According to a new study, Antacids may do any good to you occasionally, but if you consume it on a daily basis then it may increase the chances of heart attack.

Antacids are generally used for curing heartburn, reduce stomach acidity. Antacids are harmless but if taken every day chances are high for them to be harmful.

A study carried out on the lifestyle and stress level in youngsters revealed that over usage of this kind of drugs may increase the risk of heart attack by 16 to 21 percent.

For the study, researchers have analyzed 16 million clinical records of 2.9 million patients.

Nigam H. Shah, Assistant Director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research and the lead researcher of the study said, “People who take medication to suppress stomach acid are at greater risk of developing myocardial infarction, commonly known as heart attack.”

Drugs like Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid called proton pump inhibitors or PPI are among the prescribed drugs to treat wide range of disorders, including gastroesophageal reflux disease or GERD.

He further added, “By looking at data from people who were given these drugs primarily for acid reflux and had no prior history of heart disease, our data-mining pipeline signals an association with a higher rate of heart attacks.”

He finally concluded by saying, “Our results demonstrate that PPIs appear to be associated with elevated risk of heart attack in the general population.”

The team along with scientists from Houston Methodists Hospital found that H2 blockers, another type of antacid drug showed no such association.

John Cooke, a senior study author said, “Our earlier work identified that the PPIs can adversely affect the endothelium, the Teflon-like lining of the blood vessels.”

Excess usage of antacids is not recommended by doctors, in fact over usage of nay drug leads to harmful effects.

The recent finding has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.