Nailing Down the Perfect Acid Reflux Diet

Staying true to the name of the blog, I wanted to put a post together detailing the perfect acid reflux diet plan. There are two things we will look at in particular: trouble foods and trigger foods.

Trouble Foods


Trouble foods are foods that many people across all genders and nationalities seem to have trouble with. When eaten, these foods lower the pressure of the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) and seem to trigger heartburn in a large number of people. Your acid reflux diet should make an effort to avoid these foods:

• Mints
• Citrus (oranges, lemons, and their juices)
• Alcohol (of all types, the higher the proof, the worse it is)
• Chocolate (all types - including dark chocolate)
• Sugar (cane sugar, HFCS, it's all bad!)
• Caffeine and Tobacco
• Coffee (even decaffeinated coffee!)
• Tomatoes (and sauces)
• Full-fat dairy
• Spicy (hot) foods, sauces, and flavorings
• Oily fish (though if tolerated, these are actually quite healthy)

All of these foods either lower the pressure exerted by the LES or increase the body's production of stomach acid. Regardless of the path of action, most people will find that these foods do not belong on their acid reflux diet plan.

Trigger Foods

Trigger foods are highly individual foods that give you heartburn every time you eat them. Everyone has different trigger foods and they could be related to either the genetics or your environment. For example, perhaps you trace your ancestry back to tribes which lived along the waters and primarily ate fish. You might not tolerate the high carbohydrate American diet, simply due to genetics, and may experience heartburn as a result.

On the other hand, trigger foods can also be learned. Have you ever ate something that made you sick? When this happens, we often develop aversions to the last thing we ate and associate it with sickness. After consuming these foods again we may feel sick and get heartburn, even if the food was completely cleaned.

The only way to tell your trigger foods from another person's is to write down what you eat and whether it gave you heartburn. If you make an honest effort to do this over the weeks you will find that you have a couple foods which you know to eliminate (see our fast food reflux diet plan as well).

What you can then do is after you have been acid reflux free for a few months, re-introduce each trigger food to see if it gives you problems. Some foods will be re-introduce-able whereas a few may not be.

Common Causes of GERD

Gastroesophageal reflux disease, commonly known as GERD, is one of the most common chronic conditions in the world today. This is typically defined as experiencing reflux frequently and for a long period of time, at least a few weeks and several times per week.

There are a lot of common causes to GERD, although typically it is a combination of some or all of the factors below:

1. Excessive or Regular Alcohol Use

Out of everything on the list, alcohol is probably the only thing that can single-handedly lead to clinical GERD, even in otherwise healthy individuals of an appropriate weight. Even young individuals who abuse alcohol will develop GERD. Nearly every alcoholic has GERD.

A night of binge drinking may lead to heartburn for a few days, and if this is done once a week, it can end up as GERD. Drinking causes a lot more health problems than most people would care to admit, especially when done on a daily basis, or in excess once every week or two.

2. Obesity

Obesity is another top cause of acid reflux. In particular, obesity likes to team up with some of the other factors (such as food intolerance, smoking, and alcohol use). Think of obesity as a catalyst; people who are overweight are much more susceptible to heartburn if they drink, smoke, or eat something that upsets their stomach.

3. Smoking

As alluded to above, cigarettes and tobacco both can lead to increased rates of acid reflux. The problem with smoking is that it inflames tissues all over the body, including the stomach and esophagus, making acid reflux likely to occur. Nicotine is also a stimulant and can cause heartburn much like caffeine.

4. Food Intolerance

For many of us, heartburn is triggered by certain foods to which we have an intolerance to. This could be a common heartburn food or it could be a learned aversion. For example, if you ate a food and then got food poisoning, it is possible that that same food then will lead to acid reflux and dyspepsia the next time you consume it. Many people do not realize that food aversions have taken place and continue to eat foods around when they got sick.


Be sure to avoid the foods that bother you, quit smoking and drinking, and lose weight, and at least 90% of the people reading this post would not even have to deal with GERD.

If you think you might have GERD, you should check out this youtube:



Many people who have chronic coughing and wheezing, they may have GERD rather than asthma. Quite interesting!

Tips for Helping Daytime Heartburn

While nighttime heartburn is the most common type of reflux, some people do indeed suffer from reflux in the daytime. This type of acid reflux is an entirely different animal from nighttime reflux. The main reason is that nighttime reflux takes very little to trigger (since you are lying down, its much easier to get reflux) compared to daytime reflux. Something really has to stress out your stomach in order for you to start getting daytime reflux.

The good news here is that since it takes something major to cause acid reflux during the day, it is usually easily corrected. Another interesting thing to note is that daytime reflux is most common in men; acid reflux in women is much less common during the day (except in the case of pregnancy, but that is another topic altogether).

Really, if you get heartburn during the day but do not get it at night odds are your problems boil down to one of two things: clothing and work.

Clothing as a Cause of Heartburn:

This one takes a lot of people by surprise, but it is a very real cause of heartburn. The real culprit here is dress pants, in particular men's slacks. Men hate to shop and will try to cycle through the same set of dress pants for their entire adult life, with usually their spouse ending up buying them new pants to avoid embarassment.

While it does save some money, the problem with this is that men of a certain age tend to gain weight, but refuse to buy new pants. The end result of this is that men wear pants way too tight for them, this pressure is exerted on the stomach (especially after lunch) and this needs to heartburn and bladder problems. This is actually been dubbed as "Tight Pants Syndrome" in many parts of North America, simply because men were having so many health problems due to wearing tight pants!

As a result, if you've put on a little weight, you either need to buy some new pants or lose some weight (preferably both). Running around in pants that are too small for you is a great way to get daytime heartburn.

Work as a Source of Heartburn

It is well-known that many stressful events can lead to heartburn. However, destressing at work is not always so easy, but necessary if you want to lose weight. The two things that I like to do are going for a walk at lunch and practicing "straw breathing" twice a day.

Going for a walk is self-explanatory - bring a pair of walking shoes and walk around the building for 15-30 minuets during lunch. It's a great way to burn some extra calories (to work on part 1), as well as a great way to de-stress and even reduce heartburn from the motion itself.

Another good technique is straw breathing. To execute this, breath in deep through your nose, only allowing your stomach to expand. Then, purse your lips and forcefully exhale, again keeping your ribcage still and only moving your abdomen. This is a great stress reducer and helps reduce the upper neck and traps which we often associate with stress.

Try adding these techniques and you will be surprised and how quickly your daytime heartburn resolves!

Some Unusual Research - Advances in Acid Reflux

In this quick article, I wanted to just give you a few cool new bits of information I have found out recently about heartburn. The list is in no particular order, just some cool pieces of research I have found out about acid reflux recently that I thought 1) most people wouldn't know about 2) might change the way you look at your heartburn.

• Many researchers have found recently that unless your diet is extremely high in fat (some 45% or more of your total daily caloric intake), you have no increased risk of heartburn or acid reflux. This sort of flies in the face of the notion that you need to eat a really low-fat diet to stop avoid heartburn. Sure, you don't want all your calories from fat, but if you eat 2500 calories a day, 75g of them coming from an assorted blend of healthy fats is not going to be a recipe for heartburn like once thought.

• H pylori, a bacteria responsible for stomach ulcers, seems to actually be considered a negative risk factor for GERD. In other words, people who have H pylori are LESS likely to have GERD, and NOT having H pylori seems to increase the average person's risk rate for GERD. We have always considered this bacteria to be quite harmful but it turns out it may have some usefulness for humans. Only time will tell.

• Eating a lot of fiber lowers your risk for esophageal cancers. It is unclear whether fiber itself reduces rates of heartburn or whether simply people who eat a lot of fiber have something in their diet that helps protect the esophagus. Either way, it's a good idea to eat a lot of fiber, and the best source of fiber is from fresh fruit and vegetables. Psyllium husk is a decent supplement if you cannot get in enough fiber.

• Many developing countries have lower reported rates of heartburn than industrialized nations, despite having higher rates of stomach illnesses. Between obesity and lifestyle, there is something about the modernization that significantly increases our rates for heartburn, which may be negatively affecting our overall health.

Hope you found these 4 tidbits on acid reflux interesting, I know I sure did when I first read them!

Eating Out With Acid Reflux - Finding the Right Food

Welcome to my quick guide on how to pick out the best places to eat when you are on the road and what to get when you are out to ensure that you pick the right foods and avoid heartburn on the road.

Types of Cuisine Bad for Reflux

The two places you will struggle to find food on the menu that you can eat are places that serve Mexican (Tex-Mex variety) food and barbeque. Both of these are terrible for reflux and there is very little you can eat on the menu that is safe. If you do choose to eat Tex-Mex, go light on the spices in order to prevent acid reflux.

You also have to be careful with portions at Tex-Mex restaurants. Overeating is an easy way to get a lot of heartburn, so you have to be careful about how much you eat. One thing you can opt for is the chicken fajitas, focusing on eating the rice, beans, and meat, while skipping over the peppers and cheese. This is often a safe meal, at least compared to the other things on the menu.

At barbeque houses, generally you can order a steak prepared without barbeque (or a chicken breast) with a side of steamed vegetables. This is an easy meal that works and you can even get this in most American restaurants as well.

Eating Fast Food with Acid Reflux

Finding a place that has decent fast food is even tougher if you have acid reflux. Try to find somewhere that offers low carb meals or choose the low-carb option. Salads are your best bet. When you are on the road, a place like Panera or Cosi is generally a good place to go, because the portions are controlled and you can get a lean salad instead of a fatty fried sandwhich.

Although some more mainstream fast-food restaurants are starting to offer salads, you have to be careful about dressings with trans-fat. Trans-fat finds its way into many sauces including mayonaise and salad dressing at many popular chains. This is starting to be phased out, but it really depends on what part of the world you live in. Many places in the USA still use trans fat in their fast food, so it is best to avoid them all together.



The video above shows off Panera. Skip the bread and get an apple on the side with your salad, and you can get a nice healthy meal on the road for a low price.

As stated, some of the higher-end sandwhich shops offer decent salads with trans-fat free menus. With that said, sandwhiches are generally not a safe bet as the sodium nitrate found in many preserved meats and the general high fat status of sandwhiches can lead to problems.

Treating Heartburn Naturally

One of the biggest concerns people have when they look into reducing their heartburn is whether or not they can treat their heartburn naturally. Well, that depends. First off, when approaching things holistically, I do not like to use the word "treat" because that implies as if a home remedy was the same as a medical treatment, and that is not the case. A natural treatment is simply trying to stop heartburn without the use of prescription medications.

I also am not a big fan of the world "natural" - after all what does that even mean? Let's face it - there's nothing "natural" about eating frozen, processed meals which come from the grocery store or deep frying everything in oil. It's anything but natural, so to suggest that some sort of treatment is natural is kind of a misnomer because whatever I am about to recommend might not necessarily be natural.

I would say one of the easiest natural fixes for heartburn is to simply eat healthy food, maximizing your intake of fruits and vegetables, getting in a good portion of quality protein (free range eggs and grass-fed meat), and adding in some healthy oils or nuts as well (almonds, olive oil, fish oil). I am not a big fan of grains - whole or not whole, when it comes to helping out acid reflux. I find that many people do better by getting a lot of fiber from fruits and vegetables rather than relying on grains to get fiber. Grains have a lot of anti-nutrients and are inflammatory in nature, unlike the majority of fruits and vegetables which are quite nutritious and loaded with nutrients that reduce inflammation.

Another natural cure you can use to stop your acid reflux is to elevate your bed and place it on an incline. This way you get to lay on an incline which has a good chance to help reduce any sort of heartburn at night.

Finally, you can also try losing weight. I have mentioned this many times on this site but it is just so important that you understand just how much heartburn can be reduced by losing weight. Excess fat causes heartburn to be increased on so many fronts, from increasing inflammation to physically compressing the stomach. Being overweight is bad news for heartburn, as well as for your overall health. The chocolate may be delicious but you will just end up with acid reflux afterwards!

Completely Natural Heartburn Remedies - Glutamine

Have you ever heard of glutamine? This is a completely natural substance which has shown a lot of promise in helping out digestive orders. Note that by completely natural, I mean that it is an amino acid found in a lot of protein sources (though it is fairly low in plant proteins).

Glutamine is the preferred fuel for many of the cells that line the digestive tract. They love glutamine and need it to thrive. As a result, when we start supplementing with glutamine, the cells have the fuel they want and start running better. This leads to good digestive motility and can help reduce heartburn.

What you want to do is find a decent quality glutamine amino acid powder (this is quite cheap) and just take a gram (or a few grams) with each meal of the day. Like I stated before, glutamine is an amino acid and there is usually a gram or two in a serving of meat. Add it in additionally even if you do normally take meat. You want to give your digestive tract a little more than it is used to, because clearly if you are reading this post you are having some sort of digestive problem!

You should give glutamine, one of the best natural heartburn remedies, 6 weeks before you judge whether it is effective or not. Cells that are fed properly will take some time to start showing improvements, so even if your digestion is better you may not recognize the positive effects until after taking the supplement for some time. Fortunately since it is just an amino acid it is really cheap and a month's supply is under 10 bucks. You can pick it up in bulk pretty much anywhere, and it is much cheaper as a powder than it will be as a pill.

As mentioned, glutamine is naturally found in meat, so if you already eat a very high meat diet, this may not be a miracle cure for you. This works particularly well in women, vegetarians, and people who eat a lot of processed or frozen foods that may not necessarily get a high protein diet.

One easy way to take your glutamine is to mix the powder with a mild flavor of crystal light and add to a big jug of water. This way you can sip your glutamine throughout the day, stay hydrated, and not have to gag over the taste!