Stomach pain sucks, so take a few minutes to learn about the least acidic drinks for stomach ulcer patients. Trust us, one day you will be thankful that you learned this information.
I’ve never had a stomach ulcer, and that’s not something I would ever like to experience in my lifetime. A stomach ulcer (also known as a peptic ulcer) is basically a sore you get in the lining of your stomach, or esophagus or small intestine. Apparently, 1 out of 10 Americans will experience one at some point in their life. While many believe that stress and eating habits result in stomach ulcers, doctors disagree. While they say this was the theory for a long time, they now believe that bacterial infections are the leading cause of stomach ulcers, according to WebMD. Other factors like excessive alcohol use, overuse of painkillers, smoking and psychological stress may “promote the development of ulcers.”
If you find yourself unlucky enough to have a stomach ulcer, you can usually tell by nausea or vomiting, pain in the stomach, bloating, pain from eating and a number of other symptoms. In most cases, ulcers can be treated by antibiotics or other prescriptions, but if you do have one, you certainly want to minimize your intake of acidic food and drinks because that will just make you even more miserable.
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Many people who suffer from ulcers might be put under stomach ulcer diet restrictions, which sucks because who wants a restricted diet? So what are the best foods to eat when you have an ulcer? Doctors suggest leafy veggies, broccoli, yogurt, apples, olive oil, berries and probiotic-rich foods are good because they help reduce and fight off the bacteria that causes the ulcers in the first place. While none of these items are full meals, they are great snacks for ulcer patients. Some of these easiest fruits to digest for constipation or upset stomach may also be useful (as long as they’re low in acidity). Diving deeper into the “stomach ulcer diet menu,” what you drink is just as important as what you eat. Pretty much any non-acidic drinks or those with low acidity will help. If you must drink alcohol (we’re not judging here) take a look at our article on the least acidic alcoholic drinks.
Now that we’ve told you the best foods for stomach ulcers (and some alcoholic drinks), we’ll get to this list of the best non-alcoholic drinks for you. For our methodology, we could only go for pH levels of soft drinks. That is because pH levels show how acidic or basic/alkaline a liquid is. A 7 on the pH scale is considered to be neutral, and the higher you get from 7, the more basic your substance is. On the other hand, the lower you go from 7, the higher the acidity of the substance. So, a 1 on the pH scale would be something extremely acidic, and a 10 would be very alkaline or basic. So, basically, a stomach ulcer patient should avoid acidic soft drinks at all costs and try to drink neutral or low acid drinks, meaning that we will be looking for drinks that have near neutral pH level, or in other words a pH level around 7. Several reliable websites like Shelton Dentistry, Live Strong, and the American Dental Association have done extensive research on this matter, and we sought help from them. Now for the ranking, we went with pH levels obviously, and the closer a drink is to the neutral mark, the higher it has been ranked on our list. Please be mindful of the fact that we are not considering any other parameters other than the pH level, because that is really the most important factor for someone suffering from the stomach ulcer.
Since everything is said and done, it is now time to get our list of least acidic drinks for stomach ulcer patients started.
