Late dinner and night time heartburn: scientific proof
If you had any doubts about whether eating early helps reducing nighttime heartburn look at this link with scientific article from Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Gastroentérologie, Lausanne, Switzerland.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1434162
It pretty clearly proves that if you go to bed at 11pm and have later dinner at 9pm your pH will be 1.39. If you have early dinner at 6pm than your pH will be 1.69 or 20% lower.
Please note that the higher the pH the lower the acidity. Thus pH of 1 is very acid while pH of 5 is very alcaline.
Conclusion: moving your dinner 3 hours early will reduce your nighttime heartburn 20%… Of course your mileage may vary but trend is quite obvious.
Moving dinner even earlier won’t help much since you’ll get hungry by the time you need to get to sleep.