Acid Reflux: Lifestyle and Diet Remedies

(see also: Managing Acid Reflux)

In What is Acid Reflux I described what acid reflux is as a condition, and some of the harmful drugs that are sold and used for its treatment.

In this article I will list out some natural remedies which may assist you to alleviate your condition (I won’t say “cure” - I don’t think I’m allowed to say that word without a license!) Diet, lifestyle, and nutrition form a key factor in acid reflux treatment and acid reflux prevention.

Body Detox

Following a diet and a lifestyle that will help your body to detoxify can go a long way in assisting you to remedy your acid reflux.

Drink at least a gallon of water every day. One method of doing this easily is to simply keep lots of bottled or filtered water at your desk, at your work space, in your car, or wherever you spend most of your time. Drink water throughout the day. It has been said that drinking about a gallon of water a day, while taking probiotics, can assist greatly to return the body’s digestive functions to normal. Water also assists to dilute stomach acids.

Drink unrefined vegetable juices. Ideally from your own juicer. There are many recipes out there for homemade vegetable juices (particularly when from organic vegetables) in various combinations and they can be fun to make, while you can also create your own. Vegetable juices help to supply your body with the nutrients it needs, while helping the body to detoxify. They are also excellent for weight loss, if you are also trying to lose weight. But you don’t have to be overweight to benefit from vegetable juices! Anyone, with or without acid reflux, can have incredible benefits from vegetable juices – in appearance, health, energy, and general well-being.

Eat as much “live food” as possible. Foods which have real, live enzymes in them assist you to get your digestion working right, and this is a critical aspect to addressing acid reflux. In other words, eat uncooked foods – raw fruits and vegetables. Raw vegetable juices are a very good way to supply this. Enzymes help the body to digest food. But when they are heated and cooked, they lose that ability and they change their structure. Cooked foods are generally more difficult to digest, and require additional effort from your body for their assimilation.

Eat foods and fats that help your body to heal. Examples of these “healing foods” are avocados, seaweed, chlorella algae, spirulina, barley grass, chaparral tea (consult your physician before using this tea, it can be toxic if taken incorrectly), olive oil, lemon, maple syrup, niacin, calcium, magnesium, coconut oil, green tea, cayenne pepper, ginger, garlic, onions … there are many.

Eat foods that are rich in water, vitamins, and nutrition. Green leafy vegetables have also been said to benefit digestion and the gastro-intestinal system. Sprouted greens from buckwheat, sunflower, alfalfa, wheat, and red clover, are very good. Raw nuts, sprouted or even soaked, are very beneficial.

Avoid harmful foods: fast food, white flour, refined sugar and sweeteners, margarine, aspartame, pesticides, soft drinks, etc.

Cleanse your body. Do a good natural colon cleanse and follow safe and natural detoxification programs and any good detox diet.

In fact, doing a good colon cleanse could be one of the most important parts of your approach. Over time, the body accumulates a layer of hardened material around the linings of the intestines, as a result of eating unhealthy food, white flour, insufficient raw foods and fibers, etc. This material forms into a kind of a “glue” around the walls of your intestines – preventing toxins from exiting the body, and preventing nutrients from being absorbed, creating digestive trouble, and leading to a multitude of other conditions and illnesses. I will post further articles on this in the future.

There are other natural acid reflux remedies, and I will post further information on this. But the above basic guidelines should help get you off to a good start.

If you have a severe acid reflux problem, however, I suggest you get a book on Managing Acid Reflux.

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When the inside of your throat becomes inflamed and swollen as a result of regurgitation of the contents of the stomach, this is called “acid reflux” or “reflux esophagitis.”

Almost everyone has experienced this at some point – where the contents of the stomach rise up into the throat. But some people experience this more than others, severely and frequently. Frequent vomiting is also one acid reflux symptom.

In a drug-happy society, there are bound to be a variety of drug-related addresses to this condition which are considered to fall under the category of “acid reflux treatment” or “acid reflux medication.” And there are plenty of people making lots of money off of these drug treatments. The drug industry is big – whether we consider the legal drug industry, or otherwise.

But for those of us who do not wish to fall into the pharmaceutical trap – what can be done about acid reflux? And what are the steps, in terms of nutrition, that acid reflux could be benefited by?

Some of the drugs which are on the market as treatments for acid reflux have been said to be very harmful. They are not acid reflux cures. These drugs reduce the amount of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. Hydrochloric acid is used by the body to digest food. So reducing it can be very harmful to your ability to digest and this can carry other consequences as well. A failure to properly digest one’s food can put one at risk of other diseases, can reduce one’s resistance to infections and harmful organism borne in foods, can increase your susceptibility to food poisoning, and can put one at risk of chronic degenerative diseases.

While I am not one to recommend testing human problems on rats or mice, it does bear mentioning in this article that tests on mice performed by scientists in one university did indicate that reduction of hydrochloric acid could be exactly what not to do in treating acid reflux.

As time goes on and the “information age” progresses, many of us become more and more aware that drugs are not the answer.

Severe acid reflux can be a nightmare for anyone affected by it. And there are a number of natural methods of addressing acid reflux.

First, lets look at the alternative to natural acid reflux remedies: drugs. Why do I recommend so strongly that you stay away from these drugs?

Some of the drugs sold for treatment of acid reflux are “Prilosec,” “ Nexium,” “The Purple Pill,” “Prevacid”, “Zantac”, “Pepcid” “Tagament.”

My advice? Stay away from them. I mean … there must be a reason why many of these drugs are only supposed to be used for 8 weeks maximum.

As a general rule (and this goes for street drugs, psychiatric drugs, “anti-depressants,” over-the-counter pain killers, etc.) drugs don’t solve anything in the long run. They only mask the problem. And in the long term, they often make it worse.

Used sparingly and infrequently in moments of extreme pain or urgency, I can admit that some drugs can have their uses. If you are on that vacation you have waited for for five years, and your jet-lag is giving you a headache from hell, I won’t blame you for grabbing a painkiller from the local supermarket. I’ve done the same myself.

But – in terms of truly handling an illness or long-term condition, it is always my advice to stay away from them! And most level-headed people would say the same. There is just too much evidence of the harmful effects of drugs, physically and mentally.

For information on natural treatments of acid reflex, please see my next post, Acid Reflux Relief.

I hope this information is of use to you or to any of your friends who may be battling this ailment. Something can be done to relieve it for real, and it doesn’t have to come with a prescription.

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