What is bile reflux?

What is bile reflux?

Bile reflux occurs when the bile that’s released into your small intestine to help digest food washes back into your stomach, and sometimes into your esophagus.

Normally, everything involved in the digestive process should only flow one way ⁠— down. As food progresses along the digestive tract, valves at the end of each organ open just enough to let food and digestive juices through into the next, without letting anything flow back the other way. But if these valves (sphincters) aren’t functioning right, reflux can happen, and digestive juices like bile can flow back into organs where they don’t belong.