Frequent heartburn might be a sign that you have a drinking problem, a new study says.

Patients had an 18% higher risk of diagnosis with alcohol use disorder if they suffered from gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), also called acid reflux or heartburn, researchers recently reported in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

“If we know GERD patients are at higher risk, we can start asking the right questions and offering help sooner,” lead researcher Dr. Kimberly Schiel said in a news release. She’s acting chair of family and community medicine at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

Alcoholism affects at least 12% of men and 8% of women in the United States and contributes to around 178,000 deaths each year, researchers said in background notes.

However, it can be tough for family doctors to detect risk for alcohol use disorder among patients, researchers noted.

GERD might serve as a potential warning flag for alcoholism, researchers reasoned, because GI problems frequently occur as a consequence of heavy alcohol consumption.

An earlier study estimated that drinkers have a 48% increased risk of GERD, with their risk increasing alongside their consumption, researchers said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed health records from more than 350,000 adults seen at SLU-affiliated clinics between 2020 and 2023. None of the patients had been diagnosed with alcohol use disorder in 2020 and 2021. Then, researchers analyzed the odds of the disorder in 2022 to 2023 along with certain GI diagnoses.

Researchers specifically looked at whether people were more likely to be alcoholic if they had any of three GI conditions — irritable bowel syndrome, GERD or ulcers.

Only GERD showed a strong link to later alcohol problems, results show, with the risk especially high for people younger than 58. The risk was consistent across both men and women.

“A diagnosis of GERD is associated with an increased chance of receiving a new diagnosis of AUD within 2 years,” researchers concluded in their study.

“Physicians should recognize that a new diagnosis of GERD points to an opportunity to open a discussion about alcohol use with the patient, and to screen for alcohol use disorder with a validated tool,” researchers wrote. “Patients may be more willing to discuss their alcohol use in the context of a newly diagnosed GI disorder, and physicians may be more likely to perform formal screening.”