Foods to Avoid on an Acid Reflux Diet
Video transcription
Hi, I'm Charlotte Lawson, a registered and licensed dietitian, with a little bit of information on foods to avoid on an acid reflux diet. Now you may have heard, either from your own experiences, or friends, that high acidity foods tend to flare up that acid reflux. Now that may or may not be true, even though a lot of tests actually show the PH level of our stomach doesn't necessarily change. But you may have a personal intolerance to a certain type of food. Now at this point, you may want to start keeping a food log and a food symptom diary. So when you eat a certain food, you write down the way that you personally react to that food. Typical flare-ups end up being from spicy foods and high acidity foods like tomatoes or citrus fruits, like orange juice, lemon juice, or even grapefruit juice. Again, just because ultimately they have a higher acid level in general. Now other things to keep in mind are the way and timings that you're eating. Try to eat smaller frequent meals throughout the day. If you tend to only have maybe one or two very large meals, you may be filling your stomach too full, and then because it's so full, it's pressing more of the stomach acid to the top, and you're feeling that acid reflux. Also, be sure not to lay down within a half an hour of eating. Give yourself some time to digest, because if you still have all that food, again, you might have a little bit of seepage of the acid coming into your esophagus or your throat and then experience those bad symptoms. Other key trigger foods I forgot to mention, often have a higher caffeine level, for instance coffee or tea, or even chocolate, which has a little bit of that higher acid as well as the caffeine. So ultimately, it's going to be up to you to determine what your flare up foods are, so keep the journal and the symptom log. And try to keep with those tips of small eating throughout the day, and not laying down after a large meal. I'm Charlotte, and eat happy.