Word: heartburned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
LOVED YOUR COVER: A PICTURE OF THE stomach-churning Buchanan beneath a presumably unrelated headline, heartburn wars. I should say! THOMAS WALTON Bowling Green, Ohio...
...Tums, for example, costs less than 3¢ a tablet. That compares with more than 40¢ for a one-a-day Pepcid AC tablet or a Tagamet HB two-tablet dose, although both products currently offer substantial rebates. Still, booming sales of the new acid blockers seem to show that heartburn sufferers are not troubled by sticker shock. At a Duane Reade drugstore in Manhattan, Darlene Jackson, 35, picked up a box of Tagamet HB and noted the higher price but decided to buy it anyway. "If it works," she said, "it's worth...
...operates inefficiently, allowing stomach contents to back up. In other parts of the world, most people accept it as a fact of life--and tough it out. In the U.S., says Dr. John Walsh, former president of the American Gastroenterological Association (A.G.A.), "only a fraction of people with heartburn take antacids or other treatments. Now companies are telling consumers that this is something they ought to treat...
What separates the new over-the-counter medications from the old solutions? Antacids, which consist largely of chemical compounds called bases, neutralize the wayward acid, but as acid continues to migrate upward from the stomach, heartburn can return in only a few hours. Acid blockers like Pepcid and Tagamet, on the other hand, go to the root of the problem by suppressing the production of acid in cells lining the interior of the stomach without interfering with normal digestion. These cells normally produce acid when a form of histamine called H2 "docks" with receptors in the cell walls, much like...
...does it justify the FDA's approval of over-the-counter versions? When the FDA discussed the issue, an analogy to over-the-counter arthritis medication was forcefully made: Just as some people need effective, readily available medicine for aches and pains, some people need similar medicine for heartburn...