Let's talk a little about heartburn because it is amazingly common. So what's the problem? Think of your stomach as being like a soda bottle, which would make your stomach acid the soda (which actually has about the same level of acidity). That bottle is well designed to deal with the soda in it swishing and swashing the same way your stomach lining has evolved to be very thick so it can handle all the acid. Occasionally, or frequently, you open the bottle and drop something in so it can start dissolving and moving in to your small intestine. That bottle cap is called the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) and it is an involuntary muscle (so you can't control it) that relaxes and contracts to allow food to come in. But it also is there to keep stomach acid from splashing up into the esophagus BECAUSE the esophagus does not have the same kind of thick walls the stomach does so it is easily damaged. There are a number of ways that the LES can be interfered w...
Scott Selinger, MD, FACP musing on the questions you keep meaning to ask your doctor