5 Sneaky Eating Habits That Can Lead To Heartburn

It’s not just alcohol and tomato sauce that can trigger symptoms. G.I. docs share the more surprising things you eat that can lead to heartburn.

Nothing can ruin a delicious meal like heartburn. One minute you’re enjoying pizza and beer with your friends and the next you’re reaching into the medicine cabinet for some Tums. Or maybe for you, heartburn strikes at night when you’re trying to sleep.

If heartburn is something you deal with regularly, you likely already know the main foods and drinks that can set it off: alcohol, soda, fried food, tomato sauce and citrus are all biggies. If you’ve cut ties with these worst offenders and are still experiencing the burn, it could be due to another food habit. To minimize symptoms, doctors and nutritionists specializing in heartburn say there are five major food rules to follow, which are explained below.

What Exactly Is Heartburn?

An important part of treating any health condition is understanding what’s happening in the body to cause it. Dr. Lauren Bleich, a gastroenterologist with Gastro Health in Acton, Massachusetts, told HuffPost that heartburn is a classic symptom of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and is usually described as a burning sensation in the chest. GERD is a more serious version of acid reflux, which can also cause heartburn. If you experience heartburn every once in a while, you likely don’t have GERD, but if you experience it regularly, you may. Bleich said that other symptoms of GERD include difficulty swallowing, chest pain and a feeling of fullness in the throat.

“Think of the stomach as a one-way pump. Everything should be going from your mouth to the esophagus, to the stomach and to the small intestine. But if some of the stomach contents comes back into the esophagus, it’s called regurgitation. When there is acid and digestive juices that come back up, it hurts the esophagus and can lead to pain,” explained Dr. Kenneth Brown, a gastroenterologist and the host of the Gut Check Project podcast. Brown told HuffPost that it’s normal to experience a small amount of digestive juice regurgitation, but when someone starts experiencing pain from it, it’s referred to as heartburn.