After eating a big plate of spicy tacos you start to feel the painful, burning sensation erupting from your gut and making its way into your throat. The spicy flavor of the tacos has turned sour and bitter.
Does this sound like a familiar story to you? Do you expect this experience every time you sit down to enjoy your favorite foods, even when you’re getting treatment for your heartburn? Well, did you know that you don’t have to live with this pain and discomfort anymore? It is completely possible to manage your heartburn and achieve complete symptom resolution.
Heartburn refers to the pain and burning sensation in the upper middle part of the stomach and chest. Heartburn is not a condition but a symptom. Often, many people suffer in silence with heartburn because they assume it’s just a lifestyle issue or because they don’t know that there are simple treatments that can help them achieve total resolution of their heartburn.
Frequent heartburn is caused by a condition known as acid reflux, reflux, or GERD. Acid reflux occurs when excess acid flows back up from the stomach and goes into the esophagus. When stomach acid comes in contact with the esophagus lining, chronic heartburn symptoms such as burning and pain occur. However, the frequency and severity of heartburn are not always a good predictors of how much the esophagus has been damaged.
Pepsin is a stomach enzyme that breaks down protein. It also travels up into the esophagus when acid reflux occurs. Unlike the stomach lining, the lining of the esophagus can be easily damaged by acid and pepsin. Surprisingly, Pepsin causes the most damage when acid levels are high. Therefore, when acid levels in the stomach are kept lower, the pepsin and acid are less likely to cause damage to the esophagus when acid reflux occurs.
The medial term for acid reflux is gastroesophageal reflux disease. It is usually referred to by the acronym GERD.
Acid reflux is graded from mild to severe:
Mild acid reflux has some of the following characteristics:
- heartburn and other symptoms occur less than 3 times each week
- symptoms normally do not occur at night
- symptoms normally do not affect daily activity
- heartburn pain in the chest is typically rated as 1 to 3 on a 10-point scale
- there are usually no major complications associated with mild acid reflux
Severe acid reflux has the following characteristics:
- the symptoms have been present for more than 6 months
- the symptoms regularly interfere with daily activity and can awaken the person at night
- severe heartburn pain in the chest is rated as 7 to 10 on a 10-point scale
- there may be complications associated with severe acid reflux