Are millions of us born with a genetic defect that makes us produce too much stomach acid?

Are we deficient in acid-blocking drugs that prevent heartburn and reflux?

The answers to these questions is "no."

The Truth about Acid-Blocking Medications

At least 10 percent of Americans have episodes of heartburn every day, and 44 percent have symptoms at least once a month. Overall, reflux or GERD, (gastro-esophageal reflux disease, also known as heartburn), affects 25 to 35 percent of the US population.

As a result, acid-blocking medications are the third top-selling type of drug in America today. Two other drugs to treat reflux, Nexium and Prevacid, are in the top 10 best-selling drugs and account for $5.7 and $4.0 billion in sales annually.

So what happens when you take acid-blocking drugs? There's evidence that these medications can prevent you from properly digesting food, cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and lead to problems like irritable bowel syndrome, depression, hip fractures, and some cancers. Studies show that people who take acid-blocking medications for the long term can become deficient in vitamin B12, which can lead to depression, anemia, fatigue, nerve damage, and even dementia, especially in the elderly. The research also tells us that taking these drugs can cause dangerous overgrowth of bacteria in the intestine called Clostridia, leading to life-threatening infections.

These are serious problems -- and it's pretty clear that in this case, the "cure" of acid-blocking drugs is worse than the "disease" of GERD. But that's of little comfort when you're suffering from heartburn. So if drugs are not the answer, what is? We need to find the real causes of reflux and heartburn -- get rid of them! And we need to use the right foods, nutrients, and lifestyle therapies to heal the problem.

What Causes GERD?

Fried food, alcohol, caffeine, and soda can all trigger reflux. Spicy, tomato-based or citrus foods may also cause problems for some people. Smoking also increases the risk of reflux. Being overweight and having your belly fat push up on your stomach can prevent it from emptying, triggering reflux.

Having a hiatal hernia (where your stomach pushes up through your diaphragm) can also cause trouble and can be diagnosed by x-ray. Eating large meals and eating before bed are two other main reasons for reflux.

But there are other causes that are often overlooked. Food is supposed to go down, not up, when you eat. That's why there are two main valves, or sphincters, that control food going in and out of your stomach -- the one at the top (or the lower esophageal sphincter) and one at the bottom (the pyloric valve).

When you're stressed, the valve on the top relaxes and the valve on the bottom tightens up. The result? Food goes up, not down. So stress and what Ayurvedic medicine calls a vata imbalance can contribute to reflux.

Magnesium deficiency is another cause of reflux because magnesium helps the sphincter at the bottom of the stomach relax, allowing the food to go down.

Food sensitivities or allergies can also cause reflux. Common culprits include dairy and gluten-containing foods like wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Plus, overgrowth of bacteria in the small bowel or yeast overgrowth in the gut can cause reflux, as well as H. Pylorie.

These are all treatable conditions that you don't need powerful acid blocking drugs to fix.

To properly diagnose the causes, you may need to do the following.

1. Ask your medical provider for an H. pylori blood antibody test.
2. Consider a test for food allergies and celiac disease.
3. Get a stool test to check for small bowel bacterial overgrowth.
4. If you don't get better with the suggestions below, consider getting an upper endoscopy or upper GI series x-ray to see if there is anything else wrong.

3 Steps to Permanently Overcoming Heartburn and Acid Reflux

Step 1: Treat the Bugs if You Have Them

• If you have H. pylori, treat it with triple antibiotic therapy from your medical provider.
• Treat yeast overgrowth with an antifungal protocol such as the one used at Fern Life Center.

• Treat bacterial overgrowth in the small bowel.

Step 2: Change Your Diet

• Try to eliminate dairy and gluten (see www.celiac.com for sources of gluten in the diet).
• Eliminate alcohol, caffeine, citrus, tomato-based, and spicy foods.
• Don't eat within 3 hours before bed.
• Don't eat junk food.
• Avoid processed foods.
• Eat cooked foods, like fish, chicken, cooked veggies, and rice; avoid raw food for now.
• Eat smaller, more frequent meals, at least 4 to 5 times a day.

Step 3: Try Some Natural Remedies to Help Soothe the Gut

• Take 2 to 3 capsules of digestive enzymes with each meal.
• Re-inoculate the gut with healthy bacteria by using probiotics.
• Try 75 to 150 mg of zinc carnosine twice a day between meals -- this has been extensively studied and is used frequently in Japan.
• Take 3 to 5 grams of glutamine powder in water twice a day to help heal the gut lining.
• Chew 2 to 3 chewable tablets of DGL (a form of licorice) 15 minutes before meals.
• Try 200 to 400 mg of magnesium citrate or glycinate twice a day.

As you can see, there's no need to suffer from heartburn and reflux -- or to take expensive and dangerous acid-blocking drugs.