10 Natural Remedies for Long Term Treatment of Acid Reflux or Heartburn

Acid Reflux is a common and painful disease to have. Affecting around 50% of the Americans, it can really take a toll on your well being. To be precise, Heartburn is more of a symptom than a disease of a problem with your lower esophageal sphincter (LES). It is a muscle ring in the lower part of your esophagus (food pipe) that constricts after you have swallowed the food and it is being processed in your stomach with acid. When this ring does not constrict properly the food mixed with acid splashes up in your esophagus damaging the lining of your food pipe. While you can have reflux even without heartburn you won't have heartburn without acid reflux. If your problem is severe then a medical attention is required by if it is occasional and not so severe, you should take a look at natural home remedies and lifestyle changes which can help you overcome the problem of acid reflux. Let us take a look the ways in which you can deal with the problem of heartburn for a long time.

1. Watch your eating habits. If you are having acid reflux then it can be due to a type of food you are eating. It might be too spicy food and food high in acidic content like tomato or other fruits high in citrus acid. It can take some time but keep a watch on your triggers and you can completely avoid the problem of acid reflux.
2.  Avoid smoking and alcohol. A cocktail of nicotine and alcohol are just the right recipes for triggering acid reflux. They both weaken your LES making it easy for the food in the stomach to splash in your esophagus. Alcohol absorbs water and will dry up your esophagus making it more irritated. So? Kick the butt for avoid a host of problems and reduce your alcohol intake to 1 glass daily or as less you can.
3. Timing between meal and rest. Give time to your stomach properly digest the food while you are awake. Most of us get our abdomen is a position during sleep which is not optimal for digestion. Sleeping on your stomach especially inhibits your proper digestion by placing pressure on your abdomen region which cloud lead to the food flowing back into your food pipe. Therefore, keep a difference of minimum 3 hours between your sleep and your meal.
4. How to eat. Take your time chewing the food and don't swallow it in bit bites. Don't give your stomach an excuse to flush the extra acid back into your esophagus.
5. Avoid tight fitting clothes. Just like sleeping on your abdomen puts a pressure on your stomach creating problem in digestion, tight fitting clothes around abdomen will put pressure on the stomach. This pressure will put pressure on the LES thereby pushing the food back into the esophagus creating acid reflux.
6. Keep a healthy body weight. Extra fat especially around your abdomen region will push your stomach up. A pushed up stomach will create pressure on the LES and again, will lead to acid reflux. And as you might have heard it like a million times, keeping a balanced body weight is just beneficial to your health too.
7. Keeping your acid production right. Though it might sound the reverse but acid reflux can be due to low acid concentration in your stomach. The LES ring tightens when it detects acid in your stomach and loosens up when the acid concentration is low naturally an indication that there is no food in your stomach. However, low acid production will lead to the LES deducing that there is no food in your stomach when it is actually there. The food will splash back into your esophagus creating heartburn. To avoid this, you need to restore the acid production in your stomach by making sure that your body gets the right raw materials for the acid production.
   For this take high quality sea salt (unprocessed). This will provide you with chlorine required for the production of stomach acid (HCL- hydrochloric acid). In addition, it will provide you over 80% of the minerals you body requires everyday for idea functioning.
8. Do exercise. That's right, exercise is a treatment to many of non-communicable diseases. Go out and do 30 minutes of exercise daily. This will build your natural defenses against infections, help you lose body weight and will improve your digestion.
9. Get vitamin D. Go out in the sun while avoiding radiation. Vitamin D helps in creating special peptides which will cure infections in the stomach like in the esophagus. You can take foods too rich in Vitamin D.
10. Increasing intake of unprocessed food. Raw veggie juice, green leafy salad and fresh foods contain a special enzyme that improves your digestion process. This enzyme is destroyed beyond the temperature of 46 degree celsuis.

The idea way to deal with acid reflux is eating less but eating healthy. Focus on food that are high in nutrient value to satisfy your daily requirements. Don't eat to fill up your stomach; the less content your stomach would have, the less acid it would have to produce.