If your wellbeing is affected by heartburn, one of the first things you think is ‘maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that.’ Wellness experts agree that eating the wrong kind of food is the main cause of heartburn, but it’s not the only cause. Unfortunately, in recent times researchers have discovered that your lifestyle can also affect your chances of suffering the condition.
Heartburn is not pleasant for anyone, and sometimes it can give you the feeling that you’ve got a heart attack coming on, which can really take its toll on your mental wellbeing. However, even though it’s a scary and painful feeling, that doesn’t mean you should confuse it with a heart attack. To prevent any unnecessary worry, you need to understand exactly what heart burn is and what foods are the culprits for bringing it on. Luckily, Priya Kathpal, nutritionist with BCube Advanced Sports Nutrition, is here to help you learn.
Let’s start in the most obvious place; what is heartburn? Miss Kathpal explains that, as you might guess from the name, heartburn is characterised by a burning feeling in your chest. ‘Overeating or consumption of spicy foods sometimes causes a burning sensation called heartburn,’ she says, adding; ‘Heartburn is triggered by various factors like smoking, taking aspirin etc. but there are specific foods that can cause heartburn too.’ But in this day and age, surely minor health problems like heartburn should be a thing of the past, right?
Unfortunately, the demands and features of modern life actually make the condition all the more prevalent. Not only do you seem to have less and less time to prepare your own, nutritious foods, but with the availability of a variety of ready to eat food, you don’t need to! However, this means that you end up consuming various preservatives, masalas, and artificial flavourings, which, as the nutritionist explains, are major causes of heartburn. ‘Foods like sauces that contain vinegar, carbonated drinks, coffee, fried foods, meat and dairy are some of the causes. Most of them are difficult to digest and create an environment where the body produces excess acids thus leading to heartburn,’ she says.