Indigestion is one of the seemingly universal maladies of life. You can get indigestion at any age, usually from eating too much or too many rich foods that your body just can’t handle. If you eat too much, like at Thanksgiving, the stomach needs to go into overdrive in order to break down your banquet. It winds up making much more stomach acid than usual, which can escape and go back up your esophagus. Not only can you get heartburn, but bloating, painful gas and problems moving your bowels. These suggested cures for indigestion are not miracle workers. But if you make changes to your lifestyle and diet, you can make these cures for indigestion a lot more efficient.

Peppermint

Peppermint relaxes all of the muscles in your body and helps relieve cramps and nausea. Since your stomach and esophagus muscles will be relaxing, be sure to sit up while taking the peppermint. If you really can’t abide the thought of drinking peppermint tea or eating an after dinner mint, then you can massage peppermint essential oil on your abdomen. Mix the peppermint oil with carrier oil like olive or jojoba if your peppermint essential oil is undiluted. Use one of part peppermint oil to nine parts of the carrier oil. Massage gently and try to breathe deeply to help you relax. Most people find massaging their bellies clockwise as cures for indigestion. Peppermint essential oil is not recommended for pregnant women after their first trimester.

Chamomile

Some people find the taste of peppermint too sharp and prefer the gentler chamomile. You can sip chamomile tea (hot or iced) or massage your cramps away with chamomile essential oil. You use the same method with chamomile essential oil as you would with the peppermint essential oil. Chamomile essential oil is very expensive; so what some people like to do is make a warm compress, soaking a clean rag in warm chamomile tea. When the rag is cool to the touch, you can place it on top of your abdomen. Chamomile tea is one of the most inexpensive cures for indigestion there is. Chamomile is gentle enough for children, the elderly and pregnant women.

Wear Looser Clothing

Seriously, though.. wear looser clothing not just after your Thanksgiving meal but also during any meal. Clothes with tight waistbands like designer jeans, figure shaping girdles or even belts can press your digestive muscles together and cause you to be unconfortable. Sometimes giving the body room to work is one of the best cures for indigestion.

Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin and is an excellent antioxidant that acts against the damage caused by free radicals in the human body. Free radicals are a by product of your natural metabolism that can cause accumulating cellular damage. Vitamin E can help for heartburn by protecting the cell membranes of the GI tract as well as fat-soluble molecules such as LDLs (low density lipoprotein) from becoming damaged due to free radicals.

New Light

However, there have been studies conducted that have shed new light over the benefits of Vitamin E for heartburn, which seem to confirm earlier suggestions that Vitamin E really is not all that is claimed it is. These studies have in fact shown that Vitamin E for heartburn does not significantly help in relieving symptoms of heartburn, and on the contrary. there is some potential for it doing harm to the patient.

The majority opinion however seems to favor Vitamin E for heartburn as it helps improve the circulation of the blood and a small dosage could actually help the patient. If the patient also fails to take adequate amounts of vegetables, nuts as also vegetable oils he or she may be at risk of having deficiency in Vitamin E. Being a potent antioxidant, Vitamin E protects the membranes from becoming damaged by peroxides that are formed when fats are oxidized. Such peroxides are known as free radicals due to the fact that they bounce around in a random and unpredictable manner inside the cells while also altering and even destroying them. Vitamin E for heartburn thus plays an important role in limiting oxidation of fats and thus helps protect the cells from free radicals and in the end provides relief from heartburn.

There are even many studies that support the fact that Vitamin E performs sufficiently well to reduce the damage caused by peroxides, even in spite of the fact that other studies find no significant benefit. Thus, one can safely conclude that there is need for more evidence on the effects of Vitamin E for heartburn, though in theory this reduction in damage caused by peroxides should improve a patient’s heartburn condition. It is thus advisable to take Vitamin E for heartburn even in the form of supplements, and taking one milligram of alpha-tocopherol would be the same as taking one and a half international units of Vitamin E that could be used to combat heartburn.