by Beth Benson

Created on: October 14, 2008

So you just had a meal fit for a king, you dug into those all you can eat volcano wings, or you finished off that bowl of mom's finest chili, and you plop down on the couch and sprawl out in front of television and just relax your full stomach, when all of a sudden your chest starts to burn right behind your breastbone. The burning sensation intensifies and climbs all the way up the back of your throat and turns into this hot and sour feeling that prevents you from swallowing correcting. It almost feels like you still have a small piece of the feast you still had stuck in your throat.

Well, this all too well known feeling is called heartburn. Don't get too worried, almost everyone has heartburn, sometimes. Heartburn is also sometimes called acid indigestion or Pyrosis.

The burning sensation you feel in your chest can literally feel like your chest is on fire. This feeling is actually coming from the esophagus, which is your food pipe that is located around the breastbone in your chest. The burning sensation occurs when the valves in the bottom portion of your esophagus open and close weaker than normal or irregularly. When this happens; the stomach acid will find its way back up the pipe, going where it's not supposed to go, causing acid indigestion: heartburn.

Stress, alcohol, and even some medications may contribute to heartburn. I think when we're stressed, we have all at one point in time gobbled down large amounts of our favorite foods then turned into a couch potato. But when dealing with stress, just the eating habit isn't the only thing that contributes to heartburn. Stress can affect the movement of the food through our digestive system. There is no proven link to this theory, except that the more stress stays in your body, the easier it is for stomach acid to travel up the esophagus.

Alcohol is one contribution that I have noticed myself. No matter how little or how much vodka and orange juice I drink, every night I have heartburn so bad that I feel like at any moment I'm going to burst into flames. After chatting with my doctor, I had found out that red wine, white wine, beer, vodka, and whiskey are highly popular for causing extreme heartburn, but of course each individual is different.

If you are taking medication to treat asthma, depression, blood pressure, anxiety, as well as some cancer medications can cause heartburn. Over the last seven years I had taken Lexapro, Zoloft, and Effexor for depression and noticed that every one of those medications

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