YOU VS. Heartburn: Who Wins?

iHealthTube.com - Prescription Drugs:  Do Your Homework

Marco here! Can you fart the Star Spangled Banner after a couple of burritos and some beer? Of course you can. Kinda funny, huh? We'll talk about "gas" later... Heartburn is a familiar foe. Roughly 50 percent of Americans feel the heat at least once a month; 20 percent suffer from symptoms two or three times a week and have chronic heartburn or GERD (short for gastroesophageal reflux disease). And those numbers are rising on the tide of obesity, which is a major contributing factor to the malady.

In fact, heartburn is such a universal sensation, says Elizabeth Lipski, PhD, clinical nutritionist and author of Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion (McGraw-Hill, 2011), that many have come to accept the associated discomfort as normal. “People think ‘this is just how my body works,’” she says. But no worries... The pharmaceutical industry is happy to lend a hand, of course. Prescription drugs that target heartburn are one of the top-10-grossing classes of drugs on the market in the United States.

Fight Heartburn Naturally