Acid Reflux is a medical condition that we are all familiar with. You might not have heard its name, but you definitely must have either experienced the situation or—at least—seen someone facing it. A person who get acid reflux symptoms experiences a burning pain in their lower chest portion.
The burning pain is widely known as heartburn. Many people often refer to acid reflux as pyrosis or acid indigestion. In this condition, heartburn occurs when the acid juices in your stomach flow back up into your esophagus or—in layman’s terms—food pipe. This often happens shortly after eating something.
Although acid reflux is not that harmful, it’s perfectly capable of giving your many other problems and more severe conditions. When acid reflux occurs more than twice a week, doctors diagnose you with acid reflux disease. This disease is commonly known as GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease). If you’re experiencing chronic heartburn, you must get it treated as soon as possible.
The most common gut complaints in US hospitals are diseases caused by acid reflux. This should tell you how common acid reflux is out there. GERD is also widespread in Western countries. About 20 to 30 percent of the Western population has this digestive disorder.
Common Acid Reflux Symptoms
There are many acid reflux symptoms, and some acid reflux symptoms are more dominant and common than others. The most common acid reflux symptoms are heartburn, dyspepsia, and regurgitation. To better understand this condition, we’ll deal with the significant acid reflux symptoms separately.
Heartburn
Contrary to popular belief, heartburn does not affect your heart. As mentioned above, heartburn or acid indigestion is the discomfort or burning pain that acid reflux causes. It starts from your stomach and moves up to your abdomen and chest. Sometimes, the pain can move up to your throat as well.
Dyspepsia
We use the term dyspepsia to refer to stomach discomfort generally. In actuality, it is a syndrome that patients of acid reflux disease have to face. Like all syndromes, dyspepsia has many symptoms, such as bloating, post-meal nausea, abdominal pain, and burping.
Regurgitation
Regurgitation is one of the most recurring acid reflux symptoms. It is the feeling of acid moving up into your mouth or throat. When regurgitation occurs, you may experience a bitter or sour taste and even wet burps.
Other Symptoms
Even though acid reflux is a rarely severe condition, you must never ignore your acid reflux symptoms. You can easily control these symptoms with OTC antacids and by changing a few habits.
Untreated acid reflux has harsher symptoms, such as burping, nausea, hiccups, dysphagia, bloating, bloody vomits, black or bloody stools, chronic sore throat, and weight loss.
If left untreated, acid reflux may lead to esophagus inflammation. If that’s the case, the stomach acid may damage your esophagus lining and cause it to bleed. After a certain amount of time, it may cause Barrett’s esophagus, which can lead to cancer.
Foods That Promote Acid Reflux
Some foods are likely to cause acid reflux or worsen their symptoms. To ease and eliminate your acid reflux symptoms, we previously recommended you to change a few habits. This involves saying no to some foods as well.
Generally, foods that promote acid reflux are spicy, high-fat foods, specific fruits and vegetables, certain beverages, and more.
Spicy Foods
It is widely believed that spicy foods promote acid reflux. There have been many research studies to determine the effect of spicy foods on the symptoms and occurrence of acid reflux.
Some studies have concluded that spicy foods may cause burning and abdominal pain in people with a gastrointestinal disorder. It is also proven that natural capsaicin (a compound that makes chilies taste spicy) intake doesn’t cause the same irritation as occasional intake. Regular capsaicin intake may improve GERD symptoms.
Therefore, we recommend you to notice how you feel after eating spicy foods. You may or may not have a better spice tolerance than other people.
High-Fat Foods
Fatty foods promote acid reflux. High-fat foods decrease pressure on your lower esophageal sphincter and delay stomach emptying. Therefore, doctors often recommend patients of acid reflux to reduce their intake of high-fat foods. These foods include french fries, whole milk, onion rings, ice cream, high-fat cuts of red meat, cheese, creams, and creamy foods.
Fruits and Vegetables
Although fruits and vegetables are highly valuable, some of them can worsen your GERD symptoms. When it comes to fruits, you need to avoid fruits like pineapple and citrus fruits, such as oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, etc.
In other words, fruits with high acid content aren’t right for you. They relax your esophagus sphincter and worsen your acid reflux symptoms.
In the case of vegetables, you must avoid tomatoes and all tomato-based foods since they are high in acid. Pizza sauce, marinara sauce, tomato soup, chili, salsa, ketchup are a few tomato-based ingredients. Other than that, you must avoid eating onions and garlic as well.
Beverages
Some drinks trigger symptoms in GERD patients. These drinks are carbonated beverages, alcohol, tea, coffee, citrus, and tomato juices.
Caffeinated beverages promote acid reflux, so avoid those. Sometimes, decaffeinated coffee improves symptoms too. The bubbles from carbonated drinks enlarge in the stomach to create pressure and, thus, pain. Alcohol relaxes your sphincter valve, but it increases acid production in the stomach.
Effect of Acid Reflux on Throat
Apart from your throat, acid reflux and GERD are fully capable of damaging the throat as well. When you get heartburns frequently, it destroys your upper throat.
Of course, this happens when the stomach acid enters the back of your throat or the nasal airway. This is a separate medical condition that’s known as laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR).
The symptoms of LPR aren’t readily recognized, so it’s often called “the silent reflux.” Therefore, many doctors check people with GERD for LPR by looking for any throat or voice damage signs.
Other symptoms of LPR include chronic coughing, occasional choking, constant throat clearing, hoarseness, and more
Snacks That Help With Acid Reflux
Snacking is recommended to people with acid reflux issues. Since overeating is one of the causes of acid reflux, snacking helps prevent it. It keeps you satiated so that you don’t overeat your meals.
Doctors recommend eating three small meals a day and two healthy snacks. So you should start keeping some reflux-friendly snacks in your car or bag and eat them between meals. Here are a few reflux-friendly and healthy snacks for your consideration.
• Non-citrus fruits
• Edamame
• Granola bars
• Hard-boiled eggs
• High-fiber cereal
• Salads and fresh vegetables
• Low- or non-fat dairy
• Pretzels
• Crackers
• Popcorn
• Nuts (in small quantity since they are high in fat)
Notice that these snacks are the opposite of what you are supposed to avoid for preventing acid reflux. This list doesn’t have fatty foods, spicy foods, citrus fruits, chocolate, carbonated beverages, tomato, onion, etc.
Reflux Symptoms in Babies
Reflux is not just a condition of adults, but it happens to babies as well. It is widespread in babies; however, it gets better as they grow older. To be precise, babies experience reflux often until they are 8 weeks old. By the time they are 1, the frequency of reflux becomes much less.
There are many reflux symptoms in babies that you can observe to determine if they have this condition. The most common symptom is getting sick or bringing up milk soon after feeding. Other symptoms include being uneasy or crying while feeding, hiccupping or coughing while feeding, and gulping or shallowing after feeding or burping.
Since babies are not well-fed and aren’t keeping enough food down, they don’t get enough energy in this condition. Therefore, some babies might not gain weight either. Remember, silent reflux exists in babies too. Sometimes, they may show signs of reflux but won’t get sick or bring up milk.
Drinks That Help With Acid Reflux
There are many drinks that you can use to prevent and fight acid reflux symptoms and acid reflux itself. Whatever you drink, make sure it doesn’t have the ingredients you’re supposed to avoid.
There are some tips that you must follow, no matter what you drink. For example, you must drink throughout the day to prevent dehydration. However, you should drink in small amounts. Also, you must not consume even reflux-friendly beverages late at night. Moreover, remember to stay in an upright position after drinking anything.
Here are some drinks that will help you with acid reflux.
1. Water
2. Non-citrus juices
3. Smoothies
4. Low-fat or non-fat milk
5. Herbal teas (like ginger, slippery elm, licorice, and chamomile)
6. Plant-based milk (for lactose intolerant people)
A noteworthy thing about herbal teas is that they interfere with certain prescribed medicines. So, if you take any such medication, consult with your doctor before trying a herbal remedy.
Final Words
Even though acid reflux is not hard to diagnose, you should not diagnose it yourself. It’s best to let a doctor do it. This is because you can easily confuse heartburn and acid reflux with other chest problems, including pulmonary embolus, chest wall pain, heart attack, and pneumonia.
To diagnose GERD correctly, doctors have to prescribe particular medicines. Doctors or gastroenterologists may even have to use biopsy, pH monitoring, endoscopy, impedance monitoring, esophageal manometry, and barium X-ray to check if you have GERD. You can’t do those things at home.