Suffering from chronic heart burn? This can make your life miserable. It can interfere with your sleep and even with your ability to work well. It is also known as gastroesophageal reflux disease. It often happens that the stomach acid goes up into the esophagus causing a burning sensation. Changing you lifestyle and your dietary habits can make a huge change.
Every person have experienced heart burns at some point of time in life. The main factors that contribute to heart burn are excess belly fat, eating larger portions at a time, poor elimination or constipation, eating such foods that can irritate the stomach, high fat diet and excess consumption of acidic foods. Below are mentioned few easy tips by which you can prevent heart burns.
Various Ways To Prevent Heartburn
Don’t Over Eat
Eating a lot at a time can expand your stomach and in turn heart burns. Try eating smaller amounts at a time. You can eat 6 smaller meals instead of eating 3 big meals. This can help you to prevent excess filling of stomach. Over eating can produce stomach acid which has many side effects.
Larger meals tend to stay in the stomach for a longer period of time and thus esophagus is exposed to stomach acid for a longer period of time which causes heart burns. Eat your food slowly and chew it properly so that you can digest every bit of it.
Know Your Friends And Enemies
Spicy foods, chocolates, citrus, mustard, chillies, peppermint, all tomato based foods and raw onions are some of the well-known enemies. Make sure that you stay away from them especially if you are prone to heart burns. These can easily trigger digestive problems. You should even avoid all kinds of animal products like meat, eggs and fish because these are very difficult to digest. All kinds of energy drinks, coffee and soda are also very harmful.
These can irritate your stomach linings instead try switching to herbal tea, water with lemon, etc. You can eat food rich in fibre like whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables etc. You can even have a plant based diet because these are rich in fibre and contain active enzymes. Plants are very easy to digest and cause less acid compared to other foods. Knowing your food enemies can help you to stay away from heart burns.
Keeping Yourself Healthy
Make your lifestyle healthy. Walking can even help you to ease your heart burns. Many researchers say that walking is advantageous because it keeps people upright and the force of gravity can keep food down. Don’t go in for vigorous exercise just after having your meal. Wait for about an hour so that your food gets digested.
Instant exercising can cause heart burns or in some cases can even cause vomiting. Make sure that you don’t stretch your arms after eating big meal. Instead take a walk so that your food goes down. Walking can help you in easy digestion of food and in turn prevents heart burns.
Avoid Going To Bed Just After Eating
Make sure that you don’t lie down or get excited about stooping or performing other actions just after your meal. You should at least wait for an hour before doing anything. This can help you to keep the acid at the right place.
Lying down just after eating can weaken your LES which can in turn lead to heart burns. It has been found that those who have a habit of sleeping just after eating are more susceptible to heart burns as compared to others.
Reducing Weight
Try reducing your weight. Over weight is also connected with gastric reflux and can increase the chances of heart burns. You can eat oatmeal in your breakfast because these are not fatty can help you to maintain your weight.
Dieters have recommended to eat slowly so that you can know the correct time when to stop eating.
Few Natural Remedies
Try chewing few basil leaves to soothe your digestive tract. But make sure that these are fresh. Consume some organic raw honey to neutralize the pH in the stomach. Drink chamomile tea to neutralise your stomach acids.
You can even try slippery elm lozenge to protect your digestive tract. These products are easily available on the market or in the drug stores.
Smoking And Alcohol
Smoking contributes to a number of problems and one of them is heart burns. If you are looking for the best way to prevent heart burn then stop smoking immediately. Some of the negative effects of smoking are reduction in saliva production, impairment of the functioning of the lower esophageal, damage to esophagus and many more.
Don’t drink too much of alcohol because these can increase acid production in stomach. You should drink white wine instead of red. Limit your alcohol consumption and try diluting your beverages with soda or water. Keep a track of the drinks that you drink and keep in mind that you do not drink those beverages that aggravate heart burns.
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Avoid Tight Clothes
Tight fitting clothes especially around the abdomen because this can squeeze your stomach and in turn can force food up against the esophagus. Tight fitting belts and waistbands should be avoided because these can also cause heart burns.
Stay Away From Stress
Stress is also known to cause heart burns. Medications and regular exercising can keep you stress free.
During stressful times all daily routines are disrupted and in turn can indirectly trigger heart burns. So try following some relaxing tips to stay away from stress and heart burns.
Drinking Water
Last but not the least is drinking ample of water. You should drink 8 glasses of water on daily basis to prevent heart burns.
Water can help you to digest your food easily. Water can wash the acid from your esophagus into the stomach.
If the above mentioned tips does not help you then try taking an experts advice before things get worse. Prevention is better than taking medicines after you suffer. If you forget things then write it on a piece of paper and put it somewhere in your room so that you don’t forget following such tips.
Caution: Please use Home Remedies after Proper Research and Guidance. You accept that you are following any advice at your own risk and will properly research or consult healthcare professional.