Many pregnant ladies and men have difficulty sleeping at night due to pain in the chest caused by heartburn.Simple tricks can help reduce it substantially.
1.) Keep yourself propped up with extra pillows under your shoulders. This will create an anti gravity angle between your stomach and food pipe and decrease the push of acid into your food pipe. Also sleeping on your left side may help with acid regurgitation.
2.) Eat your dinner in time and give it at least 3-4 hours for digestion before sleeping. Also avoid snacking late in the night as a full stomach puts pressure on the valve between stomach and food pipe. This valve should normally stay tightly closed in between meals. But due to constant pressure and some other factors, it may get leaky and push acid into the food pipe which causes heartburn. Greasy and eating a big portion of food also creates stress on the system and should be avoided.
3.) Avoid common acidity triggers like chocolate, after dinner mints, coffee, onions, fried food, canned juices and carbonated drinks like colas especially around dinner time. After dinner wines or alcohol can be a very big trigger of heartburn and same is the effect with smoking.
4.) Avoid strenuous exercise on a full stomach and before sleeping. A light walk on the other hand may actually help with digestion and also increase the interval between eating and sleeping.
5.) Avoid being overweight as excess weight will cause day time drowsiness and sloppiness in addition to putting stress on the valve between stomach and food pipe causing acid to leak out more frequently. Chewing bubble gum after meals may actually help reduce the heartburn by washing out the acid due to frequent swallowing.
Consult your physician if frequent heartburn is troubling you more frequently than twice a week. Sometimes heart diseases or angina may be mistaken as heartburn but if ignored will have serious consequences.