Acid reflux. Prevention and treatment.

0:00 Speaker 1 Well, it’s Sunday morning and with us today is doctor Peter Milos, and let us know how are you going to live long and prosper Doctor Milos? What’s on your mind this morning?

0:12 Speaker 2 Well, we’re celebrating Men’s Health Months and this is a topic that affects both men and women, but seems to be very common in men. It’s an acid reflux. An acid reflux is basically, we have a tube system that starts in our mouth and it travels down through something called the tube called the esophagus into our stomach, and

0:36 there’s actually a valve that prevents the stomach acids from coming back up into our esophagus. When that acid starts coming back up, that’s called acid reflux and it can cause chest pain, it can mimic heart attacks, It could even go all the way up to our vocal cords.

0:54 And when they bathe an acid, we start having a chronic cough and sometimes people think they have an infection, but it’s actually the stomach acids coming back up. It turns out that certain foods like caffeine, chocolate, nuts, alcohol, spicy foods, and peppermint all cause reflux. Interesting that that sphincter is caused to relax by peppermint. So I sometimes

1:21 see people taking these peppermint and thinking that it’s going to help their stomach, it actually makes it worse. Acid reflux has been around for millennium. In the ancient times, there was a gum called mastic gum which grows in grease on the island of huss and they would use that for treatment of stomach problems. And recently in modern

1:43 times they found that in that mastic gum there’s a chemical that blocks one of the bacteria that overgrows in peptic ulster disease called H. Pylori, which is kind of fascinating. And they also used to use it for bad breaths, and it was common in the Ottoman Empire. They would use it in the harem for bad breath the Greek

2:02 mastic comp Now in.

2:05 Speaker 1 That acid tastes terrible. I mean, I’ve experienced it a couple of times, maybe once a year or something, but that acid really tastes.

2:16 Speaker 2 Out right, and those of us. I used to experience more of that ork since I started into manifesting and I finish eating by eight pm. It stopped because guess what not good to eat late at night? Because when you have food in your stomach and then you go lie down to go to sleep, the probability of the

2:34 acid coming back up is much higher. The other thing that helps with those people suffering from reflux is if the chest is slightly elevated, So I tell people roll up a little carpet, put it between the mattress and box springs, so it elevates a few degrees your body, your upper body, so that there’s a downward track so

2:55 it’s harder for the acid to come back up. The other thing is trying to lose some weight, because that abdominal pressure pushes on the stomach and you get more reflux. Also, sleeping on your left side you get less acid reflux than sleeping on your right because the way the anatomy of the stomach is it pours down more up the

3:17 esophagus when you’re lying on your right side. So those are some of the things and the foods we talked about. Try to eat more pland food. The Mediterranean diet, of course, is very helpful. Fried foods tend to aggravate it. Spicy foods tend to aggravate it. Treatments include acid blocking medicines, but if you can do it naturally. It helps. There’s

3:40 even some people who use over the counter papia enzyme pills and they find that that helps with their digestion and with reflux. But in more severe cases, always consult your doctor because an upper endoscopy where they look down into the esophagus and into the stomach to make sure you don’t have peticulsal disease, sure you don’t have a

4:00 stomach cancer or any lesions or polyps.

4:04 Speaker 1 The other question I have when you have phlegm, what is phlegm? Is it bacteria edits in your lungs and it’s surrounded by the phlegm and you quiff it out. What is it?

4:20 Speaker 2 Well, we have mucous lining our entire sinus system because if it was totally dry virus and bacteria, it’s actually a barrier. And when we have allergies, it’s a protective barrier that tries to block or coat theologies from entering.

4:37 And the body reacts by producing that excess fluid and it sometimes drips in the back of our floats. We get let’s go post nasal drip and then we want to split it out. Yes, if it stays in your sinuses, for a while, or you get a lot of fluids and it stays stagnant, then we end up with a

4:56 sinus infection. That’s why they have will review staphistication. Things like some of these over the counterproducts that you put up against your nose and there’s sterile sailing and it goes in through one nose and it flushes up the sinus out of the other. But of course it’s always good to do that on the supervision of a physician

5:14 when they prescribe it. But the airway is very sensitive to temperature humidity. That’s why when your sinuses are dried out, your airways are dry out, you get sick more. That’s why people get sick more on international flights. When you’re in a plane that has a higher humidity, you get less thick like carbon fiber plane when the plane is

5:33 super dry, because they don’t want humidity in a plane because that causes rust. Rust causes metal fatigue and structural failure, and that’s why people get more sick when they’re flying long distance and transatlantic. So controlling the humidity around fifty percent, even in your bedroom in the winter apartments in cities where they have fan forced hot air people get more sick,

5:54 so it has to be the right balance. But the phlam and the extra mucus is sometimes in the exaggerated response either to allergies or other things like even an infection can do that too. The body is trying to wash out itself. And then another topic since you mentioned that we might talk about is the recent study talking

6:17 about washout that the brain washes itself out at night and it has something called a glymphatic system. Yeah.

6:25 Speaker 1 Yeah, we talked about that the brain has excess what waste product?

6:33 Speaker 2 Yeah, well, anything that has high metabolism has waste products. Then you’ve got to get rid of those waste products. And the brain has its own built in washing machine. And they found that these electrical pulses are happening in the brain during sleep, and they helped to move this fluid culsuybo spinal fluid around and to drain it and

6:54 get it back into the venus bloodstream and then get processed and excrete it through the kidneys. And it’s basically during sleep a lot of the cleanup occurs. And they found also that when you sleep on your side, that washing machine system of the brain works more effectively and sleeping on your left side, just like what we just

7:13 talked about with acid reflux, leep on your left side. That system of cleaning out waste products is more effective.

7:19 Speaker 1 I saw, yes, I saw an auticle doctor that it says that if you sleep flat on your back that you have increase risk of all timers. Is that because the waste product doesn’t.

7:32 Speaker 2 Go away right right, because you don’t clean the waste products out of your brain as efficiently. And this is all recent literature, but it’s fascinating that position of how you sleep affects how well your brain cleans itself out.

7:46 And also when you’re lying on your back, especially if you’re not feeling well or you think you’re going to pass out, it’s not a good position because that’s how you aspirate if you throw up, and that’s how a lot of these stars or music stars, we take drugs or take too many pills. Sometimes they’re sleeping on their back.

8:01 They tend to ask br and die. If you’re lying on your side when you think that pass out, even if you had you threw up, you’re not going to choke. So always lie on your side and call for help when you’re feeling like you’re going to pass out, so it’s fascinating brain can clean itself up.

8:19 Speaker 1 A brainwashing machine. Thank you so much, Doctor Peter me Helos. Live long and prosper and we’ll talk to you real soon.

8:26 Speaker 2 Happy Sunday, and we celebrate Men’s Health Month. Get your PSA tests or colonoscopy and keep listening to w ABC for more health tips on how to live long.