What Causes Heartburn?

The most common digestive system disorder people experience is heartburn, which is highly associated with acid reflux. Often, many people will encounter heartburn or acid reflux during night time. When this happens, a burning sensation in the chest will be felt. This particular pain is similar to heart attack symptoms. However, heartburn acid reflux is also a very serious disease that can affect many individuals including infants and young children as well as adults. Infants usually grow out from this condition after time while most young children will likely experience acid reflux in their lifetime. Meanwhile, many adults are likely to experience possible occurrences of this condition due to lifestyle factors and eating habits.

Causes of Heartburn

Understanding the causes of heartburn is essential to those diagnosed with acid reflux. Eating habits or lifestyle factors should be changed to prevent this condition. As such, unhealthy eating or eating excessively at one time can cause improper movement of the gastric juices in the lower portion of the esophagus causing possible heartburn to occur.

These juices in the gastric area are highly acidic. When the gastric juice touches the lining of the esophagus, irritation and inflammation occur, causing heartburn. The abnormal gastric juice flow is due to either Lower Esophageal Sphincter, LES in short, caused by the relaxation of the muscle between the esophagus and the abdomen or other related factors such as structural defects or disorders like hiatial hernia or lifestyle factors.

Heartburn or acid reflux needs treatment especially when a night time attack happens. Night time attacks have similar symptoms to those experienced during the day except that night time attacks include snoring, restlessness, fatigue and even abnormalities in breathing. Attacks during the night tend to be more severe than attacks during the day.

Many people with heartburn or acid reflux understand how it is triggered. However, there are still many people lacking essential knowledge of the causes of heartburn. The simplest answer is food. Many people experience acid reflux after having a large meal due to improper breakdown of foods causing acid reflux to occur. Foods such as spicy foods, chocolates, fried and fatty foods can trigger this condition. In fact, even citrus fruits have a tendency to flare up heartburn.

If you have been diagnosed with acid reflux, you should try preventive medication and treatments to help aid in its cure. One way that can help lessen the occurrences is by changing your lifestyle. A change in lifestyle can really help rid of acid reflux from recurring. Also, you should avoid eating aa heavy large meal at one time. Instead, eat small meals at intervals. Eating large meals can increase pressure in the esophageal sphincter and at the same time, expand your stomach. Other preventive measures include maintaining your weight, avoiding alcoholic beverages, and not wearing tightly fitted clothes around the waist because all these factors can cause acid reflux.

Acid reflux is a common condition that can lead to severe problems if left untreated. If you are diagnosed with this condition, always take necessary precautions when experiencing it to avoid further serious problems. Understanding the causes of heartburn will go a long with towards preventing and treating this condition.

Tags: Acid Reflux, causes-of-heartburn, heartburn, Reflux Related Conditions

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.