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Is Your Heartburn Medicine Working?

Summary & Participants

How do you know which heartburn medicine will bring you the best relief? Researchers studying acid reflux can tell us how they measure relief. But what does that mean for the millions of people who suffer occasional heartburn? Listen to gastroenterologists describe what they know about quelling the discomfort of heartburn.

Medically Reviewed On: July 01, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: An estimated 60 million Americans experience heartburn. That means many trips to the drugstore and supermarket for over-the-counter medicines.

STUART SPECHLER, MD: I think most people do self-medicate. It's very hard to know exactly how many people are self-medicating, but certainly the surveys on this issue do suggest that most people with heartburn are self-medicating.

ANNOUNCER: With scores of heartburn products available, how is a person to know which ones will bring him or her the best relief?

One test is very simple.

HASHEM B. EL-SERAG, MD, MPH: If your symptoms are provoked by meals, by eating, and you take the pill with the meal or just before the meal and then the symptoms that predictably happen don't happen anymore, or they happen to a very reduced severity, then you know that they're working.

ANNOUNCER: "Working" when it comes to heartburn relief has several measures. One is "onset" and the quickest relievers are usually antacids.

STEVEN PEIKIN, MD: The benefit of an antacid is that it works immediately. You don't have to wait for it to be absorbed by the body. It works quickly.

ANNOUNCER: Another measure of relief is "how long." Drugs called H2 blockers and Proton Pump Inhibitors generally provide longer relief by curbing the production of acid.

STUART SPECHLER, MD: Since they're interfering with the stomach's ability to make acid in the first place, you can get much more prolonged relief from those agents, and it's one simple pill. You take a pill and you get hours of relief rather than having to take the antacid very frequently.

STEVEN PEIKIN, MD: They last longer than antacids, but they don't work as quickly. It takes about 20 to 40 minutes, maybe even up to an hour for them to work because they have to be absorbed by the small intestine, get into the blood stream, in order to work.

ANNOUNCER: People experience heartburn when acid from the stomach backs up into the esophagus, where it doesn't belong. Doctors call that condition Gastro esophageal Reflux Disease or GERD.

Millions of Americans find over-the-counter remedies provide effective relief.

But when researchers try to demonstrate effectiveness scientifically, they run into a problem.

HASHEM B. EL-SERAG, MD, MPH: Heartburn is a subjective symptom. There is no blood test that would determine if your heartburn is going better or worse. There is no endoscopic test that will determine if our treatment is doing better or not. And there is no X-ray that will detect these things.

ANNOUNCER: Instead, when researchers conduct clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of heartburn medication, they focus on what can easily be reported by the patient.

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