Article by Barry Lutz
What is acid reflux, and why is your diet such a contributing factor to the heartburn and the pain and other related symptoms that you are experiencing as a result?
Acid reflux is a condition where the acids in your stomach are able to move back up into your esophagus. The digestion process includes the production of enzymes that are necessary to break down the food that you have eaten. Although these normally stay in your stomach, when a muscle known as the lower esophageal sphincter or LES is malfunctioning, it either doesn’t close all the way or opens up during digestion, thus allowing acids to leave your stomach, and cause acid reflux.
Your diet is very much related to acid reflux because of factors like the following:
• Certain foods contain far more acid content.• Certain foods cause the LES to relax.• Certain foods digest slower causing both more acid and having it stay in your stomach longer.
So, your acid reflux diet is going to be a combination of eliminating the trigger foods that lead to increased symptoms, while eating foods that not only won’t increase the acid content in your stomach, but can even help neutralize it.
Besides focusing on the foods that you eat, your acid reflux diet is also going to include your eating habits. This will be based on trying to reduce acid production, and the amount of time that the acid remains in your stomach. In light of this, one of the most important things to do is to eat smaller and more frequent meals, instead of three large meals each day – larger meals will take longer to digest, and will require more acid to do so.
Additionally, don’t lie down shortly after you eat. Stay upright for at least 45 minutes, and 2-3 hours would be a lot better. And when you do lie down, and especially when you sleep, it will be helpful to elevate the head of your bed in order to raise your torso.Acid Reflux Diet Trigger Foods
When you have constant reflux and heartburn pain, you might not even want to eat just from thinking about it, or if you do it will be something like a plain baked potato or plain turkey. Not much fun, and also not necessary. You will learn how to eat differently, along with learning what not to eat.
Like discussed above, eating smaller meals more often will speed up the digestion process, and by doing so your stomach will not need to make as much acid. And not lying down after eating definitely helps with reflux. You might even find that there are foods that you can’t eat if you lie down within 45 minutes, but if you extended that to 90 minutes you wouldn’t have any symptoms at all.
You will also learn what not to eat – be prepared to keep good records about how certain foods affect you. There is a group of known acid reflux trigger foods that you want to avoid. But there are also certain foods that affect people differently. For instance, some people find they can eat raw onions, but cannot eat cooked onions. Or some people just can’t eat any peppers at all, while others might be able to eat red peppers, and it would only be the really hot peppers that give them problems. This is all part of the learning process and discovering what foods can be part of your acid reflux diet.
Here are some foods and food types that trigger reflux in most heartburn sufferers:
• Foods which are very high in acid content. Of these, highly spicy foods, citrus fruits or juices, and foods and sauces that are tomato based, are among those that trigger heartburn.• High fat foods are those that stay in your stomach longer and require more acid for digestion; they also are foods that tend to relax the LES. Foods like sausage, bacon, and heavily marbled steaks, along with French fries and foods fried in vegetable oils are especially bad – and the foods from the fast food restaurants are among the worst. Of course everyone’s general health could improve from getting rid of all the fat.• Dairy products that are high in fat like milk, cheese, and yogurt because it takes more acid to digest the fat. Also note that these have a lot of calcium in then, and this can cause the release of stomach acid.• Caffeine, including coffee, tea, and soda – also note that this include caffeine free soda because the carbonation tends to trigger heartburn. • Alcohol, with beer considered to be the worst. It has been shown that beer may actually double the acid in your stomach within an hour.
So, your acid reflux diet will eliminate the worst trigger foods, or you will eat these in far smaller amounts and see if you can tolerate it. Your cooking objective is to maintain the taste of the food, so when you cook you will try to reduce the quantity of a problem ingredient, or replace it all together.
You will look for food substitutes like low fat varieties of foods like dairy and salad dressings. Or when you need to use eggs you will only use egg whites, and when you need to use vinegar you will use light soy sauce.
To look at this positively, your acid reflux diet will also tend to be a healthy diet. Much of what you eliminate wasn’t healthy to begin with, and if eliminating the fats and fried foods also leads to you losing weight, that will also be very helpful in controlling acid reflux and heartburn.
Foods that you should typically be able to eat without a problem would include:
• Foods that are made from grains like bread, cereals without a lot of sugar, and rice as the grains tend to neutralize stomach acids. Pasta should also be fine – without all the sauces on it.• Vegetables like green beans, carrots, and broccoli. And plain potatoes should be fine – just no French fries, or mashed potatoes because of all the fat in the other ingredients or from how they are prepared.• Meats like chicken and fresh fish are fine; just don’t ‘ruin’ them from how they are prepared.• Most fruits will be okay, with some of them even helpful since they neutralize stomach acid. It is the citrus fruits and their high acid content that can cause the problems.
You will find that your acid reflux diet can taste good and be healthy for you, and you will also find that you are able to eat some of the problem foods if you will decrease the frequency and serving size.
About the Author
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