How to Reduce Your Acid Reflux Symptoms with Your Diet

When food enters the body through your mouth, your digestive tract turns it into fuel, nutrients, and other chemicals you need to function. Your stomach is an important part of this process, breaking down food with acids that get carried into your small intestine for further process. Keeping that acid bath in your belly in balance is equally important. Otherwise, you may deal with conditions like acid reflux and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

These problems upset the chemical balance in your digestive system, leading to inflammation, narrowing, and precancerous changes in the esophagus (food tube). Dietary changes can help manage acid reflux and its related problems to prevent things from worsening. Let’s examine its causes, risk factors, and how diet changes can help.

Drs. Stephen Steller, Ryan Garcia, Justin Murray, and their experienced team at Spinal Correction Centers can help you find relief if you live in Dunedin, Largo, Riverview, or St. Petersburg, Florida, and you’re struggling with acid reflux. 

Understanding acid reflux

Your stomach breaks down foods and eliminates pathogens with hydrochloric acid but suffers no damage because of your stomach lining. Not all parts of your digestive tract have this advantage, including your esophagus, which has a valve (the esophageal sphincter) that releases food into the stomach but prevents it from going back up. 

Acid reflux happens when the esophageal sphincter fails to keep food from going back up, leading to acid getting in there, which causes heartburn and other digestive problems. It can also leave a bitter or sour taste as it moves back to your throat.

Causes and risk factors

The valve at the base of your esophagus fails due to weakness or relaxation, which makes it more difficult to do its job, and this can be caused by:

• Abdominal pressure: Overeating and pregnancy can cause pressure on your abdomen, which can lead to acid reflux.
• Medications: Certain asthma, blood pressure, painkiller, sedative, antidepressant, and allergy medications can also lead to this gastric problem.
• Hiatal hernia: A condition where the upper stomach bulges into the diaphragm, affecting how you take in food.
• Foods: Dairy, spicy, and fried foods can create digestive problems that lead to acid reflux, along with caffeine, alcohol, and acidic juices.

Other factors include smoking, inactivity, and lying down between two to three hours after eating. 

Diets that can help

The key to reducing acid reflux is knowing what to eat and what to remove from your diet. In addition to the foods mentioned above, tomato-based sauces, citrus fruits, chocolate, processed snacks, fast food, pizza, and carbonated beverages can all contribute to dealing with gastric illness. Moderating the amount of these foods you eat and avoiding them closer to when you go to sleep can help reduce digestive issues.

Here are some foods to add to your diet to relieve this problem:

High fiber

These foods will fill you up quickly, decreasing the chances of overeating and lowering issues with heartburn, which means adding more whole grains, root vegetables, and green vegetables to your meals, such as oatmeal, brown rice, sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and green beans.

Alkaline

These foods can balance the acid levels in your stomach and include bananas, melons, cauliflower, fennel, and nuts in your diet.

Watery

Watery foods also affect stomach acid by diluting it, so having more celery, cucumber, lettuce, watermelon, broth, soups, and herbal teas can help reduce problems with reflux.

We offer a variety of dietary and exercise choices that can reduce acid reflux, and use chiropractic care to reduce pressure on your nerves, spine, and joints. If you’re ready to see how we can help with this gastric condition, make an appointment with Drs. Steller, Garcia, Murray, and the team at Spinal Correction Centers today to get started.