Its great to back with you’ll! My apologies for spacing out! Tough times but what’s more important is to believe in yourself that, not just will you make it through but you’ll shine! On that positive note lets jump onto the solutions that we all have been looking forward to, rebuilding our stomach acid!So today’s episode is going to be entirely devoted to the solutions.
Before you start reducing the pH of your stomach & supporting stomach acid production. The most important thing would be to support the mucosal lining. Just like in the case of muscles, if you exercise them, you build size & strength & if you don’t then you simply loose those gains. Similarly, if your stomach acid has been off since quite sometime, your stomach mucosal lining will thin down. Since the contents of the stomach are no longer acidic enough, that much mucosal protection just won’t be required. The body needs energy & resources to build & maintain. You wouldn’t start building sky scrapers in a town with a population of a 1000 people!
Ideally you’d want to first start off by first trying to eliminate environmental toxins, weaning off non-prescribed pharmaceutical drugs, having good whole foods, reducing stress & all those sorts of things that I keep talking about. Because, remember, if you haven’t addressed the causes that have led to this problem in the first place. You’ll find yourself back in it again & again!
To support the mucosal lining, mucilaginous herbs like marshmallow root, Irish moss, coltsfoot, burdock root, etc. Are really beneficial since they help coat the gastrointestinal lining. You can take it on an empty stomach & let it do its thing. And you can start with apple cider vinegar & lime and lemon juice. Start with a tablespoon of of apple cider vinegar diluted in around 150 to 200ml water, I suppose that’s around 7 to 8 ounces. You can take it before a meal or you can sip on it throughout a meal after those first few bites. The dosage of apple cider vinegar can be increased to 2 or even 3 tablespoons eventually provided you don’t have any pain or discomfort. The juice of limes & lemons can also be squeezed over your meals, especially meats or other rich & heavy foods. This would really help in digestion. Another important thing is to introduce digestive bitters or Swedish bitters before or after meals to help & support the liver & hence your digestion. I personally take these bitters & so can you, regardless if you have any digestive issues or not. In fact that’s the one thing I’d recommend that you take time to time for liver & digestive health in general. It has no side-effects of course. Neither does apple cider vinegar or lemons. Including it as a part of your daily or regular meal habits will have immense benefits not just in present but also in the long run. Small things go a long way.
Introducing some good digestive enzymes at least in the beginning will also really help with breakdown of food. Eventually you could dwindle it down to only when you’re consuming red meats or any kind of rich & dense meals. Introducing probiotics to help the diversification of our friendly gut microbes. Its not necessary that you have to take it in the form of supplements. Its, in fact, preferable that you take it through foods. From things like yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, etc And another thing is Manuka honey, its not highly essential that you take this. But if you can, then there’s nothing like it! You’ve to take a teaspoon or 2 in a day. Most importantly, it’ll help battle any overgrowth since its antimicrobial. So even in things like SIBO that’s small intestinal bacterial overgrowth & ulcers, its miraculous! Gosh! And every time I think of honey, I start to think about how the bees might be facing extinction due to the growth of EMF’s in our environment.
Anyways, if this doesn’t seem to work in spite of being pretty much dedicated to it for like 3 to 4 weeks. Then its an indication of the problem is not mild & that we’ll need to add Betaine Hydrochloride, Hcl. People generally tend to think about Hcl as being very acidic & dangerous! That’s not the truth! Sure, its acidic but not to the extremes! In fact betaine is an amino acid which is also found in spinach, beef, shrimps, etc. It was originally found in beets hence its name betaine. So, basically what betaine Hcl does is, it lowers the pH of our stomach which helps in re-acidifying the stomach acid to its original pH.
Firstly, I suggest that you do this under the guidance of a healthcare professional. Now, the right way to introduce Betaine Hcl is low & slow. Just because its not extremely acidic, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be cautious or careful when using it. Actually we should be cautious when using most supplements especially when they are lab derived. Not because they are dangerous but due to the fact that we are interfering in the body’s physiology. Not that its a bad thing, we intend to support the body & nourish it. But we’ve got to understand that the body is super complex & so is its internal working, its processes. And we still have lots to learn & discover. We humans are really in the naive stages of gaining an understanding of the human body! And the biggest mistake of all that we can make is entirely relying on lab reports, blood work. Sure it can be useful but it is susceptible to error & can never replace the symptoms that the body in its wisdom is giving out. How you feel matters a whole lot!
So with betaine hcl you ideally start with 1 capsule. This is to be taken in the middle of a meal. Sure you can take it with the sips of diluted apple cider vinegar as previously discussed. But it should always be during a meal & never before or after. Reason being that our body is in the cephalic stage before a meal & the stomach acid production is at the max! Although its insufficient but its this one time when your stomach acid is the highest it can be. And adding support in the cephalic stage of digestion is likely to cause more harm than good! So, after 2 days you could add in another capsule. And as long as you’re not having any negative effects you keep adding a capsule after every 2 days. Until you reach the dose where your body signals you that you’re taking enough. That’s when you feel warmness in your stomach, near the chest or maybe even in the chest region. You might even get diarrhea. And that’s when you know you have to reduce your dose to the amount of capsules that you last took that worked well without any feeling of warmness or anything out of the ordinary. And make sure that you never exceed 8 capsules.
Now, one very important thing to note is that you’ve got to stop immediately if you feel pain or discomfort during the betaine hcl trial or even during consumption of apple cider vinegar! Because it could be a case that you might have an ulcer or gastritis, that’s inflammation of the stomach lining. And if that’s the case, adding stomach acid support will only worsen the problem! And please beware, if you have any mouth or esophageal disease, inflammation or cancer. Any problem related to the mouth or esophagus or stomach, whatever it may be, please don’t get onto these suggestions that I have shared with you today! Except of course, supporting the mucus membrane. So, you’ll have to work with your healthcare professional in such cases, especially if you’ve been taking acid suppressing medications.
Okay, so apart from all this, eating hygiene is one area that you have to get right. Chewing your food, not being in a hurry or stressed out during meals, not gulping down your foods with water, all those sorts of things. If you want that what you’re fixing now shouldn’t reoccur, well you’ve got to take care & get into the habit of practicing eating hygiene most importantly! Then, if you remember in the previous episodes I mentioned of sodium & potassium as being the building blocks of stomach acid. So you’ve got to give it to you body! You’d really benefit from a good quality sea salt, free of micro-plastics or even better Himalayan pink salt. As for potassium, you can either get a good quality electrolyte with higher amounts of potassium or ideally you can get it from food. By consuming good amounts of vegetables and also by including eggs & nuts in your diet, as long as you aren’t allergic to it. Fasting is also very essential & plays an important role in healing the gut. We’ll be talking more about fasting in another episode.
Lastly, vitamin B3, niacin. Its a co-factor of over 300 enzymes in the body which are responsible for carrying out various function in the body. And one of them being stomach acid production. And as we already know the role of B vitamins in energy production, ATP generation. The cells of our stomach are no different. They too need ATP, energy to produce stomach acid. So, a deficiency of, especially vitamin B3 can hamper stomach acid production. Generally if the body has low levels of niacin, it’ll prefer to spend it for the functioning of other mechanisms that are crucial for survival. Just a reminder, survival is very important for our body & it prioritizes it. The body is wise & is never broken! Its just intelligently regulating its function to keep itself alive when we put it in a toxin environment with low nutrients needed for optimal function & with lots and lots of stress! So, its going to try its level best to make use of whatever little it has so it can see a new day. We start to thrive when we start supporting our body with a clean environment & with good clean nourishment and a stress free mind. That’s when the body starts repairing itself to get back in balance. That’s when you start to feel great & leave behind your health problems!
Anyways, so getting back to vitamin B3. Sometimes you may not have any symptoms because its just low & not depleted. But at times you may have a 1 or 2. And if you’re seriously depleted then you’re surely going to have symptoms. Especially if you’re a person who takes a lot of stress. Because niacin is used in the production of adrenaline & too much stress means higher usage of B3 and a faster depletion. Usually if niacin is deficient, the body will use the amino acid tryptophan & convert it to vitamin b3 but since stomach acid is sub-optimal. There’s no chance you might have those resources in hand since protein isn’t being broken down. So, symptoms include, fatigue, diarrhea, skin issues & anxiety.
To replenish your niacin stores, I’d recommend that you try & get them from foods rather than supplements. Although some supplements that are food based are amazing! Like freeze-dried desiccated beef liver available in capsules. You can consider taking it. Apart from beef liver, foods like anchovies, salmon (make sure its not farmed), then there’s meats (grass-fed), seeds like hemp, chia, sunflower, flaxseeds, seasme seeds or tahini if you’re like me. Nuts like almonds, pine nuts & peanuts as well but please don’t overdo on the nuts. There are also foods like pumpkin, squash, chestnuts, peas & mushrooms. There are also some herbs & condiments which you can include in your diet. These will not only provide you with niacin but many other health benefits! Its dried spirulina, tarragon, coriander, ginger, parsley & paprika. So make sure you get as many foods as possible that I’ve just mentioned, onto your grocery list. Although we all should be eating these foods regardless any which ways.
So, that was it for today! Thank you for hanging in there & I really appreciate you for being such an amazing listener! I hope you found the info that I have shared with you useful in your health journey. I’d love to hear from you, so if you’ve got anything to say or even if you don’t, just drop in & say hi! I’ll be seeing you’ll soon with another interesting & useful episode! Until then, have a great day or evening!
Thanks.
You’re welcome!