Acid reflux can hit just about anyone, at anytime.? It can occur occasionally after you?ve had a particularly large, greasy meal, or more frequently becoming disruptive to your daily life. The symptoms can include excessive burping, difficulty swallowing, the feeling that there?s something lodged in your throat, or nausea after eating. Causes are varied, but culprits may be ingestion of fatty foods that the stomach does not have enough hydrochloric acid to deal with; a weakening of the esophageal sphincter (which acts as a gateway through which acid should not pass); hiatal hernias; or esophagitis.

Some of the more popular homeopathic methods for dealing with acid reflux are through the use of lifestyle changes and natural remedies that you can find at a good health food store. For one thing, limit your intake of fatty or processed foods.? They make your stomach work overtime to digest the unnatural substances. Also, try to drink at least eight glasses of water a day; diluting stomach acid can help heal your esophagus to the point where it can be able to do its job correctly again. Try eating smaller meals more frequently, instead of one or two heavy meals in a day; that way your stomach doesn?t have to work so hard to process the little meals. Do not drink alcohol, or greatly curtail your intake. Also, avoid caffeine and try to eat at least few hours before you?re planning on lying down. Gravity will send acid up to your esophageal sphincter, and its job is to keep the acid down, so lying down right after a meal really challenges its ability to do so.

Even controlling the stress in your life is an excellent way to keep stomach acids where they belong.? Stress causes all your systems to go into overdrive, including acid production.? Taking a deep, calming breath can help prevent heartburn pain down the line.

A few dietary supplements are around that might work for you.? These include teas such as chamomile or peppermint, which can soothe the stomach. Eating an apple actually seems to work for some people and barley grass has been shown to be a great acid reducer. Apple cider vinegar, in its organic, unpasteurized state, has been shown to help sufferers, as has pickle juice, orange peel extract, slippery Elm bark, and probiotics.? Papaya enzymes help speed the digestive process, which prevents pressure in the stomach from building to an uncomfortable amount.? Ginger has also been an age old solution for settling an upset stomach, and heartburn is no exception.? Whether it?s tea or candied, it can help relieve pain from acid reflux.

For more information on natural ways to relieve acid reflux, please visit www.refluxremedy.com and read The Reflux Remedy Report.? There you will find a compilation of a huge amount of natural remedies.? The one that will work for you could be waiting for you to discover it today!

If you suffer from occasional heartburn, you might be a good candidate for trying natural cures for acid reflux. After you have seen your doctor and ruled out more serious conditions such as esophagitis, hernias, or even cancer, you can talk to your physician about homeopathic remedies, which have helped millions of people.

The problem occurs when your stomach produces more acid than your esophagus and esophageal sphincter can handle, allowing acid to creep up into your throat, and causing burning sensations. You might experience upset stomach, excessive burping, a bad taste in your mouth, tightness in your chest, or feelings like you have a piece of food stuck in your throat. If it is just an occasional occurrence, say after an especially heavy meal, you might be able to get away with a one-time treatment.

If it is more frequent however, diet changes and lifestyle modification may be necessary to completely take care of this problem. Fatty foods and processed, fast food can be a big cause for your stomach?s overproduction of acid. Avoid alcohol, caffeine, tomato-based products, and citrus as they are common acid reflux triggers.? Try tracking what you eat to discover what causes reflux for you most consistently, and then react accordingly.

Natural cures for acid reflux may include supplements from your local natural food store.? These include chamomile tea, slippery Elm, fennel, catnip, and ginger root. Adding chopped ginger to a dish or a tea before a meal can help with an upset stomach, and can give your overtaxed acid pumps a chance to calm down.

Simply changing your daily eating habits may result in relief from acid reflux. Several small meals over the course of the day are much easier for your stomach to process than are large, heavy, fat-laden meals. Your stomach does not have to produce nearly as much acid to take care of the digestion of these smaller meals; therefore, less acid is likely to come up to the top of your esophagus.

Also, try giving yourself a few hours after your last meal before going to bed, so that your stomach has a chance to digest the food at least partially, and it is not working overtime right when you are going to lay down flat.

Another homeopathic remedy involves elevating the head of your bed slightly, or adding a pillow under your head, to bring your head above your stomach. Gravity works here, to keep stomach acid down where it belongs, and give your esophagus and esophageal sphincter a break from the bombardment of acid that occurs when you lay completely flat.

Natural cures for acid reflux can also include actual weight loss. Heavier people tend to get heartburn more often, simply because of the added weight on their abdomens causing pressure on their stomachs. It may help that one of the suggestions is to avoid fatty foods; the dual benefit being reduced acid and weight loss.

Whichever cures you try, check with your doctor first and get his or her advice, then check with the folks at Reflux Remedy. The natural cure you need may be waiting for you at www.refluxremedy.com.

Acid reflux is a medical condition in which the patient?s lower esophageal sphincter (LES) does not close after taking in food. All of the food we eat passes into our stomach through the LES, and if it does not close, the acid produced inside of our stomach can reach to our esophagus causing acid reflux disease. This can lead to heartburn, chest pain, and a multitude of other conditions, so it is extremely important to ask yourself: what are good foods to eat with acid reflux?

Preparing a diet regimen for treating acid reflux can be intimidating, and the problem may increase if you have any kind of food allergy. Normally acid reflux flares up post meal, hence it is important to have food that discourages reflux. Those suffering from this disease should have food in small amounts, spreading their meals throughout the day instead of having two or three large meals per day. If you take small amounts of food throughout the day, you will experience less stomach distension and lower acid levels. These techniques will ease pain and peripheral conditions that manifest through acid reflux.

An acid reflux reducing diet consists of all the essential food groups- fruits, vegetables, grains, meats and dairy products. However, some of the specific items under these groups are not prescribed. People suffering from acid reflux disease, are asked to avoid drinks containing caffeine, alcohol, chocolate and peppermint. One should also avoid foods with a high fat or grease content because they are harder to digest and cause your body to produce even more acid.

When you ask your doctor: ?what are good foods to eat with acid reflux?? he or she will normally recommend grains that have a low fat content like rice, multigrain, corn, oats, graham crackers, unseasoned pretzels and bran. White bread, rice cakes, and low fat dairy products are also good for patients suffering from acid reflux. Cabbage, celery, fennel, peas, green beans, broccoli, carrots and cabbage can be included in the diet, and fruits like bananas, apples, peaches, berries, melons are also great choices. Citrus fruits must be avoided since they aggravate the problem.

Feta cheese, cheese prepared from soy and vegetables can be eaten, while ice cream, whole milk and chocolates must be avoided. If you must eat meat, keep it low fat, like skinless boneless white meat chicken, low fat fish, egg whites, London Broil steaks and lean ground beef. Many people use a wide variety of seasonings, toppings, and condiments while preparing food. However, you must remember that these should also contain a low percentage of fat.

Avoiding chocolate based desserts is mandatory. Jelly beans, pudding, baked chips, cookies, fat free snacks, sweets, sorbet and yogurt containing low fat are allowed. When wonder what are good foods to eat with acid reflux, you should include high fibrous foods since it clears the stomach nicely and is filling at the same time. Food items like strawberries, scallions, ham, scrambled egg, Mozzarella and Cottage cheese, muffins and root beer can be eaten in moderation.

If you suffer from acid reflux, acid indigestion, acidosis, digestive upset, dyspepsia, flatulence or heartburn you should know not to eat foods high in animal fat, wheat gluten or refined sugar or salt, to name a few.

On the other hand do you know what foods you can eat that will help prevent or cure your acid reflux, heartburn dilemma?

This whole acid causing food thing can be a little confusing, but I?m going to clear that up for you real fast today. I get a lot of people asking me about this, but it?s really quite simple to understand. You see many foods that are ?acidic? actually create an ?alkaline? condition inside your body and alkaline is good, that?s what you want.

This includes heirloom tomatoes, organic lemons and oranges . . . basically all citrus fruits. Once you know this, the rest is straight forward.

Now that we have that cleared up let?s take a closer look at what having an ?acid condition? or an ?alkaline condition? really means and why it?s important to know.

A Comparison: Acid Vs. Alkaline

First, an acid or alkaline state are opposite poles on a scale measured according to the ?pH,? which is short for ?potential of hydrogen.? Pure, living mineral water, which is made of hydrogen and oxygen, should have a natural pH of 7.0 representing the neutral, or half way mark on the pH scale.

A neutral 7.0 pH is neither in an acid or alkaline state. When the pH reading drops below 7.0 it?s considered to have an acidic pH and when the pH reading rises above 7.0 it is said to have an alkaline pH. So as you can see the entire pH scale is only from 1.0 pH being the most acidic to 14.0 pH reading being the most alkaline.

Your optimum health depends on you having a slightly alkaline reading, a 7.4 pH is good. This will naturally fluctuate from 6.5 to a 7.5 pH depending upon the time of day, your metabolic cycle and what you just eat.

The pH reading of your blood, urine and saliva determines your health.

Your urine will naturally become temporarily acidic in the morning because that?s when you carry the most acid waste.

If your blood pH becomes too acidic the hemoglobin is destroyed making it impossible for your red blood cells to carry oxygen to your cells. This is called acidosis and ignored will cause illness, cancer and even sudden death.

Perhaps now you can see why eating the wrong foods could cause an illness like acid reflux disease.

Bottom line is you need to know which foods will cure acid reflux and most of them are alkaline foods that create a slightly alkaline pH, the one exception being citrus fruits as I mentioned above.

German researchers discovered eating acid forming foods flushes the magnesium out of your kidneys, leading to magnesium deficiency. Magnesium is vital for heart health, for proper gastric acid balance and helps maintain optimum pH levels. So naturally, food rich with magnesium and other minerals will qualify as alkaline producing foods. Actually most raw green plants are rich in alkaline minerals.

Here?s a list of 9 very alkaline foods:

• Organic bananas or plantains
• Organic dark chocolate (70%+)
• Organic figs
• Natural mineral water
• Fresh squeezed orange juice
• Organic potatoes
• Organic spinach, kale or collards
• Seeded watermelon
• Organic dandelion greens

I hope you?ve found this information useful. On a final note, keep in mind that anything with refined sugar in it will tend to give your urine a more acidic pH. I would suggest supplementing with agave nectar, raw palm sugar or raw honey, at least these provide a lower glycemic load and provide useful minerals, vitamins and cofactors, whereas refined sugar and artificial sweeteners actually deplete these.

Live well,

Todd M. Faass?

Health Ecologist