How to Control Acid Reflux. Heartburn usually kicks in when you lie down to sleep, especially after a heavy meal.
You wake up in the middle of the night with a fire in your throat and a sour taste in your mouth. A blob of something vile pops up from your stomach and you have to spit it out.
After you get rid of it, your throat feels sore and you sound hoarse when you talk. Sometimes you start to cough or your chest sounds wheezy. What you have experienced is heartburn... which has nothing to do with your heart.
It happens when stomach acids, which you use to digest your food, flow back into your esophagus (the long tube between your mouth and your stomach). These acids irritate and burn the lining of your esophagus and throat.
Everyone experiences some heartburn now and then. But it can become chronic, ie recur constantly. If you experience heartburn a few times a week, it is likely you have gastroesophageal reflux disease, otherwise known in short as GORD (or GERD if you are American).
The chronic condition should be treated with seriousness for several vital reasons. What chronic acid reflux (GORD) does to your body. The constant backflow of stomach acid into your esophagus can lead to:1 Dental problems... stomach acids in the mouth can wreak havoc on tooth enamel, requiring more trips to the dentist than usual.2 Voice and throat problems... stomach acid in the throat can cause hoarseness and laryngitis, and even changes in the voice. However these problems tend to resolve easily when GORD is treated.3 Asthma... studies have found that up to 80% of patients with asthma also have chronic acid reflux. Whether asthma causes GORD or chronic heartburn causes asthma is not known, but some medical scientists are of the opinion that acid that backs up from the stomach can get into the airways and damage them.
