The Heartburn-Tobacco Connection

There are many good reasons to quit smokingquit smoking. They range from curing your bad breath to reducing your risk of cancercancer, heart diseaseheart disease, and lung disease. But here's another reason to add to that long list: tobacco -- not just in cigarettes, but in cigars, pipes, chew, and snuff -- can cause heartburnheartburn.

"Tobacco makes acid refluxacid reflux worse," says David Carr-Locke, MD, director of endoscopy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. "It's definitely a risk factor."

And unlike a heightened risk of serious diseases -- which might seem rather abstract, especially when you're young -- heartburn is a consequence of tobacco use that you can feel right now. And chronic heartburn, due to gastroesophageal reflux disorder (GERDGERD), can cause more than serious pain; it can disrupt your sleep and interfere with your life.

Healing the Heartburn

According to some experts, there's a simple solution to the heartburn/tobacco equation, although you've probably heard it before: quit.

"For some people, quitting tobacco use can be the difference between having GERD and not having it," says Lawrence J. Cheskin, MD, co-author of Healing Heartburn and associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. "If you stop, your symptoms will probably get better quickly. It also really lowers the risks of having further complications down the road."

However, not everyone thinks that quitting tobacco use will necessarily have a dramatic effect on heartburn.

"I think that quitting only has a modest impact on GERD symptoms," says J. Patrick Waring, MD, a gastroenterologist at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. But he still strongly encourages anyone who uses tobacco to kick the habit.