You may need to avoid certain foods if you suffer from heartburn. What foods are your biggest heartburn trigger? How do you cope with food triggers? Any handy tips or food substitutions? Share your experience with others!

If you suffer from frequent heartburn, you know that it often makes an appearance at special occasions, such as during the holidays. To help prevent heartburn from occurring, you can try these tips. Do you have some tips for preventing heartburn during the holidays, at parties, at family gatherings? Share your tips here.

The holidays are filled with feasts and festivities -- and sometimes heartburn, too. Here's how to avoid holiday heartburn.

During the holidays, and anytime during the year, it's important to avoid the foods that can cause heartburn, learn how to prevent nighttime heartburn, and follow other methods of preventing heartburn each day. And while this season is joyful, it can also be stressful. While stress doesn't directly cause heartburn, it can have an affect, so learn about heartburn and stress and how to relax.

A new study published in the December 2009 issue of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, shows that muscle cells that were grown in the lab were able to restore intestinal sphincters ability to squeeze shut properly. While this procedure was done on dogs and rats, researchers hope that it might eventually be used in humans to treat patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

This infusion technique would be used to help strengthen sphincter muscles. These sphincters are muscles that form a ring that can contract to close an opening to separate major sections along the digestive tract. The sphincter that is of most concern to GERD patients is the lower esophageal sphincter (LES), since a weakness in the LES can allow stomach contents to reflux back into the esophagus.

Dr Pankaj Pasricha, chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at Stanford and lead author of the study, said, "After injecting muscle cells in that area of weakness, those muscle cells thrive and get integrated into the existing tissues, and then add to the strength of the sphincter."

The study involved the isolation and growth of skeletal muscle cells from the hind legs of animals in the lab and implantation of these cells into the sphincter of another animal. After four weeks, the researchers examined the sphincters to determine if the cultured cells, which were marked with a dye, had survived, integrated and become functional. Skeletal muscle cells were injected into the lower esophageal sphincter of each of the three dogs. When analized after three weeks, the sphincter pressure had doubled. No abnormalities were found in the esophagus, confirming that the cells had successfully integrated into the sphincter.

More research and testing need to be done before this becomes a viable therapy for GERD patients, but if it is found to be effective, it could prove to be a less invasive treatment than surgery.

For more information, you can see the abstract of this study.