I personally experienced an intense burning sensation right above the chest to the point where I thought I was having a heart attack.

After all, everybody knows that one of the main symptoms of a heart attack is chest pain so how can you tell the difference especially when you’re under a lot of pain and anxiety?

In functional medicine, practitioners consider the health of your digestive system
to be as crucial as the health of your brain.

In fact, many chronic conditions start with poor digestion, sending out clues in the form of indigestion and heartburn.

Thanks to incessant advertising, many people go to their doctors looking for an antacid or proton pump inhibitor (PPI) when they have acid reflux.

But using these pills long-term could mask the signals your body is sending out and keep you from finding the real cause of your acid indigestion.

The problem of acid reflux begins when the gradient of pressure between the lower esophageal sphincter (the valve between the esophagus and the stomach) and the stomach is altered.

Under normal circumstances, our muscles act with gravity to create pressure to push the food we eat downward from the esophagus into the stomach.

With acid reflux, the pressure from the stomach below increases over the pressure from above, and the mixture of food and acid that should stay in the stomach comes splashing back up.

A similar pressure gradient effect applies whenever we belch.

You would think that if we could only stop or neutralize the hydrochloric acid produced in our stomachs, we can solve the problem. If the acid is causing the burning, then take away the acid, right?

This can certainly help some people in the short-term. But in truth, the approach only solves a portion of the problem, the symptoms.

And remember that an inappropriate or long-term use of antacids, proton pump inhibitors, or H2- receptor antagonists can set you up for more problems down the road.

But what if I told you that there was an underlying cause that most people aren’t even aware of and it has to do with a certain hidden bacteria. More on that later…

Need guidance on how to control and manage your acid reflux? Check out my Heartburn No More program

The post What Exactly Is Acid Reflux?(A Fresh Perspective) first appeared on Jeff Martin's Acid Reflux Blog.