peterants

This is an article that I read at alternative-medicine-and-health.com which I have started to follow because I fit the test as deficient in HCL.

WE ALL KNOW what indigestion is–sort of. It’s like heartburn, only different. Actually, indigestion refers to any disturbance of the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract, which includes the esophagus, stomach, and gallbladder. Heartburn is one of the usual symptoms of indigestion. Gas, bloating, and belching are also common symptoms.
If you suffer from indigestion after eating or drinking too much or as a result of stress, you need to investigate the various possibilities.
Here are the most common causes of indigestion:
• Candidiasis
• Food Allergy
• Gallbladder Disease
• H. Pylori
• Heartburn
• Hiatal Hernia and Esophagitis,
• Lactose Intolerance
• Ulcers
Most people who suffer from chronic indigestion have been to doctors and have been tested for various conditions. If this describes you, and if you have read about the above ailments and still can’t find the cause of your indigestion, there are two other possible causes that are not widely known:
• Deficiency of hydrochloric acid
• Deficiency of pancreatic enzymes
If you suffer from deficiency of hydrochloric acid or lack of gastric acid secretion, you may experience:
• bloating, belching, burning, and flatulence right after eating
• diarrhea or constipation
• a feeling of overfullness after eating
• food allergies
• nausea caused by nutritional supplements
Over half of people over the age of sixty suffer from low gastric acidity. If you’ve consulted your doctor about indigestion, taken antacids, and tried the prescription drug Tagamet and there has been no improvement or in fact you have felt worse, your problem could stem from a lack of hydrochloric acid. A physician can use a diagnostic test to confirm this problem, but there is also a simple test you can perform at home. Take a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice when you are experiencing indigestion. If this eliminates your symptoms, then you may be deficient in stomach acid. If it makes your symptoms worse, you have an overproduction of stomach acid. If the vinegar helps, you can take it with meals or you can take hydrochloric acid (HCL) supplements (these often contain pepsin), which you can buy at health food stores. Please note that hiatal hernia, gastritis, and duodenal ulcer are caused by overproduction of stomach acid, and HCL supplements can make these conditions worse. Therefore, it’s important to rule out hyperacidity before treating yourself with HCL supplements.
Other people suffer from a lack of pancreatic enzymes. The pancreas produces enzymes that are essential to the digestion and absorption of food. The enzymes include lipases that digest fat, proteases that digest proteins, and amylases that digest starch. I’ve noticed that patients with low blood sugar are more prone to a problem with pancreatic enzymes. This may be because both insulin, which controls blood sugar, and the pancreatic enzymes are produced by the same organ, the pancreas. If the pancreas is out of whack, low blood sugar and lack of enzymes could result.
A lack of pancreatic enzymes will lead to trouble when you ingest fatty foods: You may experience bloating or belching an hour after a fatty meal, or your may have a feeling of fullness.
If you lack pancreatic enzymes, there are supplements that can help. Preparations of pancreatic enzymes isolated from animal sources are used with other enzymes including bromelain, which comes from pineapple, to aid digestion. These supplements are available at health food stores.
NATURAL TREATMENTS FOR INDIGESTION:
• Rule out all the disorders listed above, including cardiac trouble, as possible causes.
• If the discomfort is caused by lack of gastric acid secretion as determined by the self-test recommended above, take hydrochloric acid (HCL) supplements. Please note you should never take hydrochloric acid at the same time as aspirin, gutazolldln, Indocin, Motrin, or any other antiinflammatory medications, If you experience stomach irritation, discontinue.
Begin treatment by taking one hydrochloric acid capsule (10 grains) at your next large meal. At every large meal after that take one more capsule. For example, one capsule at your next meal, two at the meal after that, three at the meal after that, and so on. Continue until you reach five capsules or until you feel your digestion has improved, whichever comes first, When you’ve discovered the dose you need, continue to take it with meats. You can reduce the number .of capsules you take when the meals are small.
Your stomach may regain the ability to manufacture stomach acid. If this happens, you can reduce the number of capsules taken.
• If your indigestion stems from a lack of pancreatic enzymes, you should take pancreatic enzymes and bromelain, available at health food stores, Take two to four tablets of pancreatic enzymes with meals–”SX USP” is the type to look for. Take bromelain in doses of 250 to 500 mg. with meals.

I started by taking apple cider vinegar for stomach upset, something my mother does regularly. It made my stomach feel better, so I purchased Betaine-Hcl at my local health food store. I take one tablet with breakfast, one with lunch and either two or three with dinner, depending on whether I have meat for dinner. I feel better, and have less stomach upset.

Update-After two months on that schedule, I have now dropped down to one 10 grain tablet at dinner (or two, if I have meat with dinner). It has been working fine. I guess that my stomach is now making a little more HCL.

So how do we put this all together? What do we reasonably do to live a long and healthy life?

Let’s review what we’ve covered so far. First, exercise.

The benefits of exercise are extremely well studied. At least a half hour a day, at least five days per week. If this seems like a lot, look at it this way. Exercise could easily add 3.5 to 5 years to your life (per the Framingham heart study). That’s between 30,660 and 43,800 hours. Three hours per week is about 150 hours per year. If you exercise for 50 years, that adds up to 7500 hours of exercise. In other words, you gain between four and six hours of extra life for each hour you exercise. Or put another way, that’s a 300% to 500% return on your time invested exercising! And, you’ll feel better, with fewer health problems, for your entire life.

Then diet. It is now basically indisputable that there is a direct relationship between the amount of animal protein we eat and the chances of getting heart disease and cancer. This has been shown over and over again, but the most comprehensive study is The China Study. The findings? “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease.”

Another study, commonly called the Loma Linda Study, followed Seventh Day Adventists because of the vegan diet recommendations of their faith. That study showed that the average Seventh Day Adventist who followed the dietary recommendations of the church lived 13 years longer than the average non-smoking American.

Of course, just cutting out meat and dairy isn’t all that’s necessary. We need fresh fruit and vegetables, not refined sugar; whole grains, not refined flour; in short, wholesome food, not junk food.

Here’s one more thought about diet. There’s a recent study in which aging rats were given blueberries which were the equivalent of an adult human eating one cup of blueberries per day. These rats were about 65 in human terms. They received the blueberries for two months. They were then compared to young rats and control group old rats on several tests of mental and physical function. One test was typical of the overall results. In it, the young rats were able to balance on a rod for 14 seconds. The control group aged rats, who didn’t get blueberries, were able to balance for only 6 seconds. Their counterparts who received the blueberries were able to balance on the rod for 10 seconds-not as long as the young rats, but a considerable improvement over the rats not getting blueberries.

In short, what you eat matters-a lot.

Calorie restriction is the third prong of life extension. It’s thesis is-how much you eat matters a lot, also. Many studies have shown that reducing calorie intake by a significant amount, like 40%, will substantially extend life span. The problem with calorie restriction is that its impossible for all but the most dedicated, strong willed individuals to eat 25 to 40 per cent fewer calories on an ongoing basis. One way to get some of the benefits of calorie restriction is to do intermittent fasting, on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. (Before you undertake more than a one day fast, please see my fasting post for important information.)

An NIA study indicates that intermittent fasting may be more beneficial than cutting calorie intake. The researchers fed one group of mice 40% of the calories given to a control group. A third group was fasted for 24 hours, then permitted to free-feed. The fasting mice “didn’t cut total calories because they ate twice as much on days they weren’t fasting. Both the fasting mice and those on a restricted diet had significantly lower blood sugar and insulin levels than the free-fed controls. A toxin that damages hippocampal cells was injected in all of the mice. Hippocampal damage is associated with Alzheimer’s. Interestingly, the scientists found less damage in the brains of the fasting mice than in those that ate either a restricted or a normal diet.

Supplements are another way to extend life, and to maintain good health, notwithstanding the flawed studies run by people with ties to the drug and medical industry trying to prove the contrary. One study of supplements gave average human-equivalent doses of 31 vitamins and minerals to mice, while a control group got no supplements, but the same diet. This study was performed on mice with over-espressed growth hormone, and on normal mice.

The results were dramatic. Supplementation extended the life span of the growth hormone mice by 28 percent, to 431 days. In normal mice, supplementation extended life span by 11 percent on average, from 688 days to 765 days. How does this 11 percent increase in longevity in normal mice compare to caloric restriction? Other investigators have reported that a 40 percent restriction in calories increased survival in the same strain of mice about 19 percent.

One cutting edge thought for longevity. Resveratrol, a compound found in red grapes and red wine seems to exhibit some qualities for extending life. Here’s a quote from my June 4, 2007 post on resveratrol:

In numerous studies, resveratrol has demonstrated effects that mimic those of caloric restriction, the best-documented anti-aging strategy to date. In all animals in which it has been tested, caloric restriction—the practice of restricting calorie intake while maintaining good nutritional status—improves multiple aspects of age-related decline. Caloric restriction does this, in part, by producing changes in gene expression that are associated with long life and a slowing of the aging process.

So supplementing with resveratrol, and eating red grapes would be a good idea. And when you drink that daily glass of red wine, your toast should be to a long life.

Diet is a controversial issue for me. Partly this is because my wife and I have somewhat differing views. My wife believes that a vegan diet, with almost all food being “raw” (not heated to more than 115 degrees F) is the proper healthy way to eat, with maybe an occasional small serving of fish, no dairy products, no red meat, and very few cooked vegetables or fruits. It is true that there is adequate protein in vegetables to sustain life so a vegan diet is probably okay (except that you should supplement with B-12, and, if you live in the northern half of the United States, D-3). But it doesn’t satisfy me. I can do it for a few days, but then I need a little meat protein.

My attitude is also partly the result of trying many, many diets. I have been intrigued by the Blood Type diet, and its refinement, the Genotype diet, but these are not yet proven, and the blood type diet didn’t lead to any weight loss for me. Over the years, I’ve been on the Pritikin Diet, the Adkins Diet, the Cabbage Soup diet, and many others. None of them helped me loose much weight, and none of them left me with any permanent weight loss. And I didn’t feel comfortable with any of them as a life long program for eating.

Over the years, I have developed several principles about proper diet, however. The basic principle is that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is killing us.

First, we eat too much meat and animal protein. The China Study has shown conclusively, in my opinion, that the less animal protein we eat, the more healthy we are. It proves that the more animal protein we eat, the more heart disease and cancer we have. It’s a direct correlation! This is further shown by the fact that Seventh Day Adventist’s who follow their church’s teachings to eat no meat live an average of 13 years longer than the average NON-SMOKING U.S. citizen.

Second, it is a scientific fact that heating food to more than 115-120 degrees Fahrenheit kills the natural enzymes in the food. It is also a fact that the older human body does not produce many new enzymes to use in digesting food.

Third, we eat way too much sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and other sweeteners. The average U.S. citizen eats over 150 pounds of sugar a year. This, by itself, probably accounts for the epidemic of obesity and Type II diabetes in this country.

Fourth, there are way too many chemicals and unhealthy fats in our processed foods.

And, fifth, we eat foods we are allergic to, and which our body treats as toxins.

I’ve recently read the book by Dr. Mark Hyman called The UltraSimple Diet. I think it offers a good lifetime way of eating, after finding out what foods I might be sensitive to. Here’s Dr. Hyman’s short explanation of the program:

Is your digestive system making you fat?

It’s hard to believe – but very true!

Today, I’m going to explain how the bugs in your digestive tract and the way they upset your gut’s immune system just might be behind those extra pounds.

I have observed this phenomenon in thousands of patients. And I’ve developed very effective treatments for it, based on understanding the way in which all the body’s systems – the gut, the immune system, toxins, hormones and more-are connected.

These are what I call the 7 keys to UltraWellness.

You can read even more about it in my book, The UltraSimple Diet, which explains why toxicity and inflammation are key underlying causes of obesity and illness.

And there’s powerful evidence that addressing those key causes can help shed pounds.

Over and over, I’ve seen patients who lose significant amounts of weight, just by cutting food allergens from their diet. And I have also seen people lose 20 to 30 pounds, simply by balancing the bacterial ecosystem in their intestinal system.

One patient, a 38-year-old woman, had chronic inflammation, fluid retention, acne, fatigue, and joint pain, as well as irritable bowel syndrome with bloating and gas. She had tried every known diet, but was unable to lose weight.

What was her problem? She could not lose weight because she was inflamed. But when we had her eliminate the foods to which she was allergic and gave her some healthy bacteria to heal her gut, she lost 35 pounds in a few months – and all her other symptoms went away too.

The big debate in medicine is which comes first: inflammation or obesity. I have always believed that we become inflamed first, and gain weight second – which makes us even more inflamed, perpetuating the cycle.

Now incredible new research bears this out. Let me tell you a little more about these studies and their implications for treating obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and more. Both studies were done in Europe, where researchers are generally more open-minded.

The first study, published in December 2007, looked at two groups of children. The first group was overweight and the second was normal weight. The researchers then measured three key factors connected to inflammation.

First, they looked at high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker that shows the general level of inflammation in the body.

Then they looked for plaque or thickening in the carotid arteries (the main arteries that supply the brain) with an ultrasound.

Third, they looked at blood tests for IgG, or the delayed food allergies I talk about in The UltraSimple Diet.

What they found was startling…

The overweight kids had a 3-fold higher level of CRP and a 2.5-fold higher level of IgG antibodies to foods. This is astounding, since in most medical studies a difference of 20 to 30 percent is considered significant. And in this case, the differences were 300 and 250 percent, respectively.

The overweight children also had much thicker carotid arteries, which are a sign of early atherosclerosis and an indicator of heart disease. The study suggests that these food allergies are a CAUSE of the inflammation and obesity, not a consequence.

The authors of the study explain that damage to the gut can lead to a leaky gut, allowing food particles to be exposed to the gut’s immune system. This then triggers a system-wide immune response, leading to inflammation all over the body and producing obesity by increasing insulin resistance.

We already know that inflammation from any cause-bacteria, food, a high-sugar, high-fat diet- will produce insulin resistance, leading to higher insulin levels. And since insulin is a fat-storage hormone, you store more fat-mostly around the belly.

The authors of the study go on to say that we should consider elimination of IgG food allergens as a way of treating obesity and preventing heart disease. That means you don’t limit calories, just allergic foods that cause inflammation.

This study draws a remarkable link that has received little attention by conventional medicine.

So what exactly causes a leaky gut?

Well, the next study may help explain just that.

The researchers of that study, published in the July 2007 issue of Diabetes, performed a complex but powerful study to tease out which comes first – the chicken or the egg. What they did was quite ingenious. They took thin mice and then fed them a very high-fat diet.

High-fat diets change the bacterial flora in the gut. The toxin-producing bugs are promoted by the high-fat diet while the anti-inflammatory and protective bugs die off. (And there are over 500 species of bugs in your gut all fighting for territory.)

In fact, our highly processed, high-sugar, high-fat, low-fiber diet – plus many drugs like antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatories, acid-blockers, and hormones – completely alters the bacterial ecosystem in the gut, leading to breakdown, inflammation, and a leaky gut.

Back to the study.

The researchers found that the mice on the equivalent of an American diet produced more of a bacterial toxin called LPS, which then leaked into the body through a leaky gut.

In humans, these toxins then latch onto immune cells, stimulating them to produce a firestorm of inflammatory molecules such as TNFa, IL-6, and IL-1 (cytokines), which in turn block your metabolism and produce insulin resistance, fatty liver, and obesity.

Even more interesting, the researchers also found that even with a normal diet, injecting LPS into the guts of the mice led to the SAME problems – inflammation and obesity.

They didn’t eat a bad diet. Just injecting toxins into them made them fat. In fact, when you eat a bad diet, bad bugs flourish. Your whole gut ecosystem is upset and the outside world “leaks” in across a damaged gut lining.

The result? Not just obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but so many allergic, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases.

The researchers explain how giving antibiotics to rats and cleaning out the bad bugs can prevent diabetes. They explain that by adding soluble fiber to the diet, they can increase the population of the good bugs like Bifidobacteria and decrease the bad bugs – leading to weight loss.

But it doesn’t just happen in lab rats. I have found the same effects when my patients take the special soluble fiber I recommend in UltraMetabolism called konjac root or glucomannan. The good bacteria feed on the fiber and reduce inflammation.

And there is more to the gut story.

It seems that you are not the only one eating lunch. The bugs in your gut also feast – and they control your fat storage and the calories you absorb. So people with healthy bugs in the gut lose weight, and those with bad bugs gain weight.

Let’s review what you’ve learned. When you eat a typical American diet, you foster the growth of bad bugs in the gut. They then damage the gut lining and produce toxins that are absorbed into your system.

Because of the damage, partially digested food particles also leak into your bloodstream. Then your immune system reacts to the toxins and foods, producing a firestorm of inflammation.

That inflammation then leads to a fatty toxic liver and insulin resistance, which lead to higher levels of insulin in your body. And insulin is a fat-storage, disease- and aging- promoting hormone.

So an unhealthy gut makes us fat and sick because it makes us toxic and inflamed.

This is groundbreaking research that needs to shake up our thinking about how to help people lose weight and get healthy.

Now here are a few simple things to try if you are struggling to lose weight or feel better.

1. Try an elimination diet for 3 weeks. Cut out the most common food allergens, including gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, yeast, and peanuts. Some people are sensitive to soy, so you can also cut that out. (See The UltraSimple Diet for a step-by-step plan on how to do this.)

2. Eat a whole-foods, plant-based, high-fiber diet.

3. Take probiotics daily to boost the healthy bacteria in your gut. Look for those that contain 10 billion CFU of bifidobacteria species and lactobacillus species. Choose from reputable brands.

Within a very few short weeks – even if you do nothing else – you will see a dramatic difference that comes from cooling off inflammation by healing your gut.

Remember, if you want to get rid of that gut, you have to fix your gut.

My wife and I are going to try the UltraSimple Diet for a couple of weeks. We’ve read the book, and we believe we can find out what causes my sneezing and other minor problems by eliminating foods that many people are allergic to. We’ll see.

Here’s more incentive to eat right. A study reported in my weekly update from Life Extension Foundation:

Alicja Wolk and colleagues at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm analyzed data from 40,837 participants in the Cohort of Swedish Men, who were free of cancer upon enrollment between 1997 and 1998. Responses to dietary questionnaires completed upon enrollment were scored on the intake of 36 recommended food items, including 13 vegetables, 6 fruits, 7 cereal products, 5 types of fish and seafood, 3 low-fat dairy products, nuts, and olive oil, and 16 non-recommended food items, which included 3 red meat products, 5 processed meat products, 3 high fat dairy products, white bread, sweets, fried potatoes, mayonnaise, and ice cream. Between 1998 and 2005, 4,501 deaths were documented, including 1,394 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 759 deaths from cancer that occurred between 1998 and 2003.

Men with a high recommended food score, who consumed 28 or more recommended foods at least 1 to 3 times per month, had a 19 percent lower rate of dying from any cause over follow-up, and a 29 percent lower rate of dying from cardiovascular disease compared to men who scored low in recommended foods. When non-recommended food scores were analyzed, those with high scores, who reported consuming 5 or more items 3 times per week or more, had a 21 percent greater risk of all-cause mortality and a 27 percent greater risk of cardiovascular disease mortality compared to men with low non-recommended food scores, who consume 1 to 2 of these foods.