As promised · The full list
The List: What Actually Opens the Valve
Not a list of acidic foods. A list of the things that loosen the ring of muscle at the top of your stomach. It is a different list, and that is the reason the first one never worked.
General information, not medical advice. Never change prescription medication on your own.
The old list sorted by acid. This one sorts by what relaxes the muscle.
Here it is.
No email, no sign-up, nothing to download. The list is below, in full, before anything else on this page. Read it, screenshot it, and close the tab if that is all you came for. It costs you nothing and it is yours either way.
One thing said plainly, up front: this page is published by Reventide, and Reventide sells a reflux supplement. The list itself is textbook physiology. It stands on its own whether you ever buy anything or not, and we would rather you heard that from us than worked it out halfway down.
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1Large meals
Volume matters more than spice. A full stomach pushes upward on the valve and gives it more to hold back. The same food, split across two smaller meals, is a different mechanical situation.
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2High-fat meals
Fat slows how fast the stomach empties. Whatever you ate stays sitting there longer, which stretches the window in which it can come back up. A cream sauce carries no acid at all and still runs this play.
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3Alcohol
Relaxes smooth muscle, and the valve is smooth muscle. This is the one most people already suspect and still get wrong on the timing: the drink with dinner matters more than the drink at four in the afternoon, because of what happens later when you lie down.
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4Caffeine, chocolate and peppermint
All three are on the list for the same reason, and none of them is on it for being acidic. Peppermint is the one that stops people, because it is the tea most people reach for when their stomach is unsettled.
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5Nicotine
In every form, not only cigarettes. Gum, pouches and vapes deliver the same compound to the same muscle.
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6Lying down within about three hours of eating
Not a food at all. Upright, gravity is doing half the valve's job for it. Flat, that help disappears while your stomach is still full. This is the single entry most people can move the furthest.
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7Anything that raises pressure in your abdomen
Tight waistbands and belts, bending forward after a meal, certain exercise positions, lying on your right side. Pressure from below pushes against a valve that is only ever holding a seal.
This is general information, not medical advice, and it is not a diagnosis of anything. Never change prescription medication on your own. If you are on a prescription for reflux, this list is something to bring to your doctor, not something to act on instead of one.
Why the two lists disagree
The first list was sorted by the wrong thing
The list you were handed years ago was a list of acidic foods. Tomatoes, citrus, coffee, vinegar, anything sharp. It is an intuitive list. It is also sorted by a property of the food rather than by an effect on your body, and those two things come apart almost immediately.
Think about a large bowl of pasta with a cream sauce. Zero acid. Nothing sharp in it. Nothing on the old list. And it is close to a worst case for the valve, because it is high in fat, high in volume, and usually eaten late.
Now go the other direction. Peppermint tea sits on the list you just read, and people drink it specifically to settle a stomach. It is not acidic. It is on the list because of what it does to the muscle.
Sort by acidity and you get one list. Sort by what relaxes the ring of muscle and you get a different one. Only the second list is describing the thing that actually opens.
There is a ring of muscle at the bottom of your food pipe, where it meets the stomach. Its entire job is to stay shut and open only when you swallow. It also relaxes on its own, briefly, several times an hour, in everyone, whether or not they have reflux. That is normal. What decides whether those relaxations cost you anything is how often they happen, how long they last, and what is sitting in your stomach when they do.
That is what the seven entries have in common. Every one of them either makes those relaxations more frequent, makes the valve hold less tightly, or loads the stomach so that an ordinary relaxation has something to let through.
It was never how much acid. It was what opened, and when.
The honest limit
What the list cannot do for you
Here is the part that would be easy to leave out, and we are not going to leave it out, because you have almost certainly already run into it.
You can work that list perfectly and still wake up at two in the morning.
Avoidance covers the hours you are awake and making decisions. It has nothing to say about the six or eight hours you spend flat and unconscious, and that is the stretch where most of the damage happens. When you lie down, four things you rely on all day switch off at once. Gravity stops helping. You are not swallowing, so nothing gets cleared. Saliva, which buffers all day, largely stops. And you are not awake to notice any of it.
So the list is real and it is worth having. It is also a list of things to subtract, and subtracting does not put anything in place for the hours you cannot supervise. That is a different job, and it is where almost everybody gets stuck.
The two things already in your house
Why neither one closes the gap
Most people reading this have two things within arm's reach right now, and both of them were bought for exactly this problem.
Antacids. They neutralize what has already come up. That is not nothing, and on a bad night it is the difference between sleeping and not. But notice the timing built into the word: they arrive after. Something opened, something came up, and then you reached for the roll. Nothing about that sequence touches the valve, and it is why the roll on the nightstand is gone by Thursday every week and the nights are unchanged.
The once-a-day pill. It lowers how much acid gets made. That is real, it is well understood, and for a lot of people it made the daytime livable. It is also a different job entirely. Less acid in the stomach does not make the valve hold. If the valve opens while you are flat, what comes up is simply less acidic than it would have been. For the people who write to us, that has never been the same thing as a night without waking.
And then there is the part almost nobody puts plainly, which is what happens when someone decides to stop.
Read that carefully, because it is easy to over-read. Those were healthy volunteers. They had nothing wrong with them going in. The symptoms showed up after they came off the drug, not while they were on it.
That is a fact about a drug, not an instruction, and it is certainly not a reason to stop taking anything. It is here for one reason only: if you have ever tried to come off a prescription and everything came back worse within days, that experience is documented, and it was not weakness or imagination on your part. Talk to your doctor before changing any prescription. Nothing on this page is a taper plan and nothing on this page is a replacement for what your doctor has you on.
The list subtracts. The pill lowers. Neither one holds the valve for eight hours.
The two windows
Two windows, three jobs
There are two moments in a day when reflux is possible, and they are close to opposites. That is why nothing built for one of them ever handles the other.
The first window is upright, right after your largest meal. Your stomach is full, there is a pool sitting in it, and for the next stretch that pool can escape upward. You are vertical, so gravity is on your side. This window is mechanical. What it needs is not less acid. It needs a lid on the pool.
The second window is flat. The six to eight hours from the moment you lie down until you get up. Gravity is out. Swallowing is out. Saliva is out. In that stretch, how well that ring of muscle holds is the only thing standing between your stomach and your throat.
Two windows. Three jobs to cover them, because the night window has two separate needs and the day window has one.
A raft on top of your biggest meal
Sodium alginate is pulled from seaweed. Stirred into water and drunk after your largest meal, it forms a light gel raft that floats on top of what you just ate. Not a coating on your throat. A physical layer sitting on top of the pool, put in place hours before you lie down. It is not absorbed into your body. A 2017 meta-analysis of 14 randomized trials (2,095 patients, Diseases of the Esophagus) found alginate-based therapies were significantly more likely to resolve reflux symptoms than placebo or antacids (odds ratio 4.42). Day Shield uses the same alginate salt, sodium alginate, at 1,000 mg per stick. Those trials dosed several times a day; we make no claim to match their dosing. Research on the ingredient class, not on our finished product.
Sodium Alginate · 1,000 mg · day drink
The calcium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate in the same stick are not there to be an antacid. They are the chemistry that makes the raft form and float. The buffering is a side effect, not the point.
Not the sleep kind of melatonin
This is the part people roll their eyes at and then read twice. Melatonin is not only a sleep hormone. Researchers report the gut contains at least 400× more melatonin than the pineal gland, the gland in the brain that releases it at night (a review in Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 2002). Melatonin has been studied for its effect on lower esophageal sphincter tone, in one small clinical study, at 3 mg taken at bedtime. Night Restore provides 2.7 mg. Research on the ingredient, not on our finished product.
Melatonin · 2.7 mg · night capsulesIf you already take melatonin for sleep, the difference is dose and timing rather than the compound. Ten milligrams taken to knock yourself out is a different intervention from a small dose taken about thirty minutes before bed. We are not claiming the second one fixes anything. We are saying it is aimed at the window the first list never covered.
The slow one, and the reason ninety days matters
Years of reflux leave the tissue in the lower food pipe irritated, and that part does not change in a week. In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, a zinc-carnosine complex helped support intestinal lining integrity in healthy adults exposed to a common gut irritant. Night Restore provides 135 mg of zinc carnosine per serving, alongside 900 mg of L-glutamine and 1,800 IU of vitamin D3. Research on the ingredient, not on our finished product.
Zinc-L-Carnosine · 135 mg · night capsulesThat is the whole routine. One stick in water after your largest meal. Two capsules about thirty minutes before bed. No melatonin in the day drink, so nothing makes you foggy at your desk.
30-day money-back guarantee · no subscription
Nothing hidden
Every milligram is printed
You have been burned by labels before, so here is ours, in full, before you have decided anything.
Made in a cGMP-certified, FDA-registered facility.
No proprietary blend. No ingredient named without a number next to it. The DGL in the day stick is listed because it is in there, and we attach no study claim to it.
And two numbers we would rather you heard from us. The 1,000 mg of alginate is a fraction of what those trials used across a day, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Each stick also carries 336 mg of sodium. If you are on a sodium-restricted diet or have high blood pressure, that is a conversation for your doctor before you order, not after.
In their words
From people who ordered while expecting nothing
These are our own customers, quoted exactly as they wrote it. Individual results vary.
“I almost didn't order, because I've been burned by 'clinically formulated' supplements before. … Didn't end up needing it.”
Alicia D. · Verified Buyer
“Six years, more doctors than I can count. Prescription meds did next to nothing for the nights. The 2am episodes have gotten rare enough that I actually sleep now. That alone is worth it to me.”
Robert H. · Erie, PA · Verified Buyer
“I already take melatonin for sleep so I assumed this was basically the same thing and rolled my eyes a little. It's not. The nighttime reflux is the part that changed for me.”
Anthony P. · Cranston, RI · Verified Buyer
“Got so used to sleeping propped up on a mound of pillows that lying flat felt weird. Been on this about a month. I lay flat again.”
Marcus D. · Tualatin, OR · Verified Buyer
What you are risking
The honest part: you have been wrong about this before
The thing actually stopping you is not the money, and we both know it.
It is that you have spent on this category before, more than once, and each time you had to quietly admit afterwards that you fell for it again. That is a worse feeling than losing the money. It is the reason the half-used jar is still in the cupboard instead of the bin.
So the guarantee was built for that, not for the money.
Take the full thirty days and use it properly. If the nights have not changed, send the kits back for a full refund, empty packaging included. We do not ask for unopened boxes, because a product you never opened tells neither of us anything.
It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Nothing renews, nothing to cancel, no card on file waiting to charge you next month.
The money-back guarantee covers 30 days from delivery, regardless of the supply size you choose.
Full ingredients, doses and options on the product page
This is a dietary supplement, not a drug.
The list at the top of this page is yours whether or not you ever order anything from us. Screenshot it, print it, take it to your doctor.
Everything after it exists because the list can only tell you what to subtract, and the hours you spend flat are not hours you can supervise.
Sincerely,
Reventide
P.S. If you only take one entry from that list, take number six. Three hours upright after your last meal costs nothing, and it is the only one that changes the flat window at all.