Home remedies · Stomach, gut & nausea
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Eat nothing in the last three hours before lying down, raise the head of the bed, stay upright or walk after eating.
Upright, gravity works with the stomach instead of against it. A raised head end measurably reduces night-time reflux.
Heartburn persisting for weeks needs its cause looked at — long-term acid blockers without assessment are not a solution.
Peppermint, alcohol, nicotine, chocolate and very fatty food relax the valve further. With swallowing trouble, weight loss, vomiting blood or black stools see a doctor at once.
Do not treat yourself: strong, increasing or suddenly starting abdominal pain, a hard belly, blood in the stool or black stool, vomiting blood. With diarrhoea it is fluid loss that counts — dry tongue, little urine, drowsiness. In children and older people this happens faster.