Natural Home Remedies to Calm Your Upset Stomach

Stomach upset can come from all kinds of sources like: Indigestion, stress or illness. Though your first instinct may be to reach for the Pepto or a bottle of acid reducer, there may be a natural remedy that is just as effective, if not better. Mankind has used herbs and other homemade remedies for calming an upset stomach as well as for other aliments for millennia. Here are a few things that you can use to help calm that upset stomach that most of us keep around the house anyway:

Peppermint Tea

This is my personal favorite, nothing clams my stomach better than steeping some mint leaves that I pulled off of my own peppermint plant. All you need to done is crush the leaves (if they are fresh) and steep them in hot water for few minutes and drink the tea. Of course if you don't have fresh mint you can use dried peppermint leaves to calm your stomach down.

Eat a Banana

The Banana is nature's baby food, its light on the stomach but hearty enough to calm the GI tract by counteracting the stomach's acids and slowing down diarrhea. In fact, Bananas are part of the BRAT diet: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast, that is recommended by physicians for children that are recovering from a GI problem.

Baking Soda In Water

Another home remedy that you can try to calm your stomach is to mix up ½ teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water (4-5 oz) and drink it. If this issue that is causing your stomach upset is from too much stomach acid this will calm the stomach by neutralizing the acid (remember the vinegar and baking soda experiment you did in grade school?). This is general considered safe for adults under 60 up to seven times within 24 hrs.

Ginger

Whether it's candied, put in to a tea or consumed as ginger ale, ginger is a great way to naturally calm the GI tract. The Chinese have been using many different forms of ginger to calm stomach upset for over 2,000 years.

Just RELAX!

Sometimes the stresses of modern life are enough to cause a knot in your stomach. The key to this type of GI distress is to simply relax. Take a warm bath, relax on the couch with a good book or a good movie and your well on your way to self-healing.

These are great home remedies for stomach issues if you're already feeling poorly. You can however try to avoid the problem altogether by avoiding food that cause stomach distress. Highly acidic coffee, onions, milk (lactose intolerant?), cauliflower/broccoli, chocolate, fried foods and many types of beans can all cause these stomach problems.

Sources:

University Of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital. "BRAT diet: What is the BRAT diet?". http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_bratdiet_pep.htm. Retrieved 8 April 2007.

"Sodium Bicarbonate". Jackson Siegelbaum Gastroenterology. 1998. http://www.gicare.com/pated/sodium_bicarbonate.htm.