I’m not exactly sure what the correct term is (acid stomach, heartburn, acid indigestion, etc.) but I think you know what I mean - that heartburn acid feeling thing. It would seem that, if this is indeed acid causing the problem, that a glass of water should be able to dilute it to the point that it would cease to cause discomfort. How much acid is there in there anyway? Would I just need to drink more water? (this is, of course, assuming that antacid stuff isn’t available at the time).
In my experience, drinking a glass of water does, in fact help. But often the heartburn returns in ten minutes or so.
If this is a common problem for you I suggest you try cutting out caffeine from your diet, in any form. You should see an effect in two or three days. Doing so has really helped me.
[scared] c-c-cut out th-th-the c-c-c-caffeine? But, but, No, there has to be another way!![/assertive]
But seriously, it’s more a question of intellectual curiosity, than a personal problem.
Long time GERD sufferer checking in…
Depends on severity, frequency & accutcity[sup]*[/sup].
You’d think water would dilute the acidity, huh? Actually, all it seems to do is send a signal that the ole’ stomach is full again. If you’ve got nothing but water in your gut, then it’ll prolly pass through pretty quickly and ther’ll be no new acid. If there is food down there being digested, adding water will increase the volume and send those proton pumps into overdrive.
I have a box of baking sode almost everywhere I go. When I feel a little acidy (acidic?) I mix a little into a small amount of water. It works better than any OTC acid nutralizer I have tried, and is about 1/1000 the cost. Granted, it tasts like rat urine…
You always have antacid handy. Saliva is alkaline in nature, and can help reduce indigestion if you can get enough of it flowing. Go in search of some hard candy or chewing gum (but stay away from minty things like peppermints & mint gum 'cuz mint oils stimulate acid production). A stick of Juicy Fruit can do wonders, not for the gum itself but from the large amount of saliva the gum triggers.
Besides caffeine, you can try cutting out tomato based foods, alcohol, chocolate, fatty/greasy foods, candy containing mint oil (especially spearmint & peppermint). My symptoms were pretty bad, but became not so bad after cutting down the greasy food & spearmints. I didn’t cut out caffeine, but I don’t drink it so late in the day that it makes after-dinner reflux any worse. Also, don’t go to bed wiuth food in your stomach. Bad enough to be sending all of those calories into storage, but lying down with a full tummy is just asking to give your esophagus an acid bath.
[sub]*I just made that word up - isn’t it cute?[/sub]
Oh, well nevermind then.
On the dilution of acids with normal water;
The rule-of-thumb we’ve always used was that for every pH you’re trying you raise the acid, you have to add 10 times that much water than product. For instance:
1 gallon of acid at pH of 3.0
add 10 gallons water = pH of 4
add 100 gallons water = ph 5
add 1000 gallons water = pH 6
and so on.
Like I said, its not a hard and fast rule, but its good enough for government work. We have to get stuff up to a pH of 6 to dispose of it, so that little acid spill can become a huge mess in a hurry if we want to flush it out somewhere. But for the OP’s case, figure the quantity of acid in your stomach, and what the pH is, and start a’ drinkin! (I don’t reccommend drinking 1000 gallons of water in one sitting, though…)
No no Attrayant. Great stuff. Actually, when I posted the question a few hours ago it was out of intellectual curiosity. Now, following a nice pigging out on Ritz and brie, it has once again become a personal problem.
That was a great site you linked, and it certainly has me wondering. I do seem to get heartburn quite often and, on rare occasions, even to an extremely painfully uncomfortable degree, but I’ve always assumed everyone experiences the same thing.
KCBReally? 1000X to bring it from a ph of 3 to 6? It’s been a good 6 years since general chem, so I wouldn’t presume to doubt you, but I remember turning a very dangerously caustic beaker of HCL into a safe-to-handle solution by adding about 5 or 6X the water.
Well, don’t just sit there & tolerate your discomfort. Having your esophagus constantly bathed in HCL is not good & can result in Barrett’s esophagus. This progresses to cancer in a small percentage of people. I got up off my duff & saw a doctor when the reflux came to the point of almost vomiting in my sleep.
My problem is exacerbated by a tiny bit of excess weight which puts pressure on my LES and weakens it. Compounding that, I often ate too close to bedtime. So lose a few pounds if you need to, and don’t eat after dinner. If the heartburn is chronic, see a doctor. The tests for GERD are not that bad (see links below), and it’s best to be informed.
Read all about the barium swallow here, and about my upper endoscopy here.
Thats what we’ve always been taught. Granted, I think its to stop us wacky firefighters from washing substances into catch basins (duh, just means we get to use more water…). EPA/DEP/USCG likes us to pick the stuff up rather than wash it away. We also tend to err on the far side of safety, so if its less than that, we’d still stick with the high number. Gotta love rules of thumb.
Funny vaguely related story.
I was in the Army. As you know, you dehydrate REALLY fast when you’re wroking a lot outside in the summer. Officers and NCOs constantly stressed the importance of drinking lots of water, as often as possible. The general rule of thumb; put away eight litres of water every day when you’re on field exercises on hot summer days.
One day we’re doing just that and I am on sentry duty. A new officer, Captain Grant, comes by and strikes up a conversation. She asks along the way if I have been drinking lots of water, and I state that I have.
“Good,” she says, “because you need to drink sixteen gallons a day.”
Now, I can see accidentally doubling the 8 to a 16, but, uh… GALLONS? That’s 150 POUNDS OF WATER.
“Ma’am,” I say, “I don’t think it’s sixteen gallons. I think it’s eight liters.”
“No,” she says, “Sixteen gallons a day. And you’re a big guy, so try to drink eighteen or twenty gallons.”
I would not have had heartburn. But I would have exploded.
KCB’s right about the dilution. pH is a logarithmic scale, so diluting an acid by a factor of 10 raises the pH by 1 unit. It’s also true, though, that if you dilute concentrated HCl by even a factor of about 3, it gets somewhat safer and a lot easier to handle (not so much nasty vapor), but the pH is only going up by about half a unit.
Heart pain sometimes mimics heartburn. Do you have frequent and persistent “heartburn?” Does stress seem to trigger it? Again, not to be an alarmist, but you might want to get it checked out.