Heartburn and Reflux For Dummies

Carol Ann Rinzler, Ken DeVault

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764556883
• eBook ISBN: 9781118054048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Diseases & Allergies

If you or someone you love suffers from heartburn, you know that it can be very disruptive to your daily life. Most heartburn sufferers say it stops them from enjoying food. Others say it keeps them from getting a good night's sleep, it makes it hard to concentrate at work, and it interferes with family activities. Sound familiar? Don't worry. Heartburn is a pain, but it can be helped.

Heartburn & Reflux For Dummies is the plain-English guide to relief for you if you've been recently diagnosed with heartburn or reflux, if you suspect you may suffer from it, or if you're concerned about your loved ones. This comprehensive book shows you how to recognize symptoms, get an accurate diagnosis, and work with a physician to receive the most effective treatment available. You'll see how to:

• Get your symptoms under control
• Find the right physician
• Reduce stress and fine-tune your diet
• Avoid medicines that trigger upset
• Decide if surgery is right for you

This friendly guide explains what the various forms of reflux are, as all too often reflux is either self-treated or mistreated and followed by serious complications. There's detailed information on building a comfortable lifestyle by reducing stress, improving your diet, controlling portions, and timing your meals to minimize heartburn and reflux. Plus, this sensitive guide even covers heartburn in infants, children, and the elderly. You'll also discover:

• How to heal the esophagus of inflammation or injury, as well as manage or prevent complications
• The latest information on prescription medications and side effects
• Healthy habits to adopt to reduce your pain triggers
• Helpful home remedies and alternative medicine
• The special risks and remedies for heartburn during pregnancy
• The side effects and complications associated with surgery

Complete with a catalog of heartburn medicines and a list of reliable Web sites for people with digestive disorders, Heartburn & Reflux For Dummies is your one-stop guide to stopping the hurt, starting to heal, and enjoying food again!

Part I

Naming Your Pain

In this part . . .

To start healing the burn, you need to know the basic facts about heartburn, reflux, and gastroesophageal reflux disease, a real mouthful that’s usually abbreviated as GERD. This part defines heartburn, explains the workings of your digestive tract, lists the symptoms and consequences, and tells you who’s at risk.

Chapter 1

Picturing Heartburn and Reflux

In This Chapter

Getting acquainted with heartburn, reflux, and GERD

Understanding what puts the burn in heartburn

Exploring treatment options

This chapter is Numero Uno for a very good reason: It serves as your introduction to heartburn, reflux, and the impressively tongue-twisting gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

If you already know that heartburn, reflux, and GERD are common and painful but treatable, then you can just skip along to Chapter 2, which explains your entire digestive system, from one end to the other, with special emphasis on the parts involved in heartburn, reflux, and GERD.

But if you’re not totally sure that you know what these conditions are, how they happen, and what tricks modern medical science has up its collective sleeve to alleviate your discomfort, then stick around for a couple of pages.

You can pick up some facts about heartburn’s impact on your life, some new words to describe exactly what you mean when you say, “Gastroesophageal reflux disease,” and some basic guidelines on what type of help is out there and where you can go to find it.

Meeting Your Heartburn

Do any of these situations sound familiar?

Dinner was yummy. But now, just an hour later, you feel that burning pain in the lower part of your chest — and maybe have a nasty taste in your mouth.

You’re out for short run, pounding the pavement, when you round the corner and that burning pain makes another appearance.

You lie down to sleep, and as you’re about to drift off to Dreamland that pain pops back up, right smack in the middle of your chest.

If you didn’t hurt so much, you’d probably see this saga as sort of boring and predictable: No matter what you do, no matter where you are, that sudden pain can bring you up short, halt the action, take the wind out of your sails . . . okay, I’m done with the metaphors.

The fact that you bought this book and are thumbing through Chapter 1 tells me that you’ve already met the pain that most of the world calls heartburn. Now, the time has come to get to know a little more about it.

Saying hello to your fellow sufferers

When you hurt, the natural reaction is to think that you’re alone in your misery. But the first fact that you need to know about heartburn is that its pangs are as common as the common cold.

In fact, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) — I have no idea why that abbreviation doesn’t read NIDDKD — the incidence of heartburn is positively staggering.

More than 60 million American adults have heartburn at least once a month.

More than one-third of American women ages 35 to 44 and slightly less than one-third of American men in the same age group have “frequent” heartburn. Translation: More than two incidents a week.

At least 25 million Americans have heartburn every day.

One in four pregnant women has heartburn daily; a lot of babies whose parents think they have colic actually have heartburn; and as you get older, your risk of heartburn rises — which explains why, later on in this book, you can find a chapter devoted to each of these three “special” groups (Chapters 17, 18, and 19, to be specific).

And don’t think Americans have the market cornered when the discussion concerns heartburn:

According to a study published in the medical journal Gut, up to 20 percent of the people in Great Britain have heartburn at least once a week.

According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, about

• 7 percent of all Canadians suffer from heartburn daily.

• 13 percent of all Canadians suffer from heartburn once a week.

• 24 percent of all Canadians suffer from heartburn at least once a month.

Quantifying your discomfort

According to a Gallup poll conducted for the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), a professional organization for doctors who treat digestive disorders,

More than 80 percent of people with heartburn say that their condition stops them from enjoying food.

More than 60 percent of people with heartburn say that their pain keeps them from getting a good night’s sleep.

More than 40 percent of people with heartburn say that their pain interferes with their ability to con...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Naming Your Pain
• Chapter 1: Picturing Heartburn and Reflux
• Chapter 2: Tracking Your Digestive Tract
• Chapter 3: Cataloging the Symptoms and Hazards of Heartburn, Reflux, and GERD
• Chapter 4: Rating Your Reflux Risk
• Part II : Eating Your Way to Relief
• Chapter 5: Meeting Your Nutrition Needs
• Chapter 6: Fine-Tuning Your Diet
• Chapter 7: Reviewing Home Remedies, Alternative Approaches, and Herbal Healers
• Part III : Treating Your Middle
• Chapter 8: Finding the Right Doctor
• Chapter 9: Examining Your Esophagus and Testing Your Tummy
• Chapter 10: Prescribing Relief
• Chapter 11: Avoiding Problem Pills
• Chapter 12: Exploring Surgical Options
• Part IV : Creating a Comfortable Lifestyle
• Chapter 13: Building a Better Body
• Chapter 14: Healing Heartburn with Healthy Habits
• Chapter 15: Stressing Stress Relief
• Chapter 16: Fashioning (and Furnishing) a Comfortable Life
• Part V : Meeting the Special Cases
• Chapter 17: Handling the Heartburn of Pregnancy
• Chapter 18: Finding Heartburn in Infants and Children
• Chapter 19: Taking Aim at Senior Heartburn
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 20: Ten or So Heartburn and Reflux Myths
• Chapter 21: Ten Heartburn Web Sites
• Chapter 22: Ten Sometimes Painful, Often Annoying, but Almost Never Fatal Digestive Disorders
• Glossary