Heart burn
Like many symptoms and conditions of the digestive system, there’s a lot going on in the body involving the stomach, which means there’s a lot which can go wrong and contribute to symptoms. This could mean food allergies, infections, nutrient insufficiency, inflammatory response, a chronic illness, or a range of other situations in isolation, or combination. On our side of the medical fence, it’s often one of the easier digestive symptoms for us to positively impact, often side by side with any burping issues that may be around, and even hiatal hernias. This is because the stomach in particular is susceptible to a lot of mechanical forces which can greatly increase the chances and severity of these issues
We tend to have the view that our organs, especially those used directly for digestion, sit in the abdomen like neatly folded clothes in a suit case. The reality is that they are structural elements just like anything else in the body, even if it’s in a bit of a different way than muscles and tendons, or bones and ligaments. The natural forces of breathing, walking, and so on are actually crucial parts of their function, and it plays a role in those functions itself. So when something goes wrong in movement or with the organ itself, both can suffer. For the stomach specifically, it is more or less suction cupped up against the diaphragm, and when the diaphragm doesn’t descend normally during breathing, or when the stomach doesn’t have downward mobility, oooor when the organs and tissue below the stomach won’t accommodate it’s downward movement, all of these can cause a lot of upward pressure on the the stomach. And then we have a good enough reason for things like heartburn to happen already, or a lot more fuel to the fire if other things are going on at the same time.
So what do we do about it? This itself is a bit of a complicated question and answer that really demands a longer conversation, especially as there are many things which can have occurred to have led to this mobility restriction and bad forces being applied to the stomach. But keeping it simple, whether it’s faulty respiratory patterns, the body trying to lock down a rotational (or other) movement pattern so it won’t allow movements in certain directions, or a direct problem with the stomach itself, we increase the mobility of all of these tissues to get it back to normal behavior, with normal force relationships. I know this is something of an unsatisfying answer, simply because it is a simplistic answer which leaves out a lot of details. But because the issues that can cause these issues in the first place are also so variable on top of the discussions required to explain our primarily functional neurology approach, I’ve chosen not to really break into it in here.
The bottom line is, we can almost always make an improvement to these symptoms, and in some cases can see them fully concluded. Naturally, we also may interact with other practitioners if symptoms continue, to pursue other contributors like food intolerance and other variables mentioned above. In the end, our role in these symptoms is usually very quick (1-2 sessions unless a lot of abdominal trauma has occurred, or we are pursuing many different symptoms).