What Is Heartburn And What Can You Do About It?
So exactly what is heartburn ? It’s funny that a very common condition is actually something that is so misunderstood. Although many people get heartburn, they mistakenly think that they are experiencing a coronary failure. My friend loves to recall how he was in a panic one night and woke up his wife to bring him to the emergency room because he was dying. After all that, he was given a bottle of antacids and told he had heartburn.
So what is heartburn , anyway? And why do people panic the first time they feel the symptoms? Heartburn is actually a indication of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease or GERD. GERD is actually a condition where the band that holds in the stomach contents is weak for some reason or another, and releases some of the digestive acids (along with some food, in extreme cases) which literally burn the esophagus and the throat.
How do you know that it’s heartburn? What does heartburn feel like? It’s a burning sensation in the chest that can last between a few hours or a few moments. It can cause a difficulty in breathing and swallowing and sometimes, nausea or vomiting.
While a heart attack is definitely painful, one difference is the lack of a burning sensation in the chest area. Most people that have gone through it describe it as being held down with a heavy weight on the chest that expels all the air in your lungs and makes it hard to breathe. Lack of oxygen makes the person feel faint and the hurting spreads the whole way down to the arms, rather than up towards the throat.
If you have a family history of hypertension, it’s best to ask the doctor what is heartburn and what it’s supposed to feel like to rule out any major problems. The doctor will definitely subject you then to a battery of tests, starting with taking your blood pressure to monitoring your heart activity on an EKG machine. Because many people are afraid to be labeled psychosomatic, they don’t ask the right questions and sometimes suffer a mild heart attack when they just take antacids and hope for the best.
The question what is heartburn should have a follow-up question as to what causes it? One of the main causes is diet, followed by lifestyle. A low-fat, low-acid diet that is high on natural food and low on canned and processed food is the best. Staying away from caffeine, alcohol, and cigarettes is essential to controlling hyperacidity. Unfortunately, most sufferers would rather stuff themselves with antacids than change how they live. There are actually people that lie to their doctors and swear that they’ve given up their cigarettes and coffee but don’t know where their acid reflux attacks are coming from. They would rather not know what is heartburn as long as their lifestyles are not affected.
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