Dyspepsia

Managing Your Symptoms

Sometimes symptoms can be helped by changes in lifestyle. Losing weight, stopping smoking and raising the head of the bed may help some patients who have mostly reflux. It is always appropriate to pay attention to your general health, considering factors such as exercise, ideal body weight and discontinuation of smoking. It is useful to consider any correlation of symptoms with certain types of foods such as spicy foods, and alcohol. Certain drugs such as aspirin and arthritis medication as well as pain killers (except acetominophen) may worsen injury to the stomach, and discontinuation or change of these medications may sometimes help.

Stress does not usually cause dyspepsia but can worsen GI symptoms and heighten our awareness of those symptoms. In some cases, appropriate strategies to cope with stress can be helpful.