The National Heartburn Alliance (NHBA), an organisation of healthcare professionals dedicated to providing heartburn education, has developed the “Stop & Select Guide”, a colour-coded food guide designed to help prevent heartburn before it starts.
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A recent survey by the organisation revealed that 92% of the 25 million Americans who suffer from heartburn every day, believe that food is the primary cause of their digestive discomfort. This led the NHBA to compile information for sufferers that will enable them to change their diets and steer clear of potentially troublesome foods and beverages.
“Good digestive health is largely related to what we eat,” says NHBA board member and nutritionist Pat Baird: “The ‘Stop & Select Guide’ offers sufferers one option that can help prevent frequent heartburn by providing quick visual cues of a food’s potential to trigger outbreaks.”
The manual assigns a colour code to a variety of foods and beverages based on their acidic value, fat content, ability to decrease the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) tone and/or increase acid secretion. Sufferers can then assess the likelihood of a heartburn episode based on the colour code of foods consumed. Using the familiar stop light as a guide, foods coded RED warn sufferers to “STOP and reconsider the choice,” YELLOW items advise to “consume with discretion,” and GREEN foods are generally a “GO,” with little potential to cause or aggravate heartburn.
The Guide also encourages users to pay attention to portion control, as overeating also often contributes to heartburn.
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By GlobalData“Heartburn sufferers need not eliminate all of their favorite foods to avoid digestive discomfort, just those that make them ‘see RED,'” says Baird. “So you may want to skip the french fries and opt for fat-free potato chips instead.”
To visit the NHBA web site, click here.
