According to the American College of Gastroenterology, 60 million Americans report having heartburn at least once a month, and some studies report that more than 15 million Americans have symptoms every day.
Along with heartburn comes acid reflux and often times at its worst, an ulcer and potentially, when the domino effect ensues and the root cause is not addressed, throat or stomach cancer.
This is unnecessary.
That’s why this article is intended to give you things you can do before, during, and after a meal to avoid heartburn and acid reflux, as well as to drill down to the root cause of why you might be getting this and other symptoms.
The body gives us symptoms as clues that something is out of balance, so read on to learn how to give your body the balance it’s craving.
Choose one of these 3 options before your meal so heartburn doesn’t arise:
1: Prepare your body with enough stomach acid
Ironically, heartburn and acid reflux are often connected to or caused by low stomach acid.
You can avoid that by taking a good, quality digestive enzyme that contains betaine HCL with pepsin 20 minutes before your meal so your body has what it needs to do its job when the food arrives.
2: Drink your vinegar
Take one teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar in about 4 ounces of water to stimulate hydrochloric acid production while also neutralizing acidic poisons in the system.
3: Pickle your ginger
Make our “Ginger Pickle” recipe to stimulate your body to produce it’s own HCL.
Ginger Pickle Recipe
Mix together and put in a jar. Let “pickle” overnight and take ½-1 teaspoon before bigger meals daily for 2-4 weeks.
Here are 3 things to do during your meal so heartburn doesn’t arise:
1: Make wise choices
An acid bomb full of poor-quality meat that was treated with hormones and antibiotics paired with broken oil-laden fries will create a heartburn situation, whereas a meal of clean protein including poultry or fish with organic vegetables and a complex carbohydrate should settle nicely.
2: Consume fresh herbs with your meal
Just one tablespoon of fresh cilantro, oregano, basil, or parsley will go a long way in assisting your digestion because all four herbs act as dietary antipathogenics to keep the “bad guys” that cause acid reflux at bay so you can digest your food better.
3: Use apple cider vinegar and bone broth
You already know the good work apple cider vinegar does to prevent reflux, and bone broth, full of minerals, will alkalize your body, protect your stomach lining, and assist greatly in the digestive process. Try using broth instead of water whenever you steam veggies, or have a mug of warm broth with your meal.
By the time it’s too late and you’re uncomfortable or in pain, you can use these 3 tips to troubleshoot heartburn:
1: Take homeopathic cell salts instead of TUMS to neutralize the “bad acid.”
2: Have a cup of hot ginger tea with a splash of apple cider vinegar.
3: Take colostrum, a nutrient-dense combination of immune system components and growth factors to support your natural intestinal function. Colostrum helps soothe and repair the gut (mucosal) lining. This makes colostrum a good acute remedy as well as a key player in the long-term support of a healthy immune system.
When taken consistently for a few months at a time, it can help you produce more immunoglobulin (IgG). They are the most common antibodies or proteins made by our immune system. The immune system produces them in response to a threat (perceived foreign invader) to keep you safe. Therefore, producing more immunoglobulins will help you knock out unwanted bugs and mitigate or eliminate (some) food sensitivities.
It’s important to know what to do day-to-day to make yourself feel better, as well as to have healthy go-to “band aids” for when you don’t eat or feel well.
It’s also important to get to the root cause of this, or any health issue.
The four major root causes of heartburn that you won’t hear about in mainstream health news are:
If you’ve been following my work for any length of time, then you know I am all about healing from the root cause so you can have a better, happier life free of health issues so that you can thrive.
That being said, let’s dig into the solutions to these 4 main causes of heartburn.
1: Chronic Low Stomach Acid
Hydrochloric acid (HCL) is naturally secreted in the stomach in order to digest food so it can be absorbed into the bloodstream. Vast majorities of people I work with (over 50%) have low stomach acid. Not only does this create or exacerbate heartburn and reflux, it leaves you vulnerable to key nutritional deficiencies that create a domino effect in the brain, hormones, and gut. I wrote a detailed blog about about how to balance low stomach acid here.
2&3: H. Pylori and Candida (Over acid condition due to metabolic waste)
Digging deeper here…what could be the root cause of low stomach acid?
8 out of 10 times, there’s a “bug” or several bugs that normally live harmoniously in your body but have now gotten too big for their britches and taken over.
They now create an over acid condition resulting from their metabolic waste (they are terribly messy house guests) and now this is causing harm to your mucosal lining, or the protective layer in your throat, stomach, and small intestine.
This is what creates that raw or burning feeling. It’s similar to having a wound from the inside.
It can also manifest as itchy skin (eczema or psoriasis), bloating, and most always comes with brain fog as well.
The two culprits here are a bacterial overgrowth called H. pylori (Helicobacter pylori) and a yeast overgrowth in the form of Candida (Candida albicans).
H. pylori likely got in because your stomach acid was too low to kill it and Candida likely took it’s opportunity to grow after a round of antibiotics (even years ago) or from a diet that promoted it.
H. pylori and Candida are kind of a packaged deal. They like to hang around together so when you address one, you must also address the other to truly clean up the root of the pathogenic (bad organism) activity that is causing those tiny holes in your mucosal lining as well as the raw and burning feeling in your body.
Then, you must rebuild that mucosal lining (and your stomach acid) to truly heal and keep your immunity strong so if those foreign invaders try to come back, your body will know how to kick them out and let them know they are not welcome.
When approaching getting rid of H. pylori, you must do it gently because your mucosal (protective) lining is already compromised. Therefore, if you use heavy hitting, powerful antibacterial botanicals or even antibiotics, they may certainly work, but they will also cause further damage not only to your already vulnerable and thin mucosal lining, but they will also knock out the other good bacteria you have that works hard to keep you healthy day in and day out.
To avoid that, we use a gentle combination of wild crafted botanicals that are still uber powerful in eradicating both yeast and H. Pylori, but they are also gentle enough not to kill the good bacteria nor degrade the stomach lining. Matula tea is a near magical tea that has been clinically proven to eradicate H. pylori and consistently beats other treatments used for stomach ulcers, acid reflux, and Candida. It’s an easy to drink herbal tea that you drink for 30 days.
We use this very successfully in our Gut Thrive in 5 program for those on Plan H (one of our customized plans – I’ll tell you more about those soon).
This approach works because it intercepts the “cell phone” communication method that the bacteria and yeast use to communicate and proliferate in your body. It weakens them (and also kills some of them without destroying the mucosal lining) so that the existing good guys can strengthen and then the “bad guys” can start to leave on their own.
This is much easier on the body and less barbaric, ending the “open warfare” mentality that generally exists in the microbiome where we bomb and attack the whole body to kill off the bad guys, and end up inadvertently killing our good bacteria and hurting our immune system.
