Food and heartburn

I have chronic heartburn and reflux, to the point where I was having respiratory tests and stumping to Docs as to the source of my wracking couch, only to discover that it was irritation from reflux!!

I don't know my triggers either, sometimes fat, sometimes not. Sometimes salt, sometimes not. Sometimes chilli, sometimes not. Sometimes tomato, pasta, carbs, protein, fish, eggs, candy... sometimes not.

It isn't a solution, I know, but I'm now being prescribed Nexium and *poof* no heartburn.

I know that working out the cause and fixing it needs to happen, but for now, Nexium has changed my life. I was actually getting used to being in burny pain!

I suffer from bouts of heartburn when my diet goes downhill. But i've learned to moderate my diet intake to mitigate any intense aches in my chest. My heartburn's quite manageable in that I kinda know what foods I should avoid on a general basis, but there are occasions where even with eating a banana my chest just burns.

I suffer the most at night as that's when I tend to eat most of meals. I've reduced my salt intake and minimized my serving of dairy compared to what it was before. Also I can't handle anything with a lot of oils, worst nightmare. I think what I've found that anything with intense spices and/or flavours are just triggers, so I merely minimize my intake lets say if I'm having a lasagna instead of completly getting rid of it.

I think the key thing is to look at your whole days meals and see the amount of high fat, high sodium foods your taking in and try to cut back to a minimum if possible. That is definitely one thing I've found that's helped me out, sticking to meals made at home that are low in sodium/fat/sugar. Also I've also found that smoking can aggravate heartburn...i'm not sure how but maybe you should check that out as well and reduce your frequency of smoking.

Finally, when I first sought out my doctor they had found that I had H.pylori which aggravated my hurt-burn last summer. You should get that tested. I wasn't aware until I did a blood test, was provided with antibiotics to clear it up.

One more thing (i'm sorry for the long post) I've been told that spacing your meals within a reasonable time can also do wonders, i try not to eat after dinner because it doesn't matter what I eat it my throat and chest can't handle it some days

Hope that helps!!

I had pretty severe heartburn/GERD when I hit my highest weight about 2 years ago. I had graduated from Tums to ranitidine to omeprezole, and sometimes even that didn't do the trick. It started getting better the more weight I lost on a primal/paleo (low-carb) diet that also eliminated wheat-containing products and bread. Wheat can trigger heartburn/reflux, so trying wheat/gluten-free might give you an answer. It may not be easy, but it's a good way to lose weight, too. Check out marksdailyapple.com