IF YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM HEARTBURN, you are not alone. In fact, you’ve got way
too much company. In the United States, over 50 million Americans complain of acid reflux.
That’s one-sixth of the entire population. Roughly 44 percent report an attack at least once
a week. More than 23 million people experience episodes of heartburn daily. Even for a
physician like me, who sees gastrointestinal patients regularly, the numbers appear
staggering; but as a person who suffers (or I should say, has suffered) from acid reflux, it is
reassuring to know that I am not alone.
What’s particularly sad is that this disease distorts one of life’s most primary pleasures:
eating. Unlike other diseases, you cannot avoid food, one of the primary causes of
heartburn. You have to eat—at least three times a day—so it’s not something you can
ignore. I for one thought paying the price of heartburn after every meal was something I
was going to have to do all my life. Happily, I was wrong.
The Skinny on Acid Reflux
Acute acid reflux, as anyone who suers from it knows, is a sudden burning surge of
stomach acid that flares up into the throat, much like the lava of an erupting volcano. And
like lava, it burns everything in its path. The stomach makes acid to help digest food that
has recently been eaten. Ideally, that acid should stay in the stomach. But sometimes it
shoots up into the esophagus. This is reflux. Reflux usually occurs about an hour after a
meal, but it may affect you shortly after you eat.
Or maybe it wakes you up suddenly at night hours after you’ve eaten. I have many patients who swear the accompanying chest pain is so severe they think they’re having a heart attack.