Are you among the 20 million Americans taking an acid inhibiting drug to treat your heartburn?
Please be aware that for most, the risks far outweigh the benefits as there are plenty of alternative effective strategies to eliminate heartburn without serious side effects.
Previous research clearly shows that proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) such as Nexium, Prilosec, and Prevacid, are severely overprescribed and misused.
Indeed, PPIs are among the most widely prescribed drugs today, with annual sales of about $14 billion --this despite the fact that they were never intended to treat heartburn in the first place.
Proton Pump Inhibitors Were Not Designed to Treat Heartburn
PPIs, the most powerful class of antacid drugs, were actually designed to treat a very limited range of severe problems, such as bleeding ulcers, Zollinger-Ellison syndrome (a rare condition that causes excess stomach acid production), and severe acid reflux, where an endoscopy has confirmed your esophagus is damaged.
PPIs were never intended for people with heartburn, and according to Mitchell Katz, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, “about 60 to 70 percent of people taking these drugs have mild heartburn and shouldn’t be on them.”
If you’re taking a PPI drug to treat your heartburn, understand that you’re treating a symptom only; you are in no way addressing the underlying cause. And, by doing so, you’re exposing yourself to other potentially more dangerous health problems, courtesy of the drug itself.