Digestion blues?

3 Natural remedies that'll put you in the pink

People often use the terms "indigestion" and "heartburn" to describe feelings of gaseousness, mild burning, or fullness in the abdomen. Indigestion and heartburn can be attributed to a great many causes, including not only increased secretion of acid, but also decreased secretion of acid and other digestive factors and enzymes.

Today, the mainstream medical treatment of indigestion often comes in the form of over-the-counter preparations, such as Pepcid, Zantac, and Tagamet. Naturopathic physicians, on the other hand, typically use herbal digestive aids, hydrochloric acid supplements, and pancreatic enzymes.

Defining digestive woes

The medical term often used to label indigestion and/or heartburn is "non-ulcer dyspepsia," or NUD. Another common term used to describe similar symptoms of NUD is "gastroesophageal reflux disease," or GERD. The main symptoms of GERD are: heartburn, acid reflux and associated gagging, and/or upper abdominal pain.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is another very common condition. While NUD involves a functional disturbance of the upper gastrointestinal tract, IBS is a functional disorder in which the large intestine, or colon, doesn't work right. About three out of 10 patients with NUD also meet the criteria for IBS and vice versa.

General Considerations

First of all, the reason why most people use antacids is to relieve symptoms of reflux esophagitis, the medical term for heartburn. Reflux esophagitis is most often caused by the flow of gastric juices up the esophagus leading to a burning discomfort that radiates upwards and is made worse by lying down. Reflux esophagitis is most often caused by overeating. Other common causes include obesity, cigarette smoking, chocolate, fried foods, carbonated beverages (soft drinks), alcohol, and coffee. These factors either increase intra-abdominal pressure, thereby causing the gastric contents to flow upwards, or they decrease the tone of the esophageal sphincter. The first step in treating reflux esophagitis is prevention, which, in most cases, simply involves eliminating or reducing the causative factor. For occasional heartburn, antacids may well be appropriate. However, they should not be abused.

Additional support

I want to offer three options to choose from with some guidance as to which one is right for you. If you have a very sensitive stomach that is upset easily--along with some heartburn--then a special licorice extract known as DGL licorice (short for deglycyrrhizinated licorice) may offer the best solution. If you have symptoms of NUD along with some symptoms of IBS (particularly occasional constipation), then artichoke extract makes sense. If your symptoms are primarily due to IBS, the best choice is peppermint oil in enteric-coated capsules (special capsules that will not dissolve in the stomach, but rather the small and large intestine).

DGL licorice

Numerous studies have found DGL to be an effective anti-ulcer medication. In several head-to-head comparison studies, DGL has been shown to be more effective than standard antacid drugs in both short-term treatment and maintenance therapy of gastric and duodenal ulcers. DGL has also been shown to be helpful in healing canker sores and is often recommended for NUD and GERD. The proposed mechanism of DGL is that it stimulates and/or accelerates the protective factors which protect against ulcer formation.

Artichoke extract

Artichoke leaf extract acts as a choleretic--a substance that increases the formation and flow of bile to and from the liver. Studies in patients with abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, lack of appetite, and nausea have demonstrated that artichoke extract can produce improvements in 65 to 72 percent of patients after one week and 80 to 92 percent after six weeks.

Peppermint oil

Several double-blind studies have shown enteric-coated peppermint oil capsules to be a very effective treatment of IBS. The most recent, and perhaps the best-designed, study demonstrated that over 80 percent of 110 patients with symptoms of IBS demonstrated improvements in pain, bloating, bowel function, and flatulence when they took enteric-coated peppermint oil (0.2 ml) three to four times daily, 1530 minutes before meals, for one month.

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