it all a bit clearer for you. PPI’s Now, if you go a doctor with GERD (gastro esophageal reflux disease) you’ll likely be given a prescription for a PPI medication. PPI stands for Proton Pump Inhibitor and what this does is blocks the action of your stomach to produce as much acid.
This is how it works to stop heartburn, but the effects don’t stop there. Since you’ve decreased the acidity in the stomach, your food won’t be broken down as much by the time it gets into the intestine and also more bacteria will pass through the stomach and into the duodenum. This can make you much more susceptible to “stomach bugs” and excess bacteria living in the stomach. Over the longer term PPI’s have been linked to calcium deficiency as your body can’t absorb it is easily to become reliant on the PPI’s considering that as soon as you stop taking them you’ll get the heartburn back again! This could be considered a great thing by the companies that produce the PPI’s but not necessarily by the individual!
So it would seem that if you could increase the amount of acid in the stomach the pyloric sphincter would do it’s thing as it’s supposed to and the acid would go down instead of up and it’s all good. So how do you increase the acidity in the stomach? Quite simply, increase the micro nutrients that the body requires to produce stomach acid! In most cases these are a few B vitamins. Specifically Vitamins B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin) and B6 (pyridoxine) are the most common ones. Just supplementing these I your diet can fix the whole problem at it’s root.
There’s plenty of cases of chronic GERD sufferers taking B vitamins for only a few days and getting rid of most of their symptoms, without drugs and for the long term. This information isn’t meant to replace your doctors advice but hopefully it’ll all work to cure your heartburn for good! If this information was helpful then you should check out my blog here for more great tips and information.
All the best,
Mark Syme
Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/diseases-and-conditions-articles/gerd-super-secrets-to-control-your-heartburn-886790.html
