Smoking Can Cause Heartburn

Heartburn is a feeling of pain or sensation of burning in the chest and mainly caused by the indigestion of food. There are several other causes that may lead to heartburn, one of them being cigarette smoking. Smoking not only leads to blockage of windpipe due to smoke and acid but also leads to production of acid that leads to heartburn.

Heartburn Related To Smoking

Heartburn is experienced when the food reaches the stomach for digestion. However, due to some reasons, the acid that helps in the digestion come back into the esophagus and causes pain as the esophagus has no protective lining like stomach. The flow of stomach acid into the esophagus may be caused by a variety of reasons. Over eating and too much greasy food that takes a long time to digest may lead to heartburn.

Smoking can cause many problems and heartburn is one of them. The symptoms of heartburn include pain in the chest, sour taste in the back of the mouth and acid regurgitation. Too much smoking means too much inhalation of tobacco and thus, it blocks the windpipe and leads to heartburn. The effects of smoking on heartburn can be reversed by giving up smoking.

How Does Smoking Cause Heartburn?

• Saliva contains bicarbonate, a compound that helps in neutralizing the stomach acid. It has been found that smokers produce 50% less saliva than non smokers. Thus, its takes longer for esophagus to clear the acid in smokers and thus, they experience heartburn more than other people.
• Also due to smoking, the esophagus pipe is blocked and it takes more time for the food to reach the stomach which results in heartburn.
• Smoking also relaxes the ring around the esophagus that allows the stomach acid to come up and cause heartburn.

How to Avoid Heartburn Caused by Smoking

The only thing to do to avoid heartburn while you are smoking is to stop smoking. It has been found that people who limited smoking, experienced less heartburn. Thus, giving up smoking is the only way to avoid heartburn.

People who smoke very frequently are more likely to have heartburn rather than people who do not smoke. The only way to get rid of heartburn is to quit smoking and take a healthy diet.