My Hearburn Knockout Method

When my patients come to me with chronic heartburn symptoms, I first try them on my heartburn knockout regimen and see how they respond.  Usually their symptoms disappear within a few days.  If so, I know that their heartburn symptoms were likely due to a common cause of heartburn – Candida overgrowth and its associated inflammation, and not something mechanical like GERD, proton pump dysfunction, or an ulcerative condition.

As explained in my article, Heartburn: Put Out The Fire With This Little Known Method, I feel, as do other researchers, that common heartburn symptoms are caused by overgrowths of many bacteria and yeasts – including Candida – which can cause a lot of unpleasant symptoms.

Here’s my basic heartburn regimen that I recommend my patients try first:

• Follow a low carb/low glycemic index diet for 4 weeks, though you will likely see relief of your heartburn symptoms in the first 3 days.

• Buy a good low glycemic index food book, or follow a basic Atkins-type low carb diet.   This means restricting your carb intake to 30 grams a day to start for 2 weeks then slowly increasing it.  If this seems too hard for you go to 40, but still with low sugar.

•  Omit all refined sugar from your diet (candy and other sugar-added processed foods and drinks).  Omit all processed foods unless you are sure they do not contain sugar. Limit sugar grams to 10-15 a day.  Read labels.

• Omit high sugar dairy foods like cow’s milk.  Switch to 0 sugar almond milk.

• Omit high sugar, high glycemic fruits like bananas, and vegetables like corn, potatoes, grains like brown and white rice, wheat.

• Stick to very low glycemic index foods like 4-5 servings/day of most vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, etc).

• Eat high protein foods – all meats, poultry, fish, and cheese.

• Use “good fats” in cooking and on your foods – olive oil, canola oil, coconut oils.

• Purchase a reputable high probiotic, digestive enzyme supplement at a vitamin outlet. Take as directed on the bottle.

• Take a good multivitamin mineral supplement to fill-in any vitamin/mineral gaps.

• Drink lots of water – 1/2 ounce per pound of body weight.  150 lbs = 75 ounces water. This will help detox your colon of any retained food, bacteria, yeasts, etc.

• Use only Stevia sweeteners for tea, coffee.

• After 4 weeks, slowly increase your low glycemic carbs by 10 grams every week, still avoiding refined sugar, and high sugar fruits and vegetables, until you are at 75-100 grams carbohydrates a day. However, you still must limit refined sugar and high glycemic foods to only occasional indulgences if you want to beat heartburn for good.

Stay Well,
Mark Rosenberg, M.D.