Nobody likes the pain, heartburn, and irritation that accompanies acid reflux flare-ups after you’ve had a heavy meal. You would hate these flare-ups even more if they became a regular occurrence in your life. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a chronic condition in which acid reflux flare-ups are a usual part of life. So, to deal with GERD, you need to build for yourself an acid reflux diet.
What Actually is Acid Reflux?
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When you eat food, it passes down to your stomach. But before passing to your stomach, it has to pass through the entrance. At the entrance is a group of muscles. These muscles are called the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES). Now, if everything is alright with your, the LES will close exactly after the food passes through it.
This is so that none of the acids from the stomach can escape from there and go up the LES to cause heartburn. But sometimes, the LES does not close fully, or it becomes loose, which is why acid escapes from the stomach to travel up your esophagus. This gives you the feeling of heartburn and is called acid reflux.
This feeling does not sound too good, and that too after you’ve had a meal that you thoroughly enjoyed. It is even worse for people who suffer from GERD and therefore know much more than they want to about acid reflux. This makes a GERD diet extremely important for them.
Acid Reflux and Food
Now, there are food items that make your acid reflux symptoms better and then there are some foods that reduce acid reflux. This list of food items is more of a personal choice as some food items that help the majority of people might not work the same for you.
The solution to this is that you try these food items when you are experiencing an acid reflux flare-up and see if it helps you. Now before moving on to telling you about food items that can help with acid reflux symptoms, let’s discuss these symptoms of acid reflux so that you can identify your feeling of heartburn as acid reflux.
Acid Reflux Symptoms
The obvious symptom of acid reflux is heartburn. Heartburn is a searing discomfort or pain. This pain is located in your digestive system. It starts from your stomach, abdomen and chest but can progress up to your throat. Along with heartburn, you can also regurgitate. Regurgitation is a bitter taste in your mouth or throat. This bitter taste is actually the taste of acid that has escaped from your stomach and made its way out of the LES.
These are the most common symptoms of acid reflux, but there are some other symptoms of acid reflux. These symptoms can be feeling bloated and burping. Your stool can also be bloody or black. You might even have bloody vomit in some extreme conditions.
Another symptom you might experience is Dysphagia which feels like food is stuck in your throat. You can also have hiccups for no apparent reason. Some other symptoms that you might experience are unexplained weight loss, an unending sore throat, dry cough, difficulty in breathing, and a hoarse voice.
Now that you know how to identify acid reflux, let's move on to foods that reduce acid reflux flare-ups.
Food Items that Relieve Acid Reflux
There are many foods to avoid with acid reflux as they make your symptoms worse, like oily, fatty, and spicy foods. Similarly, there are so many food items that you can eat when you have an acid reflux flare-up to relieve yourself. You should keep track of these items and how they help you during a flare-up. This will help you in figuring out which of these items helps you the best.
1. Food Items With High-fiber Content
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Before listing actual food items that fall under this category, let’s talk about how these items help you. Firstly, as these items have high fibre content, you are not likely to overeat. HIgh-fibre food items make you feel full sooner than other food items. Secondly, high-fibre food is obviously healthy for your body. So, choose food items with high fibre instead of oily and fatty food to relieve your acid reflux symptoms. Here are some food items in this category:
- The first food item under this GERD diet category is whole grains. This includes couscous, brown rice, and oatmeal
- The next high-fibre food items are root vegetables. This includes carrots, sweet potatoes, and beets.
- You can also eat these green veggies, Broccoli, asparagus, and green beans.
2. Food items With A High pH Count
Just like chemicals, foods have a pH scale which indicates their acidity. There are food items with low pH that are acidic, and then there are items with a high pH score. These food items are alkaline foods. Acidic foods are harmful to you as they are known to worsen your acid reflux flare-ups. Alkaline foods, on the other hand, can help in relieving a strong stomach acid. These food items that can be included in the acid reflux diet are:
- Fruits such as Bananas and Melons.
- Vegetables like Cauliflower and Fennels
- Nuts
3. Food Items With Water
Water is always good for you. This is just another proof. You should consume food items with water in them as they can help in relieving your pain and irritation by diluting your stomach acids. These food items include:
- Fruits like Watermelon and Cucumber
- Vegetables like Celery and Lettuce
- Soups with broth
- Herbal Tea
4. Milk
Milk is also known to be on the list of foods that reduce acid reflux, but this is only true with nonfat milk. This is because it acts as a sort of translator between your acidic stomach content and your stomach lining. It can act as an immediate relief of heartburn.
5. Ginger
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The next food item that can help with your acid reflux flare-ups is Ginger. It is very much known as one of the top digestive aids. So, you can try adding a soothing ginger tea to the GERD diet to relieve the irritation in your digestive tract.
6. Lemon Water
The next tip to help relieve heartburn symptoms is lemon water. Lemon water is considered extremely acidic; you would think it would be on the list of foods to avoid with acid reflux. But if you take a little bit of lemon juice and stir it into some water and then finally add some honey, you have the natural remedy to acid reflux.
