As a GERD survivor, many times, I wished to throw up to stop annoying burping, heartburn, and hammering headaches.
I did that?
No, I didn’t do so because my extensive research and consulting health care experts found that self vomiting wouldn’t be a great way to treat acid reflux symptoms.
The reason is:
Contrary to misconception, forced throwing up doesn’t make acid reflux better. But it can worsen GERD over time.
It causes immediate health problems like:
- Aspiration
- Dehydration
- Electrolyte imbalance
- Tooth Decay
Additionally, in rare cases, chronic self-induced vomiting can cause complications such as:
- Esophageal stricture
- Gastroparesis
- Pancreatitis
- Bone density loss
- Reproductive problems
- Bad hair, skin and nail health
- Fluid Buildup in Lungs
- Heart and Kidney failure
- Seizures
- Eating Disorders
So, consulting a health expert can find you a safer and more effective solution than indulging in such a dangerous practice.
Luckily, as a GERD survivor, I’ve been successful in surviving my GERD, finally, by understanding my body and eliminating the root cause with the help of knowledgeable health care experts.
In my case, stress management played a significant role in reducing my symptoms.
This well-researched and life-saving article covers all the reasons why you should never throw up to ease acid reflux symptoms.
1. Quick Risks of Induced Vomiting for Acid Reflux
Esophageal Tears
Self-induced vomiting, despite seeming a quick fix for uncomfortable acid reflux symptoms, can actually damage the esophagus (the food pipe).
How?
Your stomach contents have strong hydrochloric acid with a pH of 1.5- 2.0 as well.
When you expel them frequently, this acid, which is supposed to digest food, damages the delicate lining of the food pipe.
These tears, known as Mallory-Weiss tears, are more pronounced on the lower part of the esophagus.
They can bleed and be quite painful.
In severe cases, they can even result in infection or other complications like painless bleeding. Such bleeding can even be life-threatening in rare cases.
Simply put, your food pipe has been designed as a passage of food, not the stomach contents coming back.
So, the damage caused by frequent throwing up can be worse than temporary relief.
Dehydration and Electrolyte Imbalance
Self-induced vomiting intending to lessen the acid reflux symptoms can cause dehydration and electrolyte imbalance in two ways:
Vomiting expels stomach contents forcefully.
These include water, electrolytes like sodium and potassium, and digestive juices.
If you induce vomiting to help with heartburn often (like a few times a month or week), it can result in significant fluid loss.
This may disrupt the body’s water balance, leading to dehydration.
As a result, you may feel more thirsty, dizzy, and fatigued.
Throwing up also causes electrolyte imbalance (loss of essential nutrients).
Following the proper digestion process, your body absorbs these minerals from food and uses them to maintain muscle and nerve function, even in the brain.
Contrarily, vomiting pushes these minerals out of the body in the form of undigested food.
This causes an electrolyte imbalance, leading to weak nervous system, muscle cramps, weakness, fatigue, and even heart rhythm problems.
Aspiration
It may sound surprising and horrific at the same time, but purging (throwing up) comes with the greatest life-threatening health risk known as aspiration.
Normally, when you vomit, a flap-like structure called the epiglottis closes over your windpipe to prevent anything from going in.
However, forceful vomiting can overwhelm this reflex.
This may allow stomach contents like acid, food particles, and saliva to enter the lungs.
This can trigger inflammation, infection, and even fluid buildup in the lungs (aspiration pneumonia), which can be life-threatening.
Tooth Damage
Though it seems less serious, tooth damage is an obvious outcome of voluntary vomiting. Just as the stomach acid damages the esophagus (the food pipe), it also harms your teeth’ enamel.
Consequently, your teeth are prone to cavities.
2. Severe Risks of Excessive and Repetitive Forced Vomiting
If you throw up more often to reduce your heartburn you may experience further health issues, over time.
These issues can be serious and require timely management.
Some of such complications are:
Esophageal Stricture
In extreme cases, the esophageal irritation caused by thrown up stomach content and acid can lead to inflammation and scarring.
This resembles a scab forming on a cut; the body repairs the injured tissue.
On the downside, this repair tissue can be thicker and stiffer than normal.
Subsequent thickening narrows the esophagus.
So, swallowing becomes difficult and painful.
This narrowing is called an esophageal stricture.
Gastroparesis
Gastroparesis is one of the potential outcomes of chronic forced vomiting, according to a study published by Cambridge University.
Your stomach muscles help to push food down into the small intestine for digestion.
Self-vomiting disrupts this process by forcefully pushing stomach contents back up.
Excessive self vomiting causes repeated stress and weakens the stomach muscles.
Consequently, it becomes difficult for your stomach to empty food in the small intestine–the food stays longer in the stomach.
This condition, called gastroparesis, can lead to nausea, vomiting, bloating, malnutrition (electrolyte imbalance).
Pancreatitis
In rare cases, bulimia (induced vomiting behavior) can cause acute pancreatitis, as a 2014 case report confirms it.
The report published by American Journal of Gastroenterology shows that a female with a GERD history developed pancreatitis through self vomiting.
How does it happen?
The pancreas is an organ near your stomach that produces digestive juices.
Induced emesis (voluntary throwing up) causes forceful contractions.
These contractions can cause these digestive juices to leak out of the pancreas and into the surrounding tissues.
Such leakage irritates and inflames the pancreas and causes a condition called pancreatitis.
Besides this, after periods of starvation, reintroducing food too quickly can trigger an inflammatory response in the body, including the pancreas.
Likewise, chronic malnutrition due to frequent throwing up can weaken the pancreas and make it more susceptible to damage.
Pancreatitis can cause severe upper abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and fever.
In serious cases, it can even lead to organ failure.
Bone loss
Self-induced vomiting or purging, which causes nutrient and mineral loss, can harm your bones in several ways.
Firstly, the resulting mineral imbalance also includes calcium deficiency.
Calcium is essential for building strong bones. Calcium loss means weak bones over time. So, you may experience frequent bone fractures.
Secondly, frequent vomiting can disrupt the body’s hormone production.
This decreases levels of estrogen and other hormones important for bone health in all genders.
This hormonal imbalance can further contribute to weakened bones and an increased risk of osteoporosis, a condition that makes bones more brittle and prone to breaking.
Kidney Problems
Self-induced vomiting to reduce acid reflux can cause acute kidney failure by impacting potassium and sodium levels in the body, according to News Medical.
When you vomit more often, you lose more fluids and electrolytes like potassium and sodium.
These minerals work together to balance the amount of water inside and outside your cells.
Thus, the body remains hydrated without harmful fluid buildup in your body.
If the ratio of sodium and potassium is disturbed, your kidneys have to struggle to function effectively.
This over-stresses the kidneys leading to acute renal failure.
If your kidneys fail to remove the extra fluid from the body owing to workload, the fluid built in the lungs can push the heart to work beyond its capacity and lead to heart failure.
Besides this, sodium and potassium aid in the smooth filtration of toxins and fluid your kidneys carry.
They do so by creating electric signals within the kidneys.
When these minerals are imbalanced, the kidneys’ ability to filter waste can be compromised.
It’s how temporarily salving forced vomit compromises your renal system–a big threat to life.
Heart Problems
The persistent throwing up for easing heartburn can cause overall damage to your blood circulatory system.
Dehydration caused by frequent vomiting reduces blood volume and forces the heart to work harder to pump blood.
This can strain the heart and increase the risk of heart problems.
Reproductive Problems
Chronic and excessive self-vomiting impairs your body from essential electrolytes for a longer time.
This long-term deficiency of essential electrolytes results in disrupted fertility in men and women.
A 2022 animal study published in Biology (Basel) shows that some of these consequences are:
In women:
- Lack of oocyte activation: The egg cell doesn’t get the signal to start the fertilization process.
- Altered endometrial embryo implantation in the endometrium: The fertilized egg has trouble attaching to the lining of the uterus (where it would normally grow into a baby).
In men:
- Decreased sperm motility: The sperm can’t swim as well as it needs to reach the egg.
- Decreased capacitation: Sperm don’t undergo the changes that prepare them to fertilize the egg.
- Acrosomal reaction: The sperm can’t release the enzymes it needs to break through the egg’s outer layer to fertilize it.
Furthermore, malnutrition from repeated vomiting can further contribute to hormonal imbalances.
Integumentary System (Skin, Hair, and Nails)
Your integumentary system includes the skin, hair, and nail health.
The long-haul electrolyte imbalances due to repeated forced vomiting affect the skin, hair, and nail health badly.
So, you may have weak and brittle nails, hair thinning and brittleness, and dull-looking skin–it speaks of how impaired your body is.
Seizures
The history of self-vomiting causes an electrolyte imbalance, as previously discussed.
This disturbance of electrolytes levels affects your potassium levels, according to several health publications including Journal of Neuro Critical Care and J Clin Neurol.
Potassium helps in proper nerve and muscle function.
When potassium levels drop dangerously due to repeated vomiting, it can disturb electrical signals in the brain, potentially leading to seizures.
This severe risk highlights why you should stay away from harmful practices like self-induced vomiting.
Risk of Developing Bulimia Nervosa (Eating Disorder)
Engaging in self-induced vomiting can prove a gateway to developing an eating disorder, particularly bulimia nervosa (eating disorder).
Soon, when you find some ease from acid reflux, depending on your individual condition, forced vomiting may become a comfortable act for you.
Resultantly, you may resort to the risky behavior of inducing vomiting whenever you need it, even for controlling weight.
The behavior involves recurrent episodes of binge eating followed by purging behaviors like vomiting to compensate for perceived weight gain.
It may also make your untreated GERD more complicated.
Additionally, bulimia can have severe physical and psychological consequences.
What Should You Do to Ease Acid Reflux Ideally?
Throwing up might seem like a quick fix for heartburn–it’s best to avoid it.
Instead, you should look for safer ways and permanent solutions to ease your GERD symptoms.
Here are some safer and more sustainable ways to manage heartburn, I’ll only discuss what works best for anyone, including you and me.
Manage Stress
On top of that, to enjoy a happy digestion, you should prioritize your mental wellness.
Approximately 1 in 4 adults (26% of the population) in the United States suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder each year.
As an eye-opener, stress has been the root cause in my case of GERD.
During stress your cortisol hormone increases that relaxes the LES (the muscle between the lower part of the food pipe and your stomach.
Relaxed LES muscle lets the stomach content come back into the esophagus, leading to heartburn and belching.
Likewise, cortisol, the stress hormone, can also impact stomach acid production in several ways.
During stress, cortisol levels increase.
Cortisol also affects stomach acid production.
During stress, cortisol levels rise, but stomach acid levels decrease. Low stomach acid can lead to problems like poor digestion, nutrient deficiencies, and increased risk of infections.
Low stomach acid causes many issues such as improper digestion, reduced absorption of nutrients, and an increased risk of infections like H. pylori, which can lead to ulcer formation.
Stress can also slow down digestion by diverting blood flow away from the digestive system.
This can worsen digestive issues and contribute to further stress–the vicious cycle continues.
Therefore, if you succeed in getting rid of stress with the help of your healthcare expert, you can say a big goodbye to acid reflux forever.
Thus, you won’t have to search for harmful solutions like throwing up to fix heartburn.
Chew Slowly
Digestion starts in the mouth.
Your saliva helps in efficient breakdown of food.
By making the best use of your saliva, you can reduce the burden on your stomach and minimize the risk of potential heartburn.
So, chew your food slowly and thoroughly.
Make Right Food Choices
You can improve acid reflux symptoms by making smart food choices. Limiting certain foods and drinks can help.
- Reduce spicy, acidic, and fatty foods because they can make heartburn worse.
- Eat smaller meals to avoid putting too much pressure on your stomach.
- Choose lean protein sources like fish, beans, and legumes instead of fried or processed foods.
- Limit alcohol and caffeine as they increase stomach acid.
- Drink plenty of water throughout the day to stay hydrated and aid digestion.
- Wait at least 3 hours after eating before lying down to allow your stomach time to digest.
Following these tips can create a balanced diet that promotes gut health and reduces acid reflux.
Rule out the Low or Excessive Stomach Acid
To cure acid reflux it’s essential to figure out if you have low or high stomach acid.
Here is how both affect your digestion:
- Low stomach acid can cause poor digestion and increase the risk of reflux.
- High stomach acid can irritate the esophagus and worsen reflux symptoms.
Doctors need to know the type of imbalance to prescribe the right treatment.
- For low acid, they might recommend supplements.
- For high acid, they might recommend medications to decrease acid production.
Finding out the type of acid imbalance helps doctors choose the best treatment to manage acid reflux.
Avoid Trigger Foods
Identify foods that worsen your heartburn, such as spicy or acidic foods, and limit their consumption.
Over-the-counter medications
If your acid reflux is because of high stomach acid, over the counter medicines can help better than inducing vomit.
- Antacids: These neutralize stomach acid, providing quick relief for mild heartburn.
- H2 blockers: These reduce the amount of acid your stomach produces, offering longer-lasting relief.
Remember, these are general recommendations to help with acid reflux, and it’s crucial to consult a healthcare professional for personalized advice and treatment options. They can help identify the underlying cause of your heartburn and develop a personalized management plan to ensure long-term relief.
Bottom Line
Forced vomiting, misattributed solution for relieving acid reflux symptoms, carries significant health risks.
So, instead of resorting to harmful practices like throwing up help stomach pain or heartbrun, look for safer and more sustainable solutions.
Managing stress, chewing food thoroughly, and making wise food choices can all help.
Additionally, identifying and avoiding trigger foods that worsen symptoms is crucial.
If these measures prove insufficient, consulting a healthcare professional is essential. They can provide personalized advice, explore medication options, and develop a treatment plan for long-term relief and overall well-being.
Disclaimer
This information is for educational purposes only and doesn’t replace professional medical advice. Consult a doctor for any health concerns, personalized diagnosis and treatment.
