Why Antacids are NOT the Solution for Reflux

admin — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:38:59 +0000

Do you experience frequent heartburn/reflux? Indigestion? Maybe you take over the counter antacid relief, or your doctor prescribed you Nexium (the purple pill!) or Prilosec. After all, it makes sense: if you have stomach acid burning your esophagus, you need an antacid to neutralize it for pain relief, right?

i don't feel so good.

Actually, this is not always the case. Conventional medicine has a knack for treating the symptoms without uncovering the underlying cause of what causes the reflux. In cases of chronic heartburn, it’s actually LOW stomach acid, not too much stomach acid, believe it or not.

Your stomach acid should be around a PH of 2, incredibly acidic, so that it can break down food into a liquid (chyme) that travels to the small intestine and then the large intestine, where nutrients are absorbed and waste travels onward and outward to be excreted. If your stomach acid is at a higher PH, more alkaline, food cannot be properly broken down, and any pathogens, bacteria, or anything else that might be possibly contaminating your food won’t be killed. When food is not properly broken down, it sits in the stomach and ferments/putrefies, giving off gases and causing a burning sensation in the stomach and/or throat. This is reflux. It also travels out the other end, causing gas and bloating.

If you have chronic heartburn, GERD, or ulcers, chances are very good that you have h pylori, a nasty bacteria that causes ulcers, gastritis, and systemic inflammation that can lead to cancer and heart disease. The 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to 2 scientists for “the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.”

Antacids make the heartburn worse because they lower stomach acid further, making it easier for h pylori to thrive and making it harder for you to digest food. That’s why reflux worsens over time. No purple pill will kill h pylori – it will only exacerbate it over time.

Low stomach acid is a common problem and worsens with age. If you see undigested food in your poop, or if you belch or fart a lot, you likely have low stomach acid and are not absorbing necessary nutrients from your food. Also, low stomach acid makes it easier to get h pylori and other bugs in the first place. H pylori can also be transmitted through undercooked chicken, meat, or even by kissing.

Of course, reflux can also result from consuming foods to which you’re allergic, spicy foods, whatever. But if you are experiencing it regularly, time to figure out the cause. H Pylori and other bugs can be tested for via stool test. Then you can do a mastic gum cleanse for 60 days. Mastic kills the h pylori. It’s often used with bismuth to soothe, and DGL licorice to heal. Once the h pylori is gone, your stomach and gut can heal – both will be inflamed as a result of the infection. You can take digestive enzymes to help digestion and to increase stomach acid. Follow up the program with a good course of probiotics to recolonize the gut.

Don’t live your life covering up symptoms of a very uncomfortable problem. Why take a pill for the rest of your life when you can get rid of the problem itself?

The Latest Pharmaceutical LIE

admin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:52:08 +0000

A new study (click to read) has made headlines and has people buzzing. Apparently, if everyone takes the cholesterol-lowering statin drug CRESTOR, you’ll have a 54% lower risk of a heart attack! It’s a miracle!

Folks, this kind of information is disturbing for many reasons. First off, guess who funded this study? AstraZeneca, maker of Crestor! Secondly, a nasty side effect of taking this drug surfaced: many people in the study taking Crestor (vs those taking a placebo) saw blood sugar levels rise or were newly diagnosed with diabetes. Reduce heart attack; get diabetes!

So, the recommendation is that everyone now begin taking this drug to prevent heart incidents. Do you know what other side effects (besides diabetes) statins carry? How about muscle pain and weakness, most likely due to severe depletion of CoQ10, an important antioxidant that supports muscle function. Wait, isn’t the heart A MUSCLE? There’s also fatigue, neuropathy, dizziness, cognitive failure, oh, and potential heart failure. Must be that if you starve the heart of CoQ10, it stops working?

Here’s the scenario: a busy doctor is working in his/her office when a pharmaceutical rep stops in and presents these results. Too good to be true! Here is the study: give your patients crestor, lipitor, or vytorin (other statins), oh and here’s a golf vacation for prescribing my drug company’s drugs. Well, the doctor agrees with the rep and accepts his/her vacation and puts his/her patients on said statins. And that’s how it happens. Any drug company can fund a study and publish favorable results. And just because it’s FDA approved, does that mean it’s safe? Remember what happened with Vioxx, the drug approved for pain, arthritis, etc? It caused up to 130,000 heart attacks and was eventually pulled off the market. Drug companies don’t want to wait years to run studies before they release new drugs on the market, because they’re losing lots of potential money on that drug. So they release drugs without thorough testing, and bad side effects (death, for example) surface before the drug is pulled off the market.

The pharmaceutical industry is a 643 BILLION dollar industry. They benefit from keeping you on drugs and will gladly give you more drugs to combat the side effects of the ones that are making you feel like shit. They don’t want to empower you to make healthy decisions, they want to keep you sick and on their drugs.

Back to statin drugs, cholesterol-lowering miracles. Cholesterol is synthesized in the liver, and your body needs cholesterol to make hormones and vitamin D. Cholesterol is not bad, but when levels are too high, it can build up and becomes oxidized, causing arterial damage and clogging arteries, leading to heart disease. If you go to your doctor with high cholesterol, does you doctor ask you what you’re eating? Probably not, but maybe you think saturated fat is the culprit, because that’s what you heard. Wrong. The famous Framingham Study found that saturated fat was not responsible for high cholesterol. The dietary culprits are actually too much sugar, eating oxidized fats such as hydrogenated oils and margarine, and a congested liver.

Let’s talk sugar. I’m not just talking cookies and candy, but also white flour and grains and alcohol, all quickly converted to sugar in the body. Sugar has long been linked to increased free radical damage, heart disease, and high cholesterol. Sugar increases triglyceride levels, and high triglycerides are linked to heart disease. Cut down on sugar, processed foods, glutinous grains and white rice.

Let’s talk liver. First off, drugs are hard on your liver! Your HDL (good) cholesterol helps remove excess cholesterol from the body by transporting it to the liver for its breakdown and excretion. A congested, overworked liver therefore cannot remove excessive cholesterol from the blood supply. Try adding a milk thistle and/or oregon grape root liver tonic to your diet, and cut down on the booze and junk foods. See my previous post on how to love your liver.

Know what else can cause high cholesterol? Constipation. When you’re not having a poop every day (at least one, max 3), waste sits in your colon and toxins and cholesterol are reabsorbed into the body. Ever wonder why Quaker Oats claims to lower cholesterol? Because it makes you regular! That fiber sure does get things moving, binds to toxins, and sweeps the colon clean. Better yet, try psyllium or flaxseed.

Cholesterol levels should be somewhere around 200. Big Pharma wants you to gets yours as low as possible, maybe somewhere around 120-150. This is not healthy. Low cholesterol has been linked to depression and increased mortality.

What to do if your levels are too high? Over 250? High LDL (over 130), low HDL (under 50)?
*take care of your liver, as mentioned above. See my “Love Your Liver” post.
*reduce sugar, sodas, processed foods, gluten (white, rye, barley, spelt, teff), white rice, white potatoes, hydrogenated fats, canola, margarine.
*Try CoQ10, garlic, pantothenic acid, or plant sterols.
*Make sure you’re regular – aim for a bowel movement once a day minimum.
*Get moving. Exercise!

Holistic Nutrition Bytes--San Francisco Nutrition Consultation » pharmaceutical

Why Antacids are NOT the Solution for Reflux

The Latest Pharmaceutical LIE