Maybe I Just Need Heartburn Remedies

This cartoon is the embodiment of my recent life.

Well, if you remember my saga about stomach ulcers, turns out I don’t have a stomach ulcer after all. I went to my doctor and he simply told me to make more careful note of my symptoms over the next few weeks. I kept a log and brought it into him, and he said I was just experiencing simple heartburn.

He wanted me to start on a medication but, being the anti-establishment politico that I am, I went hunting for information on the internet and found these great heartburn remedies. The chewing a piece of gum thing really works to get rid of my acid reflux.. and it works fast! Now that dish of food by my bed has been replaced with a pack of gum.

However, I do not particularly take solace in the idea that I might have gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as GERD. I have been working on making the lifestyle changes necessary to remedy my heartburn naturally.

The first thing I started with was keeping a food journal. For the last few weeks I have recorded exactly what I have been eating and whether or not I developed symptoms shortly afterwards. I now am 100% certain that I am going to get heartburn if I eat pasta sauce, drink orange juice, or have more than 3 cups of coffee in the morning (not that I should be drinking more than 3 cups of coffee in a day, but who’s counting?).

Even avoiding these foods (as best I can – I still and will always have a love-hate relationship with pizza), I still get heartburn on occasion. Fortunately there are a few things that I have not tried yet, so there is still hope. For example, apparently being a little overweight (that’s me) can lead to heartburn. Given that this heartburn diet has practically removed everything “bad” from my diet,I think weight loss is sure to follow. I have found that walking after dinner also helps with my acid reflux a lot, so that should also help me lose weight as well.

There is one more thing I have not yet tried and that is elevating my bed. Supposedly by lifting the bed up on an incline you can actually keep reflux down in the stomach. My heartburn is worse when lying down so this really appeals to me. However, there are still two obstacles to this – I haven’t yet been to the hardware store to measure out boards and I still need to run this whole bed-raising thing by the Mrs. I think she might not be jump on board right away, but she will warm up to the idea eventually!g