Exercise Related Heartburn - Reluctant to use Baking Soda - how to solve?

I've been suffering from exercise related heartburn recently. It's becoming very annoying.

I know from experience that baking soda will stop the burn, but essentially I'm weakening my stomach acid.

From what both JDP and CS have talked about on here - for the sake of my hair, I want a more holistic solution than acid reducing remedies.

Does anyone have any long term strategies or ways to strengthen the lower esophageal sphincter?

As far as I'm concerned, the number one long term way to achieve gut health is using the GAPS diet (similar to the body ecology diet, but more extreme). The major principles can be found at the website, but as far as establishing proper gut flora and healing the gut lining, I don't think there's a better way.

Most of the time with heartburn, its a case of too little stomach acid rather than too much. I think baking soda can be a band aid that can be used when symptoms are really irritating, but certainly away from meal times, like before bed.

I would try using HCL prior to meal times, and perhaps some digestive enzymes. Also, eating the right foods will be important, identify and avoid foods you are sensitive to. I have found foods that are high in cooked vegetable oils really irritate my heartburn.
Downing a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice prior to eating can help also. But healing the gut lining with bone broth, gelatin, and high dose glutamine will be key.

H Pylori can often be behind heartburn also as it reduces stomach acid and destroys the stomach lining. All of the above will help with H Pylori, but other substances that seem to help with it are broccoli sprouts, coconut oil, mastic gum, and other natural antibiotics like berberine, oleuprin, and oregano oil. If biofilm is a problem, combining these substances with proteolytic enzymes like serrapeptase and nattokinase will help, but make sure you are emptying the bowel with cleansers like psyllium husk or bentonite clay as biofilms will release a lot of toxins/metals.

By the way, what are you eating prior to exercise? If you are eating within about an hour and a half of working out, this may be hurting the problem. If I were you, I'd make sure that I didn't eat within two hours of working out, preferably about 3 hrs. prior would be best. You don't want food digesting in your stomach as it needs you to be mostly parasympathetic dominant when you are putting yourself in a sympathetic state with the workout.

I was going to say something similar to anthonyspencer54. My healthcare provider told me it was low acid not too much. On occasion I would get fairly fierce heartburn before I got control of my gut, and now it's gone. Besides eating high quality foods, the main things I did was find the right digestive enzyme, take glutamine, and ingest an exotic array of gut flora a la Little Fighter's recs.

For me the right digestive enzyme was "Zypan" by Standard Process. YMMV, but that's the only one I could tolerate. Literally everything else I tried gave me heartburn much worse and more frequent than I was trying to treat. It's fairly inexpensive and might be worth trying for you.

I also started rotating through a bunch of different gut flora. A month of Culturelle (LGG strain), a month of EPS by Jarrow (CS's rec for good multi-strain), a month of high-potency ProBioMax by Xymogen (for Howaru strain), and now am working through Natren Healthy Trinity (for Mayloth strain). Also I take some sacchromyces boullardii (sp?) and a nice multi-strain recommended by my healthcare provider from Orthobiotic mixed with the others. As per a thread by Little Fighter somewhere on here, I think rotating through different strains like that has helped a lot.

I also take glutamine, which is good for gut health. There's a fiber supplement called Perm-A-Vite by Nutricology that has lots of glutamine plus some other stuff to help heal your gut. I don't take it all the time any more, but if you think you might benefit from fiber you might give that a try. If not, then just glutamine caps or powder.

Whatever worked, I just don't get heartburn any more. HTH.

Hey Whodathunkit,

Good answer on the probiotics. I was curious...how many times per day and around how many billion do you take? I have been taking about 16 billion per day of NOW brand probies but I feel that I should be doing closer to 50, but don't want to overdo it either. And also, any prebiotics?

My doctor originally put me on 2x/day 40 mil (80 mil total/day). I'm definitely not an expert, but from what I know the rule on probiotics is that you can take what you can tolerate without unpleasant side effects (they'll cause gas, bloating, etc. if you do too much). If somoene else knows different, please let us know.

Sacchromyces Boullardii (again, sp?) is a prebiotic. It comes in some formulations already (Orthobiotic and I believe Natren but I can't go look at the label right now) or you can get just SB caps. SB caused me a little constipation in the beginning, and I've read that it can do that, so be aware if you take SB.

Also, if you need fiber, CS recommended acacia fiber as it functions somewhat as a prebiotic.