The Danger Of Barrett's

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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If you travel back in time, you discover heartburn or acid indigestion used to be a problem faced by aging people in the middle to upper income groups. These were the people who could afford to eat well enough to put on weight and overindulge on the unhealthy food of the day. Yes, unlikely though it may seem, there was a time when poverty kept people from many diseases of the digestive system. How times change. Because America discovered the power of the agricultural lobby and began to offer amazing subsidies to the farming community, we've had to develop increasingly ingenious ways to get rid of all the surplus corn. After all, just throwing it away would be such a waste. So we mostly feed it to the animals we're going to eat. It's remarkable how fast they grow fat. We then eat a good chunk of it directly in processed foods. In syrup form, it turns up as a sweetener and a kind of cooking glue to hold combinations of ingredients together. As an oil, we cook in it. When you put all this together, it offers us plentiful quantities of food at subsidized prices. Now antacids are in demand across all age groups and income levels. ...
... We've managed to turn ourselves from a reasonably healthy, thin society into an unhealthily overweight society.

What's worse is our indifference to the risks. Instead of campaigning to do something about it, we've given in to the challenge of eating through this sweet, savory and salty food. Why should we care? Well, there's an interesting statistic you should know. If you leave heartburn untreated, the stomach acid has the chance to really burn into your esophagus. In 10% of all cases, the result is Barrett's Syndrome where the cells in the esophagus turn into a cancer. Now you have no choice. It's surgery to remove the affected part of your esophagus before the cancer has the chance to spread. So you should monitor yourself. If the pain under your breastbone grows more intense, you have trouble swallowing and you begin to cough up blood, you are showing the classic symptoms. To make a positive diagnosis, the surgeons can insert a tube down your throat with a camera and a small knife to collect a sample of the cells. If the tests come back malignant, you're immediately scheduled for full surgery.

Although this may look like simple scare tactics to sell you Nexium, just think for a moment. This article is telling you is the opposite. It's warning you that, if you ignore the problem and just keep taking the drug, the pain may seem to disappear but the stomach acid can still leak into your esophagus. Once the process has begun, the drug can't prevent the cells from turning malignant. If you're one of the 10%, you get to have the surgery. So here's the real story. Nexium is a great drug if you have heartburn once or twice. It really will make you feel better almost immediately and will keep you trouble free for the next few days. But this is no substitute for eating smaller portions of more healthy food. This is the best way of avoiding heartburn and reducing the risk of Barrett's. If you have any doubts, get a doctor's advice.