Can prebiotic supplements also be a remedy for acid reflux?

Prebiotic supplements are important for your digestive system, and the best supplements include the necessary components to balance your digestive health. But did you also know that prebiotic supplements can also be effective in helping to manage and remedy acid reflux and heartburn problems, as they are also highly related to how you digest the food you eat?

Acid reflux occurs when the LES valve in the esophagus that opens to allow food to enter the stomach does not close properly. This allows some of your stomach contents to flow back into your esophagus, along with the stomach acid created to digest the food you eat. It is the stomach acid that causes the burning sensation. Chronic acid reflux can cause a number of health problems and can even contribute to esophageal cancer.

Most of today’s medications aim to remove or neutralize stomach acid. However, this can be a poor way to treat this problem, since stomach acid is needed to digest the food you eat. When it neutralizes stomach acid, it inhibits your digestive system from digesting food properly.

And this could add to more health problems from improper digestion, as well as increasing stomach acid production to make up for what’s being neutralized, especially if your diet includes lots of high-fat protein and full-fat dairy. .

The key to preventing stomach acid from entering your esophagus is not to neutralize it, but to allow your digestive system’s ability to do its job more quickly and effectively to improve. This will allow the level of acid in your stomach to drop to normal levels faster, so the acid is in your stomach for a shorter period of time, thus not requiring the creation of excessive amounts of acid during the digestion.

And here’s what prebiotic supplements can do to also be an acid reflux remedy: They can improve and balance your digestive health, which will positively affect the way you digest the food you eat.

How prebiotic supplements help acid reflux and heartburn

Prebiotic supplements can help achieve this goal in two main ways:

First, prebiotics feed the good bacteria in the colon so they can thrive, helping to prevent the bad bacteria also found in the colon from being harmful to digestion. This is a key benefit of prebiotic supplements: keeping the good bacteria at sufficient levels to do this, so your digestive system is healthier and therefore more efficient at digesting food.

Second, the best prebiotic supplements contain active digestive enzymes. And this is the real key to how supplements can become an acid reflux remedy. These enzymes are meant to efficiently break down and aid in the digestion of food, particularly hard-to-digest proteins that are much slower to digest and cause your stomach to produce excess stomach acid. This leads to your digestive system being able to digest these proteins faster and more completely, resulting in an even quicker return to normal acid levels in your digestive system and less chance of those acids building up in your esophagus. .

Additional ways to prevent acid reflux from occurring

• Eat smaller meals. Studies show that distended or overly full stomachs can cause the LES valve to open, allowing acid to escape.
• Limit the consumption of chocolate as this relaxes the LES valve
• Limit the amounts of highly acidic and spicy foods, along with high-fat foods you eat. These foods add more acid to your system, and high-fat foods are harder to digest.
• Wait 3 hours or more after eating before going to bed, as gravity will help prevent acid from backing up into the esophagus.

Follow the diet and acid reflux guidelines, plus take a prebiotic supplement with a high concentration of digestive enzymes, and you can reduce, or even eliminate, the occurrence of acid reflux and heartburn.