Can antacids prevent heartburn?
Antacids are a group of drugs that neutralize stomach acid, and so they treat heartburn by neutralizing the acid that’s come up into the esophagus and in the stomach. They generally would not be effective at preventing heartburn because their duration of action is too short. When you take an antacid you can treat the episode of heartburn that you’re having right now, but it’s not going to do much to prevent an episode happening later in the day or tomorrow. So they’re really intended for acute treatment of heartburn. Acid blockers really are indicated for the prevention of heartburn. How do H2 blockers work? There’s a cell in the stomach called a parietal cell, and that parietal cell makes acid. There are a number of different things that stimulate that cell, and one of them is histamine. H2 blockers simply block prevent histamine from stimulating the parietal cell, thus reducing the amount of acid that’s made. H2 blockers are quite effective at preventing heartburn attacks, and they’r
