Are you among the 20 million1 Americans taking an acid inhibiting drug to treat your heartburn?

Please be aware that for most, the risks far outweigh the benefits as there are plenty of alternative effective strategies to eliminate heartburn without serious side effects.

Previous research2,3,4,5,6,7 clearly shows that proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) such as Nexium, Prilosec, and Prevacid, are severely overprescribed and misused.

Indeed, PPIs are among the most widely prescribed drugs today, with annual sales of about $14 billion8–this despite the fact that they were never intended to treat heartburn in the first place.

Proton Pump Inhibitors Were Not Designed to Treat Heartburn

PPIs, the most powerful class of antacid drugs, were actually designed to treat a very limited range of severe problems,9 such as bleeding ulcers, Zollinger-Ellison syndrome (a rare condition that causes excess stomach acid production), and severe acid reflux, where an endoscopy has confirmed your esophagus is damaged.

PPIs were never intended for people with heartburn, and according to Mitchell Katz, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health,10 “about 60 to 70 percent of people taking these drugs have mild heartburn and shouldn’t be on them.”

If you’re taking a PPI drug to treat your heartburn, understand that you’re treating a symptom only; you are in no way addressing the underlying cause. And, by doing so, you’re exposing yourself to other potentially more dangerous health problems, courtesy of the drug itself.

These drugs were initially released during the first years of my practice in the late ’80s. It is important to note that, these drugs could only be obtained with a prescription and were not recommended to use for more than ONE WEEK. Today, they’re sold over the counter and frequently used continuously by many!

The recommendation is to use them for a maximum of two weeks at a time, no more than three times per year, but many ignore this and stay on them far longer, which could have serious consequences. For example, reported side effects of PPI drugs include:

        Pneumonia
        Bone loss
        Hip fractures
        Infection with Clostridium difficile, a harmful intestinal bacteria (this risk is particularly heightened in children11)

It’s also important to realize that while PPIs suppress the production of stomach acid—which in some severe cases may be warranted, short-term—the vast majority (about 95 percent) of heartburn cases are not caused by too much stomach acid, but rather from having too little.

Hence taking these drugs will actually worsen your condition over time… Reducing stomach acid also diminishes your primary defense mechanism against food-borne pathogens, thereby increasing your risk of food poisoning. PPIs simply do nothing to treat the underlying cause of ulcer pain.