Get a handle on acid reflux Have heartburn? Blame it on your esophageal sphincter. When this little muscle doesn’t work properly, stomach acid flows back from the stomach to the esophagus, causing that unpleasant chest tightness called heartburn. Acid reflux (a.k.a. gastrointestinal reflux disease or GERD) can also lead to hoarseness and a sore throat. Before you consider over-thecounter or prescription medications for GERD – which affects up to 28% of North American adults – try these “look-ma-no-drugs” strategies: • Eat less at each sitting: When your stomach gets full, it tends to send more reflux back into your esophagus. Eating small meals more frequently – and more slowly – may help. • Avoid trigger foods and beverages: Common GERD triggers include tomatoes, onions, chocolate, coffee, alcohol, citrus juice and spicy foods. To replace those tastes, use herbs in your cooking. • Avoid carbonated beverages: They make you burp, which sends acid up your esophagus. • Avoid vigorous exercise after eating: Strenuous workouts, especially those that involve bending over, are an invitation for reflux. • Sleep on your left side: According to one review, this may decrease esophageal acid by up to 71%. Another option is to elevate the head of your bed to get gravity to work with you. Sources: Harvard Medical School, healthline.com Health Pulse Earwax be gone! One minute you hear everything crisply, and the next minute you may as well be underwater. While earwax builds up gradually, you may not notice any hearing loss until the blockage prevents sound from travelling normally to your inner ear. What next? Whatever you do, don’t reach for the cotton swabs that you may have grown up with. As one of the leading causes of earwax buildup, these swabs will only make the problem worse. Also avoid ear candling, which has performed poorly in clinical trials and may damage your ear. Instead, try softening the earwax by putting a few drops of baby oil, mineral oil, glycerin or overthe-counter wax-softening drops into the affected ear canal. Doing this for a few days may loosen the wax enough that you can flush it out with a bulb-type syringe filled with water. (Hot tip: keep the water at body temperature to help prevent dizziness.) If it doesn’t work the first time, try it again; it sometimes takes several tries to dislodge the wax. In other cases, the wax is too thickly impacted to respond to DIY methods. In such a case, a doctor can irrigate your ear with stronger products and use gentle suction to remove the wax. And just like that, the world of sound will come rushing back. Sources: WebMD, healthline.com, Mountain ENT Headache triggers that you can avoid Some headaches seem to come on “out of the blue,” but carefully retracing your steps may help you identify a cause. Certain foods, such as processed meats and some cheeses, contain chemicals that can bring on a headache. Keep a food diary and, if you suspect a food trigger, eliminate it for a month or two and see if the headaches subside. Don’t stop eating regularly, however, as skipping meals can also bring on a headache. Same goes for smells. Odorous products that may cause headaches include household cleaners, perfumes and fragranced air fresheners. The fix is easy: avoid heavy scents (or any scents) in household and personal hygiene products and keep your home well ventilated. If you’re at work and suffering from a colleague’s perfume, a desk fan may help. To avoid headaches from looking at screens, take short walking and stretching breaks. If you grind your teeth at night – another common headache culprit which your dentist can identify by looking at your teeth – consider wearing a mouth guard while sleeping. And while there’s not much that you can do about shifts in weather, which trigger headache-inducing brain changes in some people, you can keep pain medication at hand so that the next storm doesn’t “go to your head.” Sources: NHS, Mount Sinai 36 | www.snowbirds.org
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