My Dad and I had perpetual heartburn till I was like in my late 20's (1980's), it was then that I heard this health program on the radio. The guest was a very old nurse, she said that the heartburn remedy industry was a millions of dollars industry, but in her day it was no big deal, you had heartburn, you drank the juice of half a lemon, and it was gone in 10 minutes. I thought, can't hurt to try it, it is not like amputation, so I tried it. The heartburn went away in less than a 1/2 hour and didn't come back. Before the discovery, when I would get heartburn at night, I would take like 5 Tums and it would take like it seemed hours for it to allow me to go back to sleep and I'd wake up in the morning with a paste mouth. With the lemon juice (real lemon juice squeezed by your hand), in 15 minutes I'd be asleep and the would wake up in the morning with the freshest breath and wet clean saliva. It was a life changer. I do use a whole lemon rather than the half she recommended.
Even more important, she recommended that people who are susceptible to heartburn, should eat sugars (fruits, breads, tomato) first and meat last. She said that we digest in the order that we swallow, what goes in first gets digested first. The problem comes in that if you eat the meat first, the sugars you eat after will be sitting in your stomach waiting for 4 hours. Save the meat for last. In my experience, everytime I get heartburn, it is because I had a desert after having meat. It is not so bad with chicken or fish, but still, it is best to not have deserts after the meal. If someone makes a really special desert, I'll ask them to give it to me before the meal. If I break the rule and I get heartburn, I will first drink a lot of water, and if that does not work or the heartburn is really bad, I have the lemon and that is the end of that.
For me, any fermented drink, beer and wine, are killers. I love beer (really good beer from Germany!) but beer does not like me. Beer and wine equal heartburn and hangover, even if I have just one beer.
Getting back to the nurse on the radio program, curiously, she mentioned the foods that should be avoided and three were bananas, yogurt, orange juice, the three things I was having for breakfast every day! I now have only the orange juice and only have it if I drink it first. If I forget to drink it first, I just skip it that day or maybe have it later in the day by itself.
My mother never had heartburn in her life, then started to have it. I figured out that it was caused by all the medications she had to take for cancer. I remembered that the nurse on the radio program had said that there are two types of people, those that do not even know what heartburn is, and those that get heartburn. That is how I figured out that my mother's heartburn was medicine induced.
Topic: Acid reflux (Read 6077 times)