There are several natural treatments for acid reflux disease, GERD and heartburn that are also very simple and can provide a long term solution to the condition. Here’s some of the more effective ones:

Losing weight

If you can exercise easily without bringing on a cough or wheezing, do so. The best way is to find an exercise that you enjoy (cycling, swimming, brisk walking, ballroom dancing - it doesn’t matter as long as you are likely to stick to it), and do it for at least half an hour, preferably an hour, on three or four days a week.

It should be brisk enough to make you breathless, without causing you distress. If you can manage this regimen, you will find that you can lose a pound or two each week - and that amounts to 50 pounds a year! If this is combined with eating smaller amounts, it will ease your discomfort from an over-full stomach and decrease the pressure inside the abdomen that tends to push your stomach contents upwards, causing the acid reflux and heartburn symptoms.

The secret of losing weight by eating less is to eat slowly. Most fat people tend to wolf down their food, taking 15 minutes or less to polish off a large meal at home. If they could spread the time to more than half an hour, they would eat a lot less. Try it – you could be pleasantly surprised.

The reason for this is that once we feel hungry, it takes about half an hour for the feeling to die down, no matter how much we eat (within reason). If we eat our main meals round a table, having conversation with friends and family, eating slowly and waiting between courses, the feeling of satiety (fullness) starts in around half an hour, regardless of how much we have eaten (provided, of course, we have eaten something!). So if we eat slowly enough, we feel full before we have eaten a large amount, and we lose weight.

A lot of families seem to have abandoned this habit of eating around the family table, and we face a huge problem of obesity. The French eat as they have always done, taking their time and savoring every bite. Go to Paris and try to spot an obese adult - he or she is much more likely to be a tourist than a local. The French are far less affected by the obesity plague than we are.

Which foods?

The second point is that it doesn’t really matter, within reason, what food you eat. People with digestive problems often ask which foods cause their symptoms and which are unlikely to do so. They are surprised to find that there are very few types of food that cause GERD or acid reflux symptoms. A minority of sufferers find that fried foods upset them: others find that tea or coffee or similar hot drinks do so.

Many more rue the glass of spirits that well-meaning friends have offered them. The rule about food is that if you find one that brings on heartburn or discomfort, then avoid it. Everyone is different. It is more important to eat a variety of foods that don’t obviously induce the symptoms rather than to go on a restrictive diet. You will almost certainly find, as you change from big meals to small portions eaten slowly, that you return to eating foods that in the past you thought made you feel ill. This is why I’m not devoting a big section in this blog dedicated to diets. They don’t work in GERD, except in so far as you will find by trial and experience which foods suit you and which ones don’t.

Sleeping position

The third point is about raising the head of the bed. Of course, it is meant to keep the upper body semi-upright, to avoid reflux passing horizontally from stomach to esophagus. I’ve found in practice that all it does is to make people slide down the bed while they sleep so that they end up curled up, flat on the mattress.

That is no advantage to them, and can result in a disturbed night. So I would add that if you are going to raise the bed head, do it by only 2 or 3 inches, and put a foot-plate at the bottom of the bed, so you can’t slip downwards.

To be frank, raising the bed doesn’t often help: if you really have to keep upright overnight, you may well find that sleeping in an easy chair with a back and side arms is more effective.

Once your lifestyle changes have started to improve your heartburn symptoms, you can then return to bed, using two or three pillows to keep your body at a reasonable angle from the horizontal.

Smoking

This point is a very serious one. Smoking has such a bad effect on GERD that I felt that it deserved a separate article to itself - acid reflux causes - smoking. If you smoke, then you need to read the smoking related articles on this site. Stopping smoking is the best thing you can do for your health and probably the best natural treatments for acid reflux disease there is (if you’re a smoker).

If you don’t smoke, at least let relatives or friends who smoke read it, because the message to stop is just as much a general one as it is specifically aimed at GERD.