Today, I'm going to talk about reflux and heartburn and some creative solutions for them,
so stay tuned. Hey there, if you're new here, welcome my name's Amanda Malachesky,
I'm a Certified Functional Nutrition Coach and a Digestive and Allergy Detective.
To keep hearing about how to go from digestive chaos, to gut confidence,
please consider subscribing and be sure to hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video
every week. So reflux and heartburn suck. And I know this because I very recently been starting to
have the symptom myself since August or so. And I've also been seeing a lot more clients coming
into my practice, having this problem. And I've recently learned some really wonderful tips and
remedies to deal with the root causes of reflux and help yourself heal. So in today's video,
I'm going to share these new remedies that I learned about and give you an idea of how to
move forward, healing your reflux and heartburn. And I've been using these tips on myself and it's
made a tremendous difference. And I know it can for you too, so let's get started.
First, a couple of terms. Reflux is when the contents of your stomach regurgitate a little bit
up the back of your throat or into your esophagus. And this can cause a little bit of heartburn,
which is that burning sensation sometimes people get either in their heart area or a little lower
down just below their rib cage on the left side, or sometimes all the way up higher in the throat.
And then LPR stands for, this is a very big word, laryngopharyngeal reflux, LPR. And what
this just means is it's a reflux condition that is dealing with the larynx, which is the voice box
and the esophagus, and those areas are being impacted by reflux. And then one more term that
I want to talk about is the lower esophageal sphincter, which is the muscle sphincter that
opens and closes at the bottom of your esophagus to allow food to go down into your stomach, water,
liquids of all kinds to go down into your stomach, and to allow air to escape when you
burp. And the sphincter should be closed unless you're actually eating or drinking or burping.
So reflux can cause heartburn, like I mentioned, but reflux can also cause several other symptoms
that I didn't know until recently. These include things like throat clearing, a persistent cough,
post-nasal drip is another common symptom of LPR and reflux. And in the worst case scenario, this
persistent process can actually cause problems with your tooth enamel and decay your teeth.
So it's definitely something that you want to deal with because even when you're having
what's called silent reflux, which means that the reflux is happening but you're not experiencing
a burning sensation. It can still be damaging the inner tissues of your esophagus and in the
back of your throat and your nasal passages. And one thing that I recently learned about
this problem that I thought was interesting is that a lot of times the burning sensation
isn't due to stomach acid, it's actually due to protease, which is the enzyme that your body
normally and naturally secretes for you to digest proteins. But when protease is with the stomach
contents that comes up into your esophagus, it can really damage the tissues and start digesting
the inner lining of your esophagus and the back of your throat. This is something we definitely
need to handle and stop from happening. What do we do about reflux? Obviously the
very first thing that we need to do is we need to stop the reflux from happening so that we can give
your tissues a chance to actually heal. And the conventional treatment for reflux is very often
PPI medication, which are proton-pump inhibitors, which just means that they are suppressing
the secretion of stomach acid. And so, a lot of times when people who have reflux take PPI's,
their reflux improves a little bit. But it's really just because the stomach acid is reduced
and so there's not as much burning from that. And that's a great thing, but then they find that
when they go off of that medication, they often have an extreme flare or it's worse than ever.
The reflux just is really, really bad. And in fact, if this has happened to you just
click a like below this video so we can see how many people have had this challenge. So the data
and the research actually show that PPIs don't really help reflux that much. They reduce some of
the symptoms of the reflux, but they do nothing to stop the reflux. And so we want to have a
conversation about what can we do to actually stop this from happening at the root cause.
How are we going to stop the reflux? So I recently learned about a couple of over-the-counter
remedies that actually stop reflux. The first one is one that I heard about from an
interview with a gastroenterologist that was aired on NPR a couple of weeks ago. And I will
leave a link for that below this video, if I can find it. And he was talking about how
this ingredient called sodium alginate, which is derived from brown algae or seaweed, when taken on
top of a meal forms what he called a raft of this material on top of the contents of your stomach,
which then act as a plug or a cork to prevent the food from actually refluxing up into your stomach.
The over-the-counter product that he mentioned is called Gaviscon Advance. And it's available
over-the-counter in Europe and not in the U.S., not in U.S. pharmacies. But you can
order it online through Amazon and get the European formula. This is opposed to Gaviscon,
just plain Gaviscon, which you can get in the U.S. but it has a different ingredient and it
doesn't work as well. So Gaviscon Advance is one option that you can look into. And
I'll leave a link for that to Amazon below this video so you can go check that out.
The other product he mentioned is called Reflux Gourmet, and it's a reflux product that contains
the sodium alginate ingredient. And it was designed and developed by a chef who had reflux.
And it's produced right here in California, actually not too far away from me. And so,
as soon as I heard about this, I went to order a tube of it. And it's of course, horribly
back-ordered because of this piece that ran on NPR. But they're working on, I think getting their
production up and running. And I did finally get ahold of a tube of it and started using it myself.
And I found that it actually really helped me. I was using it after every meal for several weeks.
And I actually was noticing that the back of my throat felt a lot better than it had in
years. I think that I may be a silent reflux patient and I didn't know. And then when I ran
out of the product, my reflux started getting worse. I could feel the burning in the back of
my throat again. I highly recommend this product as well. I really enjoyed it. It's pretty heavily
back-ordered right now, but you can order it on Amazon and they will ship it when it's available.
I'll also leave a link for that below this video. Two other simple dietary supplements that I
recently learned about that can help with reflux are melatonin and the amino acid L-tryptophan.
I found out about this by accident, by doing a little bit of research about melatonin for
another reason. I found a meta-analysis, which is a compilation of several studies together
that showed that melatonin actually helps keep that lower esophageal sphincter closed.
And L-tryptophan actually helps in the same way. So these are two dietary supplements that you can
order online or find at your local health food store that may also help with preventing reflux,
preventing those stomach contents from going back up the esophagus and damaging your esophagus.
And once we've stopped the reflux from happening, so we're stopping the ongoing
damage that keeps happening, then we can actually focus your attention on healing that inner skin.
And some of the best remedies that I could recommend for that are things like
aloe vera juice, the inner leaf juice of the aloe plant, which you can find
at any health food store. And then something called slippery elm, which is an herbal extract,
it's a powder, that's the ground-up bark of the slippery elm tree. And you can use this powder in
smoothies or you can actually just add it directly to some water, to make a little bit of a tea.
So using these substances can help soothe and coat the inner skin of your esophagus and the
rest of your gut. And can help just decrease the burning and inflammation. And ideally, we're just
supporting the process of healing. And eventually that skin heals up, your reflux doesn't happen
anymore, and you're good to go. And then once you're confident that that inner skin is healed
up and the reflux has stopped, then you would maybe move on to supporting your stomach acid.
Stomach acid also helps keep this lower esophageal sphincter closed. But we want to be careful and
not move on to this step until we're sure that the reflux is no longer happening, because that
extra stomach acid could be irritating and feel worse on your heartburn or your irritated tissues.
I do have a whole video on how to increase your stomach acid. That might be something for you to
save for later so you can watch when you're ready for that step.
I'm curious to hear from you, what has helped your reflux? Tell me about it in the comments.
Those are some of my thoughts on reflux and heartburn and how to work on healing them.
If you think this approach sounds like a good idea, hit me up with a like below this video,
thumbs up or leave me a comment to tell me that I'm way off base.
And if you're struggling with your gut health or figuring out what to eat,
I would really love to talk to you. I am currently in the process of designing an online course
to help people go from digestive chaos and food chaos, to clarity and confidence in what they're
eating. And I need to hear from people who have digestive challenges about what they
think they would like to see in such a program. If you would like to talk with me for a short bit,
I'm going to leave a link below this video to schedule a short interview. It should only
take 30 to 45 minutes, and I will really look forward to meeting you. And as a thank you to
you for your time, I'm going to enter everyone who shows up for an interview in a drawing to
win a copy of the cookbook called the FODMAP Elimination Diet and Cookbook by Patsy Catsos.
So head over there and schedule a time to talk to me and I'll look forward to seeing you. I hope
that this video helped you feel like there's hope for your reflux and heartburn and gave you some
new ideas to play around with. If you liked this video, please consider liking and sharing it with
someone who you think could use it. And I will look forward to seeing you next time, take care.