Heartburn is one of the symptoms of acid reflux. Those who are afflicted are also burdened by other difficulties with normal bodily functions such as swallowing, breathing and talking due to coughs or hoarse throats, and dizzy spells and nausea. Luckily, a diet for acid reflux and heartburn is now available for the public.
Your Eating Habits and Acid Reflux
A lot of experts say that to be able to address heartburn or acid reflux, you will need some changes in your lifestyle, as you need to modify your diet and food intake, your weight loss regimen, how you maximize rest, sleep, or recreation and even how you prepare your food.
For starters, you might want to take stock of the kind of foods or drinks you habitually take for granted, like alcohol, fatty foods, caffeine in coffee or colas, chocolates, even some fruits (especially vitamin-C-rich fruits) and vegetables. You should look also at the frequency and timing of your intakes of the foregoing.
For example, if you were the kind of person who can not sleep without taking a glass of warm milk a few minutes before bedtime, you should know that the milk acid will be working its way through your esophageal system while you sleep. Acid reflux is likely to occur because of this habit.
Dealing With Reflux
As the kind of food you ingest and the manner and timing in which you take them are important, it all boils down to one thing: you need a diet program for acid reflux.
First and foremost, avoid the foods and drinks mentioned earlier as their acidity inevitably leads to acid reflux. Substitute them with foods that help your digestive system in its function of breaking down and metabolizing the food you eat.
Help your system further by taking in foods that are prepared healthy, avoid oil-soaked cooking, avoid fat-soaked frying, and avoid the grits in the frying pan so to speak. Going for a bland diet may not be that appealing (ask anyone who’s been confined in the hospital for a few days), but it may come to that if you are not careful.
Controlling Acidity
As you are confronted with acids, your first line of defense is to avoid those acids as much as possible. The GERD treatment, which is a treatment for gastro-esophageal reflux disease, is basically about controlling acid. If you realize early on that your heartburns are due to acid reflux, you are more fortunate than the rest. You can simply avoid, as stated earlier, acidic food that causes the reflux.
If the diet or food intake scheme does not work, you can consult your doctor for medications that can assist your diet change and counter the effects of the acid. There are a lot of antacids available out there anyway.
The Diet
You can try going on a GERD diet that will address the symptoms of the acid reflux. However, you must remember that you have to take the diet in combination with a dietary and lifestyle change, sometimes even medication.
The diet will mainly be modified by decreasing the intake of high fat meals, decreasing the quantity of the meal (as overeating almost always lead to hyper-acidity and heartburn), decreasing calories (that is why you need to lose weight), abstaining from chocolates and coffee and beer and alcohol and cola and all those other acid-causing addictions.
Sample Diets
The McKinley Health Center provides some sample GERD diet for acid reflux. The simple menu will show whole grain cereals or banana or toast with jelly for breakfast, vegetable soup and lean beef patties for lunch with fresh fruit salad, and possibly a green salad and chicken breast for dinner. A bit on the lean side but diets for acid reflux have to be so in order for the acidity to be addressed effectively.
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