Heartburn Cures

The treatment of heartburn depends on how severe your heartburn is and what other symptoms you have. Home treatment measures and medicines that you can buy without a prescription usually will relieve mild to moderate heartburn. It is important to see your doctor if heartburn occurs frequently and home treatment does not relieve your symptoms.

There are many different kinds of heartburn cures.It is all depend on how severe is your heartburn and what symptoms you have.

Most people suffers from mild to moderate heartburn. Thus, you can easily use home treatments and off-shelves medicines to relief their problems. However, if the heartburn happens frequently and the home remedies are not helping to relieve your heartburn symptoms, you must see a doctor.

Often, antacids(such as Gaviscon, Mylanta, Tums, or Rolaids) are used to treat occasional heartburn. It is inexpensive drug that can easily purchase off-shelf. Many doctors recommend taking antacids to relieve heartburn symptoms.

Antacids come in different forms - liquid, chewable tablet, chewing gum, pills. For faster relief of your heartburn symptoms, you may want to consider taking liquid antacids isntead of other forms of antacids.

Another drug used of heartburn is Histamine receptor antagonists (HRA) which is also known as acid reducer such as nizatidine (Axid), famotidine (Pepcid), cimetidine (Tagamet), or ranitidine (Zantac). It is to help your stomach to reduce the amount of acid that it is producing. This is done by suppressing your stomach acid from coming up the esphagues and thus, it stops the heartburn.

Proton pump inhibitors (PPI such as esomeprazole (Nexium), lansoprazole (Prevacid), omeprazole (Prilosec )or pantoprazole (Protonix) are also medications pescribed by the doctors when the acid reducer drugs fail to help to control the GERD or heartburn symptoms. These medications are used to treat severe inflammation of esophagus and stop the stomach acid from releasing into the intestines. The patients are normally suffering from severe heartburns, ulcers and excessive stomach acid production.

Prokinetic agents such as metoclopramide (Reglan or Maxolon) are usually used as the final medical solution to patients who do respond well to HRA and PPI drugs. They help to increase the digestion. At the same time, they make the lower esophgeal sphicter close tighter so that no stomach juices would get into the esophagus.

That would depend on your symptoms. You may need to take it daily or only occasionally when heartburn symptoms occurs. If your medication is prescribed by your doctor, please follow his advice accordingly.