Can Pregnancy Cause Heartburn?

Posted on Aug 3, 2012 | Blog Posts, Pregnancy Symptoms Category | | Print This Article

The fact of the matter is that the majority of women will have some heartburn during their pregnancy. It might be just a little bit of heartburn that occurs occasionally, or it might be rather sever heartburn that occurs quite frequently. It is estimated that at least half of all women will have some heartburn during pregnancy.

During pregnancy, a woman’s body produces much more of the hormone progesterone than it does when she is not pregnant. This hormone has specific purposes it needs to accomplish during pregnancy. One of the things that progesterone is that it relaxes the muscles of the uterus. This, in turn, allows your uterus to get bigger and bigger as your baby gets bigger and bigger. While this is good for your uterus, it is not as good for yoru stomach. Progesterone also will sometimes help to relax the valve that is between the stomach and the esophagus. This causes digestive acids to be able to travel up out of the stomach into the esophagus, which is what causes heartburn.

Because heartburn is so common during pregnancy, women have developed different ways of dealing with it over time. Certainly there are heartburn medications that are available over the counter. Unfortunately, many of the medications that are designed to cure heartburn during pregnancy just haven’t been tested enough to know whether or not they are safe to be used by a woman during pregnancy. In addition, some heartburn medications tend to have side effects that a woman may not wish to endure. So, many women have turned to more natural remedies for heartburn during their pregnancy.

Prevention goes a long way toward helping to prevent heartburn during pregnancy. Avoiding spicy foods, fatty foods, and caffeine can all help to reduce or even cure heartburn during pregnancy. Eating several small snacks and meals through the day instead of 3 larger meals may help with heartburn, because it will help your stomach from being too full. In addition, eating several smaller meals will keep you from feeling too hungry or too full. This can have the added bonus of lessening your morning sickness symptoms also.

Some of the best natural ways to cure heartburn during pregnancy are with herbs. There are a variety of herbal teas, for example, that can be used. These teas might include things like spearmint, orange peel, chamomile, and even marshmallow root. These herbs are all thought to help quell stomach acid. In addition to teas, there are also herbal supplements that contain some of these ingredients that may help with curing heartburn during pregnancy, as well.

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