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It is normal to have a heartburn, just persevere it, it won't kill you. However, it is painful and I always take it as an indicator of something wrong with your body.
I can tell you to take a glass of milk or eat some toothpaste, but look here, am just helping you sleep, not solve the entire problem. It will just come back another night. So, what are the things you need to deal with to eliminate the heart burns?
Before diving into those, I will teach you a few biological terms:
The esophageal sphincter:
Where the esophagus (the tube from throat downwards) opens into the stomach, there is a ring-like muscle called the lower esophageal sphincter. A heartburn is simply acid burning up the wall of this tube, so when you take milk or toothpaste or any base component, you are just neutralizing this acid.
The esophageal sphincter is actually a valve supposed to prevent the contents of the stomach from going up into the esophagus. It naturally opens when you swallow, belch or vomit. Otherwise, it should stay closed.
In people with a heart burn, this muscle becomes weakened or dysfunctional. This occurs when there is too much pressure on the muscle, causing acid to squeeze through the opening. And you may ask, how is there too much pressure?
One guess is that you have overeaten and the food is just pressing too much on this muscle, causing it to allow acidic contents to burn up the wall of the upward tube.
Here comes my recommendation, just do not overeat!
The second guess is that you are obese or overweight hence your fatty stomach muscles are building up pressure thus keeping this valve open.
The pressure in your abdomen may become so high that the sphincter gets pushed upward, away from the diaphragm's support. This condition is known as hiatus hernia and is the main reason obese people and pregnant women are at an increased risk of getting heartburns.
You can listen or ignore if you want, but go lose weight you will reduce the chances of these conditions happening, and many more.
Third, do a low carb diet, I have said many times that you will still survive if you avoid carbs. They are a bane to your existence and you should limit their consumption. Especially if you eat just before you sleep, undigested carbs lead to bacterial overgrowth and high pressure inside the stomach. We become fatter and fatter when we eat less than 3 hours to bed time and carb digestion becomes impaired, blotting your stomach, causing heartburns and converting all the carbs to fat, which make you overweight, obese and you go back to the second guess up, just a vicious cycle to finishing yourself, by beckoning diabetes and high blood pressure. I will not go there, but you get the point.
I will always urge you to stick to plain water as I make my forth point. Alcohol aggravates heartburn by increasing stomach acid, relaxing the lower esophageal sphincter and reducing the ability of the esophagus to clear itself of acid. If this alcohol makes you reach out to your brakes slower while driving, do you think your internal organs are as fast as they should be?
I will not tell you to avoid oranges or citrus fruits at this point as it is common sense, citrus fruits will not do you good and it is like adding insult to injury.
I will point out my fifth item using what we like drinking carbonated drinks. These also weaken the lower esophageal sphincter, mainly due to the carbon dioxide gas that will be coming out and making you feel sweet. You know it will also come out with some acid but the acid will not vaporise into the air in contribution to that "coke" feeling ha ha, it will land on your esophagus walls and burn you properly. You will belch more often — thus increase the amount of acid escaping into the tube. Do not tell me I did not tell you.