Chronic Heartburn

You can be considered to be a sufferer of chronic heartburn if you experience it on a regular basis. Most people know that the main reason for someone suffering from heartburn is because of a reaction to the food that they eat. Typically this is food of the spicy variety though that is not always the case.

You could say that chronic heartburn has gotten pretty widespread. It is estimated that over 60 million Americans suffer from the pain monthly and over 15 million experience it on a daily basis.

You should beware because while occasional heartburn can be considered to be normal, chronic heartburn is not and it can lead to cancer if it is not diagnosed and treated properly and in a timely manner.

And while food is usually the trigger for occasional heartburn, once you begin to experience it on a regular or chronic level, there are more things that come into play to make it happen and there are some times drastic steps have to be taken to reverse the damage.

A faulty valve located at the end of the esophagus causes chronic heartburn as well as occasional heartburn. What happens is that this faulty valve opens slightly and allows the acidic content of the stomach to back up into the esophagus, which causes the burn, and if untreated will eventually cause damage to the lining of the throat.

Besides the classic symptoms of chronic heartburn there are some symptoms that may accompany it and tend to throw people off track when they are trying to decide if they actually are having plain old heartburn or something else.

In fact some of these symptoms seem out of place. Such as a sore throat, a chronic cough, difficulty in swallowing and a choking sensation. All of these can be symptoms that can accompany this and chalk it off as simple acid reflux.

In order for the doctors to look in and check if the chronic heartburn has developed into something more serious like cancer, they have two methods. One involves sedating the patient and then inserting a camera down the esophagus and looking over the area.

The second is a fairly new technology called a pill cam where a pill containing a small camera is swallowed and it is able to send data back wirelessly to a receiver.

If anything is discovered then a sample of the affected tissue much be taken and a biopsy performed on the tissue to see if it is cancerous so that the proper treatment can be given to combat the situation before it becomes life threatening.

Chronic heartburn can be annoying and as you can see if it is left untreated it can turn deadly rather quickly.

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