A Natural Cure for Heartburn

When looking for a natural heartburn cure the most basic of elements is seldom mentioned. This often overlooked factor is pH balance. It sometimes pops up in cosmetic ads and gardeners talk about its importance to successful gardening, but it is very important to humans, too. Let’s take a look at this condition and how a natural solution offers the best solution.

Everything we eat is acidic or alkaline, with a few neutrals thrown in. If you eat the modern American diet your meals are way to acidic. We go where our taste buds lead us, it seems. There is also the advantage of quick fix meals that lead us to not necessarily to unhealthy choices but unbalanced ones. This results in a meal plan loaded with tasty but hard to digest foods, heavy with meat, dairy products and pasta. These are all food favorites but unfortunately they come with a price. The high acidity of this type of fat and protein is a burden for the stomach to process.

While heartburn is a condition of too much acid in the stomach, there are ways to cure the situation without using meds. A natural answer is better because it is actually a cure rather than a temporary solution.

Try these easy step to see if you can have your own personal heartburn remedy - a natural cure.

1) Eliminate things that are causing the LES to relax. It naturally opens and closes the food pipe with each swallow, but certain chemicals weaken the strength of the sphincter. By finding which ones are causing the problem you can close the loop hole.

Some of these troublesome causes are alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and chamomile. These all contain chemicals that cause the sphincter to relax rather than shut tightly when it should. There are other foods that have relaxants. If eliminating these common ones doesn’t seem to help, put on your detective hat to find the problem.

2) Be aware of what you eat. Meat - especially beef, can be a natural gastric heartburn trigger. It happens because meat contains fat and dense protein that requires much more acid for the stomach to digest. To cure this problem remember that the stomach has a simple job, basically producing acid and enzymes that break down food so that it can be passed on to the small intestine. The advantage is adding healthy portions of vegetables gives the stomach an easier job and better pH balance.

As you can see, simple changes can have a big effect. Identifying foods and chemicals that can weaken the LES and avoiding them while the stomach is full can be a big plus for containing stomach acid that causes pain when it reaches the esophagus.

Eating smaller, balanced meals means the body has to manufacture less acid to digest a meal that essentially has a more alkaline pH. This means that food can be digested quicker and more efficiently. This should eliminate the need for those easy to reach for antacids that are disruptive to body chemistry. Beyond the benefits of having achieved a natural heartburn cure there are many other paybacks to general health. A diet like this relieves the body’s burden of having to continually eliminate high acid levels for healthy balance.

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