People who suffer from heartburn and are willing to change their lifestyle will be the ones who will benefit the most from the GERD diet. Contrary to popular belief, being on a GERD diet does not mean that you will be left out from the pack who enjoys their unhealthy foods, neither does it mean that you will be relegated to eating bland or tasteless foods for the rest of your life.
GERD, or gastroesophageal reflux disease, is generally the acid and some food materials that escape and goes back up from where it came from. When someone asks “What does heartburn feel like” you know that they are reacting to particular foods that they had just ingested. The burning sense is concentrated in the esophagus which is located in the chest cavity and the acid does not affect the heart whatsoever. How long the burning sensation lasts depends on how much acids had been refluxed and not all suffer the same way.
Lifestyle and certain foods can trigger GERD and it will only be corrected by following the GERD diet which includes the avoidance of toxic or poisonous ingestion of substances commonly found in our everyday diet: alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, overly spicy foods as well as overly fatty foods. They are all so tempting and smell so good that resisting is not an option. When the heartburn attacks, regret and the motivation to bite one’s own elbow is immediately felt.
The GERD diet is really simple. All one has to do is to lower if not totally removing the following good tasting foods from the body: fried and fatty foods, chocolate, peppermint, tomato products, caffeine containing drinks and alcohol. Why all these?
A lot of research went through to make the GERD diet possible. The identification of the substances that can cause the GERD or even just indigestion and heartburn is a mind opener. There are some ingredients that are known to be healthy and yet people can react against. Who knew that garlic can weaken the LES?
Another food that can trigger GERD and identified in the GERD diet as something everyone should avoid is nicotine combined with caffeine. The combination is a sure fire way of weakening the LES as well as increases the production of digestive acids in the stomach. Avoidance of these chemicals is the number one priority in the GERD diet and it is actually good in this case as nicotine is a highly carcinogenic drug.
Cyndi Funaldi talks about solutions for heartburn at her blog where you can find out more about acid reflux in babies and gerd treatment.