Psychosomatic causes of heartburn in children and adults

Heartburn is a very unpleasant symptom that is more common in adults. Sometimes the feeling of a strong and even painful burning together with belching can spoil a family dinner, a festive banquet, any celebration.

Heartburn is a popular name that only reflects the essence of sensations. Gastric juice is thrown from the stomach into the esophagus. Sulfuric acid in its composition, peptides, bile pigments irritate the mucous membranes, so there is a burning sensation and pain in the chest in the direction from the stomach upwards. In medicine, there is another name for the symptom - gastroesophageal reflux.

It should be noted that heartburn regularly affects from 35% to half of the total population of the planet. Heartburn is considered a frequent reflux, which makes itself felt at least once a week. The more often a person suffers from heartburn, the more reason doctors have to say that the patient has an insufficiency of the closing function of the esophageal sphincter. At the same time, no one says that a person is sick with something. Heartburn is a condition that may well be present in perfectly healthy people. If the examination does not show any deviations from the norms, we can safely talk about psychosomatic heartburn (occurs in 85% of all cases of frequent gastroesophageal reflux).

It should be noted that a separate term was created for this case in 1999 - gastroesophageal reflux disease. With her, heartburn is the only symptom. Sometimes heartburn is a symptom of another disease, for example, esophageal ulcers, the precancerous condition of the esophagus, adenocarcinoma.

Psychosomatics allows you to find deeper, seemingly inconspicuous reasons that determine the reflux of gastric juice into the esophagus. The stomach and esophagus are the organs that allow a person to eat. But food is not only in the gastronomic sense, but also in the spiritual, emotional, informational. Normal work of the esophagus and stomach is possible when a person with a positive and willingly perceives all information coming from outside, quickly parses it into necessary and unnecessary, important and secondary. If a person does not want to take a new one, if he denies the need for incoming information, or, on the contrary, accepts everything, “eats indiscriminately,” then this will greatly burden his stomach and lead to instability of the sphincter.

But these are only predisposing factors. The true psychosomatic cause of heartburn is fear. Not just fear of spiders or darkness, but persevering, strong, unresponsive fear, which is most often associated with the outside world - with a sense of helplessness, with fear of being offended, with fear of future events. The second common cause of frequent manifestations of reflux disease is constant irritation, accumulation of anger, intolerance towards someone or something, again in the external world.They say that they “cause heartburn,” “get tired of heartburn.” The mechanism for the development of psychosomatic heartburn is quite simple. Fear leads to alertness of all organs and systems, the stomach begins to produce more gastric juice, and the esophagus, like all muscles in a person who is afraid or strongly irritated, tense, stays in a certain tone.

Thus, people who are more susceptible to frequent pain and burning above the epigastric region, are:

• they often experience stress, fear, take events too close to their heart, or refuse to accept them at all, violently deny;
• irritated by someone or something people who are forced to constantly contact with the "culprit" of their irritation;
• people who badly "digest" what is happening, people.

Most often, experts in psychosomatics study the stomach and its diseases in a complex, but heartburn, due to its widespread prevalence, has a special place in the works of the most famous authors. Canadian writer and psychologist Liz Burbo argues that heartburn is more often characteristic of very indecisive people who in their souls would like to control their own lives, but in practice they cannot even control their own feelings (heartburn does not obey volitional efforts, it occurs suddenly and it ends abruptly).

Liz Burbo gives certain recommendations to people who would like to get rid of psychogenic heartburn: she recommends learning to perceive the world more harmoniously, to be more tolerant and benevolent, not to get annoyed over trifles.

Psychotherapist Valery Sinelnikov indicates that The key to recovery is to be found in the psychology of the disease - a positive attitude towards the outside world, people, events and information will help to completely eliminate fears, and with them the painful symptom will go away. In men, heartburn, according to the doctor, may also be associated with wounded male pride.

Louise Hay wrote that heartburn is a condition that requires serious and big work on her inner world. You need to avoid long-term, chronic stress, as well as resentment and anger at someone, and then the condition of the stomach and esophagus will surely return to normal.

Very often, heartburn starts for the first time during pregnancy, and stops after childbirth. Women look for the cause in their diet, calm themselves with physiological substantiations (the uterus presses on the stomach, the juice is thrown into the esophagus). Of course, there are quite a lot of physiology in the reflux of pregnant women, but not all expectant mothers have this symptom, although the uterus grows and puts pressure on the internal organs of absolutely every one.

Heartburn psychosomatics in future mothers is also closely related to fears: fear of birth pain, fear of giving birth to a sick baby, fear of being alone, losing favor and support of her husband, losing his job, fear of not coping with childcare. In female consultations work free female psychologists. Therefore, it is not at all superfluous to contact such a specialist so that he can help eliminate the fears and experiences that torment a woman. The symptoms of burning and pain in the esophagus will go away with them.

Defeating these fears is important as soon as possible. It has been proven that women are calm and confident in their abilities and pregnancy is easier, labor is less painful, and children are born stronger and healthier. So why do most pregnant women prefer all these advantages to indulging their own fear? Yes, because in Russia it is already a tradition - to be pregnant and be afraid of childbirth. After all, the conversations of two pregnant women are almost always the same - “I'm scared, I'm scared, horror, as I fear, pathology, complications,” and so on. Muscle clamps occur at the cellular level in a wide variety of muscle groups, including the esophagus and in the muscles of the cervix.