Small Frequent Meals Could Help Your Acid Reflux
If you suffer from acid reflux, you might be wondering about how you eat and what you eat. You probably didn’t know that those three large meals each day might actually be causing your acid reflux did you? Studies have found that many people suffer from the worst acid reflux when they consistently overeat, so that right there is one of the reasons not to eat too much. Having the right acid reflux diet is important if you suffer from this condition, but maybe you don’t understand how that can be.
Many people know what acid reflux is, but since they aren’t sure what’s causing it, they can’t understand the things that might be very effective in treating it. Don’t believe the large meal theory? Here are a few reasons why:
- Acid reflux is caused because the muscle between the esophagus and stomach is unable to create a tight seal. This can happen for a number of reasons, but one of the many reasons is due to the muscle being weak. Sometimes, it just needs time to heal and other times, it has trouble closing completely due to the fact that you just ate a very large meal.
- Large meals tend to fill the stomach more, so this means that your esophageal sphincter cannot properly close because there might be too much food in the way.
- In addition to this, it’s important to remember that our stomachs are small, so they don’t generally require a whole lot of acid to digest a small meal, however, with a large meal, your body feels the need to make more acid in order to digest all that food, which means that your stomach will become even more full.
For this reason, it’s important to begin eating much less in one sitting and stretch your meals out over the course of a day instead of eating two or three large meals in the day. When you split up your meals into several smaller meals throughout the day, your stomach digests them much more easily and you’ll find that you actually can fight your acid reflux. This helps ease your indigestion and helps your digestive system.
In addition to using small meals as a way to ease symptoms of your acid reflux, you might be excited to find that this is also a very effective way to help you to lose weight. Plus, if you’re working on a new healthy acid reflux diet, eating several small meals a day might be a good way to help you to make the transition much more easily because you’ll find that you don’t get so hungry all the time.
However, eating smaller meals throughout the day doesn’t mean that you’re just snacking. You are actually looking for “meals”, which will encompass many of your major food groups. For instance, you might have a small breakfast of cereal, but a couple of hours later, you might want to have a some fruit and yogurt with some whole grain toast, for lunch, you may choose to have a salad with grilled chicken and whole grain rice or beans. You would then choose a small afternoon meal and dinner that also covers your food groups. This can help you to stay more “satisfied” and also help you to fight acid reflux symptoms.
I Have Been Diagnosed With Acid Reflux – Can I Drink Coffee?
Many people who are diagnosed with acid reflux ask this question. Do I have to give up my favorite beverage – can I still drink coffee? Is there some sort of heartburn treatment? Coffee is often the one thing you don’t want to give up, but you know you have to begin some form of acid reflux diet. You already know that coffee might actually be triggering your acid reflux disease and it could be making your symptoms much worse, but you just don’t want to give it up.
Acid Reflux and Drinking Coffee
There are some things you should know about your favorite foods and drinks that might actually help you to still enjoy them even if you have acid reflux. Plus there are some things you should know about what not to eat for acid reflux.
How To Ease The Acid Reflux Symptoms
In the case of coffee and acid reflux, you need to know that coffee is very acidic, which can cause you to suffer from more symptoms of this condition than if you were to not drink it, however, if you still need your coffee fix, or the fix of your other symptom causing favorites, there is a way to comfortably consume these things that won’t aggravate your overall condition.
1. Consider lightening up a little. Overall, if you adopt a healthy diet and work to avoid most of your acid reflux triggers, you will likely find that a couple of cups of coffee each day don’t really cause you too many problems. Make sure to use cream or a non dairy creamer, which helps to smooth out the texture of the coffee and make it less acidic.
2. Limit how much caffeine you drink or make it weaker. You should know that the darker the brew, the more acidic it can be, so the next time you’re shopping, look for a product which is about a medium body. Avoid the dark blends as much as possible and don’t make your coffee too strong if you can help it. Also, you don’t need to have five cups of coffee, so consider cutting it off at two for the day. Anything after two cups is just sludge in the pot anyway.
3. Drink a glass of water after each cup of coffee that you have and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Many people do this and find that it is a very effective way to be able to drink their coffee and not feel sick from acid reflux.
4. Avoid other triggers, as this can just make your love of coffee seem to be the “bad guy”, when it might not be the cause of your symptoms.
5. Don’t drink coffee on an empty stomach, because this can cause your symptoms to become very bad. Instead, drink your coffee with breakfast each day and make sure to eat something, which will help to absorb the extra acid in the coffee.
Your health care professional is likely going to tell you to quit drinking coffee and if this is the only acid reflux trigger that you have, then you will likely have to do without coffee for a while until your acid reflux is under control, but in many cases, you can still drink your coffee and take care of your acid reflux.
