I’ve spent a decent amount of time on various different medications for acid reflux. While a lot of them have worked briefly, they either had horrible side effects (PPIs) or they just plain didn’t work at all.
After losing hope for the traditional route of treatment, I decided to investigate alternative therapies. Specifically, I was interested in home remedies: things that you can buy at the health food store down the street. I find most everything that I recommend here at the supplement store that’s about 10 minutes away from my house, and I’m now a regular customer there.
Some of these remedies work better than others. The things that have consistently given me good results are the following: DGL, digestive enzymes, apple cider vinegar and calcium citrate.
- DGL stands for deglycyrrhizinated licorice; it’s a form of licorice root with the glycyrrhizin (a sugar which tends to increase blood pressure) removed. Licorice has a wonderful effect of soothing the walls of your stomach and esophagus (and throat if you have silent reflux). It promotes issue healing and protects the lining from acid damage. Whenever I’m feeling acid discomfort, I chew on a few of these and the pain tends to go away quickly.
- Digestive enzymes are a collection of enzymes that you find in the human body that aid in digestion. These are 100% natural, you take them before a meal and they work to digest your food faster. If your food digests faster then there is less chance of a reflux event occurring, and so I generally recommend taking these.
- Apple cider vinegar seems counterproductive but oddly enough, it does actually work. You simply drink 8oz of water with about a tablespoon of the vinegar (with a little honey to improve taste and texture) and boom.. tends to lessen your reflux right away. There are various theories as to why this works, I won’t delve into them here for the sake of space (and time!). It helps in digestion and moves the food along through your system faster.
- Calcium citrate is a calcium supplement that you find often in health food stores. It generally comes paired with magnesium and vitamin D to aid in absorption; I usually see it referred to as ”Cal-Mag supplement”. There has been a recent discovery that calcium may help your lower esophageal sphincter valve (LES for short) to close properly. Since I’ve started taking these I’ve noticed overall that I have less reflux taking place and I no longer get the “acid taste” in my mouth.
Along with these basic home remedies, it’s a good idea to address your diet. What you eat (despite what some in the medical community believe) does in fact have an effect on the amount of acid secreted in your stomach. Try to avoid high fat foods, those are a huge trigger. But enough on that, we’ll talk more about specific foods next week.
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