Heartburn is a common condition that affects more than 70 million Americans annually. It typically begins with a burning sensation that starts in the upper abdomen and moves up into the chest, often making its way to the back of the throat, and sometimes up into the jaw, arms and back. It usually feels worse when lying down or bending forward.
Symptoms & Signs
Heartburn is an uncomfortable feeling of burning and warmth behind the breastbone (sternum) but sometimes rising as high as the neck. It usually occurs after meals, when lying down, or at night while sleeping.
Heartburn usually is due to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), the rise of stomach acid back up into the esophagus. Heartburn has nothing whatsoever to do with the heart though the discomfort of heartburn may be confused with heart pain and vice versa. Heartburn is a popular nonmedical term that often is referred to medically as pyrosis.
What Causes Heart Burn?
Heart burn is caused by a faulty muscle in the stomach. There is a “flap” at the top of the stomach that stops food from traveling back up into the esophagus. Sometimes the flap doesn’t work properly and stomach acid escapes from the stomach. When the acid escapes, heart burn occurs.
Factors that contribute to heart burn: pregnancy, smoking, eating large meals, being overweight, and wearing tight clothing around the waist.
Heartburn usually ignites a burning pain that runs from your stomach to your breastbone, and it’s often accompanied by a sour taste in your mouth. Heart attacks, on the other hand, may cause a prolonged heavy feeling or squeezing pain in your chest. (Angina, or heart pain, causes similar pain that lasts just a minute or two.) Although pressure chest pain is more commonly associated with heart disease spasm of the esophagus may cause the same symptoms. It’s best to assume the pain is coming from the heart, get emergency help to rule the heart out as a cause, then focus on the esophagus.
Prokinetic medications are those that increase activity or peristalsis of the stomach to help push contents into the intestine more quickly. The medications metoclopramide and domperidone are both prokinetic medications. This medication may be beneficial in those people whose reflux symptoms are caused by delayed stomach emptying.
Try Tea
Green tea has been used for centuries in Japan as an after dinner drink. Green teas aid the body in the digestion process, and help soothe the stomach’s sensitive tissue.
PREVENTION
Heartburn and its symptoms can often be prevented or at least minimized by following a few, standard guidelines.
1. Never smoke before or while eating. Smoking often causes one to swallow small amounts of air, which form air pockets in the digestive tract with the added pressure of food. Smoking also slows the body’s ability to digest food.
2. Monitor which foods cause you to suffer heartburn. Often times, eliminating certain gas forming foods (such as beans, cabbage, cucumbers and onions) from the diet, brings an end to suffering.
3. Eat at a dinner table in an upright, sitting position.
Heart DiseaseTag Archives
Heartburn – Causes, Symptoms and Prevention
Phentermine vs. the new weight loss surgery
Well, let’s start with the gossip and then get serious. It seems Gabourey Sidibe who was recently nominated for an Oscar for her role in Precious, has been approached by a weight loss company. It wants to help her lose weight and, of course, by doing so enhance its own reputation. What makes the story so interesting is the aggressiveness of the approach. Here is a young woman who is obviously not unhappy with the way she looks and is successful as she is. Yet a weight loss company thinks she should want to lose weight. Now we could assume this company is altruistic. It knows being obese significantly increases the risk of diabetes, arthritis, some cancers, a stoke or heart disease. If anyone overweight can lose between 5 and 10% of their body weight, these risks are reduced or completely disappear. So why look for celebrity endorsement? The answer lies in the national statistics.
In 2009, the National Institutes of Health reported obese people in the US represented 34% of the population while the number who were merely overweight represented only 32.7%. For the record, this classifies 72 million people as obese, i.e. their BMI is 30 or higher. In fact, the rate of obesity has doubled over the last thirty years and, being dispassionate about it, this represents a major market for weight loss products and services. Billions of dollars are at stake. Against this background, the San Diego Medical Center has been running a clinical trial on POSE (Primary Obesity Surgery Endolumenal). This is a new approach to bariatric surgery. The increasingly common lap band procedure requires the surgeon to enter the body through the abdomen and this inevitably leaves a scar. POSE is surgery performed using an endoscope. This is a device pushed down the throat and into the stomach without any need for an incision. Once inside the stomach, there are tools operated remotely by the surgeon. This allows the stomach walls to be sutured, reducing available space by about one-third. Thus, the effect is the same as in conventional surgery. Patients begin to feel full minutes after starting to eat. Thus, for those who have vanity issues and want to achieve a “body beautiful”, this form of surgery promotes weight loss without scars.
For the purposes of the trial, only people who have a long history of weight problems are being considered. But, if the trial proves a long-term success, you will probably see this type of procedure heavily advertized for people of all weights. It’s not our policy to argue people should not have surgery. There may come a time when people prove themselves so lacking in will power to diet and exercise that physically preventing them from overeating is the only way of saving their lives. But what does concern us is the notion that surgery should become the normal response to weight problems. As a nation, do we really want to spend millions of dollars every year on surgery when the solution to the problem is a diet, physical exercise and phentermine? Just think for a moment. Phentermine is an effective appetite suppressant. Why do people using it not lose weight in the long term? Because they continue to eat massive portions of unhealthy food. People are unable to prevent themselves from overeating. What does that say about the character of Americans? We have become a nation of food junkies, so addicted to eating, we cannot stop even when we know it’s killing us.
Take xanax, reduce anxiety, avoid heart disease
There’s always quite a big slice of the population that’s down. For them, the world revolves through shades of grey into black and back again, and there’s nothing worse than meeting happy people to make them feel really bad. Somehow all the bitterness and resentment comes to the surface. It’s a Scrooge, “Bah, humbug!” day everyday, including Christmas, if the crowd around them is bouncing around being all joyful. Perhaps it’s a fear the happiness might somehow be infectious. They want to drive all these jolly people away unless, in a moment of weakness, they find a little joy creeps up and bites them on whichever part of the anatomy might be exposed. But, for whatever reason, unhappy people resist happiness with a real enthusiasm. Sadly, the increasing body of medical evidence is that this is shortening their lives.
Let’s start with the European Heart Journal which, this month, is carrying an article suggesting that people who find peace and joy, if not excitement, in their lives are less likely to suffer from heart disease. This is not to say everyone should walk around in a state of pure contentment all the time. Everyone is entitled to periods when they feel angry, anxious or depressed. It’s a balance between dark and light. It seems the people who feel positive about themselves for longer, live longer. While those who lapse into longer lasting anxiety and depressive states are more likely to suffer heart attacks. This builds on an increasing body of research findings that happy people have stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure and are less likely to contract diabetes. Just as important, people with a positive outlook are more likely to enjoy good sleep, only drink moderate amounts of alcohol and are better able to quit smoking. But, as with all science, there is a need for more research. The immediate article comes out of a ten-year study involving 1,740 participants. This is on the borderline of statistical significance. There should more more studies involving larger numbers of people to tease out all the complex strands that contribute to longer or shorter life expectancy.
For those of you interested in this issue, you will find it useful to look at http://www.springerlink.com/content/0474658172222350/fulltext.pdf. The most interesting studies involve groups of nuns who live 7 to 10 years longer than average. They live “stress-free” quite unlike the modern secular majority whose lives are blighted by worry and anxiety. As it stands, the medical profession prefers to deal with simple remedies. To keep health insurance costs to a minimum, physicians write out a prescription for xanax while signalling for the next patient to enter. Dealing with abstract notions of happiness is not in the program for time-crunched doctors. This is unfortunate because, although there is no evidence that happiness cures serious illness, it can always make the experience of illness more bearable. This does not deny that if you buy anti-anxiety drugs like xanax online, you will not find anxiety levels reduce. But there is a difference between an absence of anxiety and a positive attitude to life. The evidence is mounting that happiness improves longevity. So, if you want to avoid an early death, start looking for a little joy. You never know. It may just creep up on you and bite you when you are least expecting it. That bite could add years to your life.
Ambien is being overprescribed
The pharmaceutical industry prefers researchers not to look in detail at the postmarketing situation. Once a drug is on the market, we are all supposed to be interested in something else. We should just assume the drug has solved whatever the problem was. There’s no need to follow up by measuring how well the drug is actually performing. Except that’s the kind of thinking that delayed the recall of the Cox-2 Inhibitors when there should have been better safety monitoring to show this class of drugs caused heart problems. Worse, this type of resistance to research runs through most different industries as the delayed recall of Toyotas aptly demonstrates. Which brings us to 2010 Sleep in America, a poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation. This is a regular snapshot of sleeping habits across America. It’s good this research is done, but it’s on the margin with only a thousand or so participants. There should be significantly more participants if the scaling up of the numbers across the general population is to be reliable. As it is, we should not generalize too much from the results. The first finding is that, on average, we seem to be sleeping about two hours less than we did forty years ago. For some reason not properly explained, the study assumes we should all aim for about eight-and-a-half hours of sleep every night. The current crop of respondents reports sleeping between six and seven hours a night. To keep the accuracy of this report in perspective, there’s good medical evidence that lack of sleep undermines the body’s immune system making us more prone to illness, encourages obesity, increases blood pressure, and raises the risk of heart disease. What is less clear is the point at which these adverse health consequences kick in. It could be between six and seven hours a night, but there is no evidence to support this proposition. About a quarter of the respondents admit to missing work or appointments because they felt too tired. The same percentage admitted they were too tired to have regular sex. When asked to explain why sleep was more difficult, many referred to increased financial worries during the recession. Personal stress levels were higher with relationship problems. There were also lifestyle choices like watching TV in bed which delayed or disturbed sleep. In racial terms, Asians have the longest sleep patterns and blacks sleep less than whites and Hispanics. Overall, the report makes interesting reading but, until more people are included in the poll, it is difficult to generalize to the population at large. That said, some of the conclusions are intuitively correct. If about 25% of people are finding their lives adversely affected by insomnia, it helps explain why ambien is such a popular drug. As the sleeping pill with the best reputation for safety and effectiveness, it seems to be the drug of choice to get enough sleep. But it does remain something of a mystery why people make it difficult for themselves. About three-quarters of the respondents watched TV immediately before attempting sleep and then expressed surprise they did not immediately fall asleep. The reality is that, unless you resort to ambien, it’s better to relax the mind, say, by listening to gentle music. Moving the TV out of the bedroom and avoiding exciting late-night programs is basic common sense. Going to sleep at the same time every night is a good habit. Living your life around the TV schedule is a bad habit.