Ways to avoid "heartburn season".

• Position: Festive Foods

Making merry often is synonymous with overindulging--whether from holiday feasts or rich desserts or alcoholic beverages. As a consequence, ringing in the holidays often turns into "heartburn season." Heartburn--generally caused by naturally occurring acids splashing back up from the stomach--usually is marked by a characteristic burning sensation that sufferers describe as rolling up into their chest. Fatty foods play a starring role in this process.

Heartburn most often is caused by the reflux or backwash of acid from the stomach up into the esophagus, which is the long tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach. A valve at the end of the esophagus is supposed to function as a one-way release, relaxing to allow food into the stomach and closing back up so food and acid in the stomach stay there while the food is digested. If there is a leaky valve, gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, may result. The primary symptom is heartburn.

"As a general rule of thumb, anything that tastes really good is likely to give you heartburn, and the reason is the fat content," indicates Stuart Spechler, professor of internal medicine in digestive and liver diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. "Fat does a lot of things that promote heartburn. It stops the stomach from emptying well, so now you have more material in the stomach that's ready to reflux. It also further weakens that leaky valve.

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"Most of the time, heartburn is a nuisance, not a tremendous threat to your health. I tell most of my patients that it's going to be a tradeoff--is the food going to taste good enough to suffer through the heartburn? If you know you're going to eat something that ordinarily gives you heartburn, there are medications that you can take before eating that food...