How To Stop Acid Reflux | How To Treat Acid Reflux (2018)

1 in 10 people get acid reflux almost every day and if that includes you I’m gonna give you some great tips that should really help, now let’s begin okay so first let me explain to you acid reflux and heartburn but bear with me a a couple of seconds because I’ve thought of a really creative way to explain it to you so here’s my masterpiece obviously it’s not to scale but you have to use your imagination a bit the glass part is your oesophagus the green balloon is your stomach and the black tape is your lowest sphincter now the lower sphincter is a muscular valve which lets food in one way so food and liquid come down into your stomach one way through this now here’s the fun bit the lower sphincter closes and prevents food from the stomach and stomach acid from refluxing back into the oesophagus but if it opens too far or doesn’t close tight enough then this stomach acid can reflux back up like so, so this is what leads to acid reflux or Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease otherwise known as GORD for short which is the more chronic severe version of acid reflux and they both cause that burning sensation in the chest which everyone calls heartburn so heartburn is a symptom of acid reflux and GORD and I hope that helps clear things up and one last thing the other symptoms of acid reflux include an acid taste in your mouth wind, belching, bloating and possibly a dry persistent cough now let’s move on to tips so remember the oesophageal sphincter well there are ways to make this stronger and prevent acid reflux smoking, drinking alcohol and being overweight all factors that can reduce the sphincter strength so if any of these apply to you then consider stopping smoking, reducing or stopping your alcohol intake entirely and getting to a healthy weight these can help strengthen the oesophageal sphincter and make it close tighter to prevent the acid reflux and it’s symptoms some medication may also make your symptoms worse by either irritating the oesophagus or relaxing the lower oesophageal sphincter now the most common culprits are anti-inflammatory painkillers like ibuprofen and aspirin and also other medication like diazepam, theophylline and calcium channel blockers like nifedipine and by the way that wasn’t a complete list because we’ll be here forever instead if you feel like a medication is causing you symptoms or increasing your symptoms then speak to your pharmacist they’ll check for you and advise you appropriately so let’s say your acid reflux symptoms are worse at night when you’re lying down in your bed and that makes sense because the acid is no longer fighting gravity to make its way up your oesophagus you’re not lying down and it can easily make its way up so the solution to this is to elevate the entire upper part of the body so that doesn’t mean get a big pillow and put it behind your head because that’s just gonna elevate your head and make no difference so what you want to do is raise one end of the bed by about 10 to 20 centimeters so either put something under the top two legs of your bed or under the mattress or even use a wedge, so the chest and the head are above the waist and the acid isn’t gonna travel up like I showed you before in addition to this going to bed with an empty and dry stomach can also really help so in the last three hours of going to bed make sure you don’t eat anything and in the last two hours of going to bed make sure you don’t drink anything with foods and drinks the best advice is to eat smaller more frequent meals peppermint, tomato, chocolate and caffeine are all suspected of making acid reflux worse now for more information on this i’ve left a really useful link in the description below to an acid reflux diet sheet so feel free to check out also if you like to wear tight clothes around the waist or a belt it’s gonna push up that acid and cause the acid reflux symptoms and nobody wants that so instead try wear something loose for treatment of acid reflux I’d always recommend patients to speak to their pharmacist first they can then ask you specific questions to determine whether they can give you treatment over-the-counter or to refer you on to your GP and in terms of treatments there’s loads of options that pharmacist can recommend from antacids, alginates and acid suppression tablets but this will be determined on an individual patient basis lastly acid reflux isn’t usually serious unless you have red flags and that means you need to see a GP urgently for treatment and investigation now there’s quite a lot of red flags so I’ve left them in the description below and I would strongly advise everyone to read them and that’s it you’re now an acid reflux Pro I hope you find my tips useful and if you know anyone who’d benefit from my video please help spread the knowledge hey guys thanks for watching this week’s video make sure to click that like follow or subscribe button now to stay up to date with new weekly videos I should have been an engineer like this is like some real amazing engineering from Abraham the pharmacist Abraham the engineer no? and non…….. do you know that drug? really good drug gastro….. (Laughter) this is how difficult it is to film in a pharmacy see if only you new the pain I have to go through got Nadia labelling I’ve got Lewis the loudest dispenser literally like if there was an award for the loudest dispenser I think he’d win it