Today's useless fact - How can I prevent or decrease indigestion?

Drinking water right after or while eating reduces the acid in the mouth by 61%. It also reduces the acid in your stomach and can lead to indigestion. The best thing you can do is wait at least 30 minutes after eating and then have a glass of water.

Drink Black Licorice Tea. Stash Brand is good and health food stores carry other brands.

Eat Yogurt with live active cultures. The enzymes in yogurt are natural bacteria that aid in digestion and keep your stomach in balance.

Avoid Aspirin products.

If you are having a bad patch of indigestion you can use Pepcid AC (an acid controller) for a couple of weeks to heal any erosions that are flaring up. While on the Pepcid add the yoghurt and Tea to your diet and it should help. I went through a bad patch of stomach problems and this treatment fixed the problem without me having to go the whole Gastro/scope route.

Also get a medical check asap to ensure it is in fact indigestion, there are other conditions (don't want to scare you but some are serious) that appear to be indigestion but are not. Even if it is indigestion it could be caused by some medical condtion such as an ulcer or hiatus hernia so better sure than sorry. Check out the links in our Indigestion category for more.