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