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Heart Burn Disease – Just What Is It?

If you are someone that suffers from this problem, you may want to think that you already have a good handle on the answer to that question.The pain and discomfort that you will feel so often could even be enough of an answer for you.  You might have even done some research on your own and have come up with some home remedies, some of which may or may not have been successful.

When you do research this disease, however, it’s surprising the things that even the patients don’t know about it – and sometimes it’s because doctors fail to fully inform their patients of all these details!  A lot of information about what the disease actually is, where in the body it occurs, what causes it, and most importantly the dangers of the disease is typically missing from a patient’s knowledge base.

And if you’re someone with a case of acid reflux, no matter how infrequent or minor it is, you would do well to find out more details about this condition.If you do not understand what exactly it is and what possibly is causing it, you may be incorrectly treating it and maybe even making the condition worse than it is.If not attended or left unchecked, this problem can have the potential to lead on to many other serious conditions that are mopst dangerous for your overall health, and may even prove to be fatal.

Just What is the Disease

One thing that many people are not clearly told is what exactly this disease is and where it occurs in the body.  Many think that because they feel a lot of heartburn and pain and pressure in the chest area that this disease affects the heart or chest.

Some also understand that acid reflux disease is a digestive disorder and that the pain you’re feeling actually happens in the esophagus, the long tube that moves food from your mouth to your stomach.

In truth, not one of these is correct.  Acid reflux disease is a problem in the stomach.While you will feel the pain up in your esophagus, it will not be the esophagus itself that is damaged or working incorrectly.

When you eat and food is sent to your stomach, you produce a form of hydrochloric acid that helps to break down that food so that it can be absorbed in your body and digested.  There is a small valve at the top of your stomach pouch, at the end of your esophagus, that opens when the food moves down your esophagus and then closes when the food gets into your stomach.  Once the food enters your stomach, this valve is supposed to close in order to keep the contents of your stomach including that acid from backing up into your esophagus.

Unfortunately, that valve can be defective or faulty or sometimes can be so overwhelmed with acid that it will wash up past the valve and back into the esophagus even when the valve is working properly.

When this does happen, you will feel the pain and discomfort that we call acid reflux.  This happens because your stomach has a special lining so that the stomach acids won’t bother it, but your esophagus doesn’t have this lining.  When those stomach acids “leak” out of where they belong and come into contact with your esophagus it causes pain and pressure.  Imagine if you had acid dripped on your skin – of course it would hurt!

Almost everyone experiences occasional acid reflux; this can be caused by a spicy meal which overloads the stomach and does cause the stomach acids to wash back up into the esophagus, or from eating a lot of heavy stoggy foods will trigger extra acid production in the stomach.  However, when it happens on a regular basis or is caused not by dietary habits but because of a defect in that valve then this is called acid reflux disease.

So while you feel the pain of acid reflux in your esophagus, it’s not really a condition of your esophagus at all.It’s because of a defect in your stomach or maybe poor dietary choices.

What Your Doctor Isnt Telling You

People who are finally educated about acid reflux disease, its cause, its consequences and subsequent dangers, and the dangers of home remedies that so many people actually use, they can be very shocked.

And one big reason for them being so shocked is that doctors often just don’t educate their patients adequately.  Rarely do they warn their patients of over-the-counter remedies and the damage they’re doing to their own systems.They will often give their patients no information about what is really causing their problem so that the condition can be treated at the root of the source.

Acid reflux is a very serious condition, not just a painful one.  And treating it with these home remedies or over-the-counter treatments is not only ineffective, it can just increase the danger of this disease.

There’s no explaining why doctors don’t educate their patients the way they do; of course some patients don’t want to learn and understand these things and just want a prescription to take the problem away.

But only by really learning about this disease and by understanding its root cause can you really treat it properly.  If you realize the cause of the problem, then you can address that cause rather than just trying to fix the symptoms