Wednesday, September 16, 2009

How to Treat Acid Reflux - What Are the Medicines Your Doctor May Give You

Learning how to treat acid reflux or GERD (Esophageal Reflux Disease) as it is sometimes referred to, can be a long and complicated process with different people telling you different things.

One of the first things that you should do when suffering from this rather painful condition is to visit your Doctor who will be able to inform you of the ways in which you can treat the problem.

Generally, a doctor will prescribe three Types of medication to treat the acid reflux and these could be H2 blockers, promotility agents or proton pump inhibitors. Most of these will need to be prescribed by a doctor and you should inspect to make regular visits back to the healthcare professional to make sure that they are working for you and also that there are no adverse side effects that you are experiencing.

Starting with the H2 blockers and learning how to treat acid reflux in this way, it is safe to say that they work in the same way as the proton pump inhibitors and this is by blocking certain histamines that are well known to cause the acid reflux.

Generally, gastric acids are the reason behind this acid reflux and the transportation of it from the stomach, where it belongs, up the oesophagus and causing a pain that is generally described as heart burn.

Mild cases of this are generally treated by H2 blockers and some of the most well known brands that you may have heard of are Zantac, Pepcid and Tagamet which are available world wide. These can normally be obtained from a Pharmacy without the need of a prescription.

Promility agents are generally given to those that have a digestive system that is functioning rather sluggishly and the agents themselves are used to help the transportation of the gastrointestinal content to the stomach and intestines.

When you look at learning how to treat acid reflux with these agents you will find out that the stomach will often produce less of an acid reflux when it is empty, so when the digestive system is moving slowly, there are more contents in the stomach to cause more acid.

If you are looking at how to treat acid reflux by the way of proton pump inhibitors, some of the most common names that you may associate with this problem is Prevacid, Protonix and Aciphex.

These will be prescribed to patients who has a stomach that is producing far too much acid and thus being the reason behind acid reflux. These drugs will often lessen the amount of acid that is produced and therefore treating the acid reflux.

If you are looking at how to treat acid reflux, either because you are suffering from the condition or you know someone that is, visiting the doctor is one of the best things that you can do, not only to find out more about the condition but also to find a way to treat it.

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