Acid reflux has several medical names such as heart burn, acid indigestion and gastro-esophageal reflux disease, regardless they’re all associated with STRESS.

Everyone loves stress don’t they? NOT.

Stress is stressful. Just the thought of being stressed out stresses me out . . . at least it used to. I’ve learned how to not sweat the little stuff in life in order to better enjoy the bigger, more important things . . . like my health.

Acid reflux is unnatural; it’s what happens when you do unnatural things, but in a way I guess you could argue that it’s a natural response to an unnatural act.

Acid reflux is your inner intelligence getting back at you for not going with the flow. Seriously, we humans really do take everything for granted. Your mind/body is the most intelligent representation of Mama Nature’s handy craft in the entire world, and look what we do to ourselves.

We stress ourselves out in so many ways it’s not funny one bit.

We have dumped industrial pollutants into our oceans, lakes and streams. We’ve spewed noxious gases into the air . . . we stress out the world.

Then we take living soil, rich with more than 72 trace minerals and burn it up with chemical fertilizers until our foods have nothing but nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium . . . we stress out our food.

The result is biological stress caused from under-nutrition. It takes a bushel of tomatoes to equal the nutritional value of an heirloom tomato from 100 years ago.

Then we stress ourselves out . . . with radiation from the thinning sky, cell phone transmissions and nuclear fallout to boot. Add to that our desperately paced lifestyles, racing us around 24/7 just to pay the bills . . . it’s no wonder millions of people have acid reflux and acid reflux associated diseases.

Up to 44% of the United States adult population experience acid reflux, heartburn or acid indigestion at least once per month, 14% weekly and 7% daily. Acid reflux is one of the most common disorders today and it’s all from a dysfunction between the throat from the stomach.

When people are stressed in America, they eat more, or they eat the wrong food and often eat it at the wrong times. All this triggers acid reflux because the food isn’t being digested so it places stress on the barrier between the throat and the stomach called the diaphragm. Once the stomach is stressed from all the undigested garbage food in it and the diaphragm is stressed from the pressure forcing it up toward the throat . . . acid reflux happens.

You have a flap-like valve called a Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES), which normally keeps acid reflux separate from the throat. However, once the food pressure becomes great enough it warps this flap-like seal allowing stomach acid to reflux upward into your throat, lungs, sinus cavity and mouth . . . which stresses you out even more.

Bottom line acid reflux patients who are stressed report chronic acid reflux symptoms. Psychological factors may play a critical role, especially for patients without inflamed throats. There are further studies on understanding the brain/gut relationship and how a person’s perception of stress helps trigger acid reflux.

Considering all forms of stress and its relationship to acid reflux clearly shows that less stress equals less acid reflux.

You were born to heal,

Todd M. Faass

Health Advocate

Source: http://www.cns.med.ucla.edu/Articles/PatientArticleFl99GERD.htm

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say more than 60 million American adults lack quality sleep patterns. This means 60,000,000 people have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or waking up refreshed.

The main culprits are alcohol, caffeine, nicotine or eating too much before bedtime . . . which, among other factors triggers nighttime heartburn.

Researchers in Oklahoma City studied 81 people who complained of sleep problems and found that 30% of them suffered from nighttime heartburn and didn’t even know it.

In Brazilian study, researchers studied nearly 100 adults who had sleep issues and found people with sleep problems were almost ‘twice as likely’ to suffer chronic nighttime heartburn (a.k.a. acid reflux, acid indigestion, gastroesophageal reflux disease) compared to others without sleeping pattern issues.

Leading health experts agree that eating smaller meals more often is better than eating 1, 2 or 3 large meals a day. Nighttime heartburn is associated with eating large meals, especially before lying down.

If you have to eat late, make sure you’re up doing something for at least 3 hours before bed. If you eat something like a snack, make sure it’s at least an hour and a half before you crash out on the couch, floor or bed.

Nighttime heartburn can be activated by sitting down and eating as well. The proverbial coach potato who eats and watches TV will most likely qualify as one of the 60 million Americans who have sleep disorders and odds are they have nighttime heart burn.

Here’s what to do if you want nighttime heartburn:

• Eat a big meal shortly before bed
• Drinking anything but water right before bed
• Don’t raise your head while sleeping
• Eat acid forming foods
• Get a milk or beer belly
• Smoke tobacco
• Consume less than 90% vegetables and fruits
• Mix your carbs and protein together
• Take antacids that cause acid rebound

Living without nighttime heartburn is a natural step you can take that also carries many other benefits such as living longer, being slimmer and having more vitality and overall health.

You were born to heal,

Todd M. Faass

Health Advocate

Today you did a personal search for acid bad breath reflux because obviously your acid reflux or that of another has created a nasty green fog that’s ruining your relationships.

Nothing says health better than fresh breath.

We all have bad breath from time to time, but when acid reflux flares up you’re going to probably smell as bad as it tastes in your mouth, maybe worse.

Nothing says poor health better than acid reflux.

Perhaps due to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on direct-to-consumer advertising for acid reflux products most people think of heartburn, acid reflux and acid indigestion as being as natural as burping.

IF you have acid reflux once and it goes away, you wouldn’t likely have an issue with bad breath. However, IF you have chronic or recurring acid reflux, you’ve got a bad breath problem to boot.

Everyone knows that covering up the symptoms of acid reflux isn’t a cure for it, right?

Wrong, I’m afraid that’s not the case at all.

Most people think its okay to pop an antacid to cover up chronic acid reflux, or even for an occasional heartburn attack from over eating, but it’s not.

Plus the fact that the antacids are tasty little flavored candies helps the illusion along that you don’t have a bad breath problem.

Don’t you know here is a thing called aluminum poisoning, also known as Alzheimer’s disease?

Antacids don’t cure acid reflux, bad breath or memory problems, but they do help cause them.

One big issue with the ‘practice’ of consuming antacids is they have the bad effect of depleting bone and tooth calcium. Clearly blocking stomach acid production affects other functions inside the body that drug researchers have no explanation for. Ya think?

Having the calcium in your teeth disappearing isn’t going to help your bad breath situation and can only make your acid reflux come back with a vengeance . . .the side effect is called ‘acid rebound’.

Listen . . . acid reflux is a health problem that needs to be addressed at the root cause level, not at the symptom level.

The only solution for your combination of bad breath and acid reflux is to cure them simultaneously and the way you can do it is to first re-evaluate your ‘whole life’.

It’s also called Holistic thinking . . .

It’s your life and you know your acid reflux and bad breath didn’t suddenly appear. For every cause there is an effect . . .your acid reflux and bad breath are the effect of over eating, eating bad foods and thinking you could get away with it.

The fact is in the end each of us is ultimately responsible for our own health, NOT the drug companies or the food companies.

Your acid reflux and bad breath can be cured and it will be once you let go of the misconception that treating the effects are the same as removing the cause.

You were born to heal,

Todd M. Faass

Health Advocate

They call it heart burn because acid indigestion causes pain in your chest right behind your heart.

Your heart is actually located in the center of your chest, right behind your sternum, it’s just that the upper part of your heart is turned a little to the left, even though we’ve been told it’s on the left side.

It’s not unusual for people experiencing chest pain from indigestion to panic, thinking it’s a heart attack.

When your stomach has difficulty digesting large amounts of food, it tends to stretch like a balloon forcing pressure on the large muscle surrounding it.

The chest pain from indigestion is sometimes from this larger muscle, called the diaphragm being forced outward. The chest pain can also be from your stomach being pushed upward toward the opening in the diaphragm where your throat is.

Sometimes the pushing is so strong the stomach literally escapes the surrounding diaphragm, near that opening causing a hiatal hernia . . .

Another cause of chest pain from indigestion is acid reflux, which is when the flap that seal the bottom of your throat, to protect stomach acid from passing upward, get’s over come with pressure.

This produces that burning pain you can feel right behind the heart in the middle of your chest, called heart burn.

All this indigestion and chest pain is from your inability to release pressure and digest food fast enough to empty your stomach.

You can either eat less over all or break your meals down into smaller meals throughout the day, or both.

Some people have chest pain from lack of digestive juices causing undigested food to pile up; others just eat too much through the day, or at the last minute before bed.

Your chest pain may not be a heart attack, but indigestion that triggers chest pain has been known to trigger heart attacks . . .

Also eating a large meal before exerting yourself can cause chest pain too.

So learn to relax, breathe deeply, eat small meals of diverse foods and try to go for a casual walk after eating. Chest pain is a serious issue whether it’s indigestion, poor circulation or a heart attack . . . always see your doctor if it recurs or won’t go away.

You were born to heal,

Todd M. Faass

Health Advocate