One of the most common conditions we see in people over 40 is gut pain…  reflux, heartburn and acid problems are huge.  Unfortunately it means that many of them are taking drugs which settle down the reflux or heartburn, but also have many unfortunate ’side effects’.  Not side effects in the usual sense of the word, but consequences of long-term health.

• Somac, nexium & losec (& other similar meds) stop the acid which causes reflux, heartburn & indigestion.  It also stops the ‘good acid’ released from the parietal cells which help to digest proteins.
• This means that long term our body has a hard time building muscle mass.  This leads to tiredness and lethargy since our thyroid hormones are converted in the muscle mass and our muscle cells give us the largest amount of energy of any cells in our body.  If we have low muscle mass, we struggle getting plenty of energy.
• It takes some time to get the gut working well.  There are three stages to the process of getting the gut working well:

1. symptomatic relief: settle the acid reflux and indigestion with supplements that ‘quench’ the acid without shutting down the parietal cells long term.
2. heal the gut lining: most of the time with acid reflux and indigestion there is a ‘leaky gut’ or tiny ulcerations even if the ‘endoscopy’ says everything is okay.  This means that if we give supplements that help to digest proteins it increases ‘good acid’ which will cause pain, so we need to heal the gut lining BEFORE giving supplements to help the actual digestion; and
3. get the digestion working properly. We use enzymes and supplements which help the digestion of the gut, getting the parietal cells working correctly and starting the process of having the food we eat broken down again.

By the time we have indigestion, reflux & heartburn our gut hasn’t been working for quite some time.  It doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes some time to correct.  Doctors don’t mention to us that there is ‘good acid’ and ‘bad acid’. Many practitioners don’t see the link, and therefore don’t get good results with gut issues.

Take time to get your gut right.  It takes time, but it’s worth it!  Gut issues cause chronic disease:  cancer; diabetes; depression; food sensitivities; immune problems; allergies and chronic pain.

Madonna Guy ND
New Leaf Natural Therapies

Tags: acidity, allergies, cancer, chronic pain issues, diabetes, food sensitivity testing, immune balancing, Madonna Guy ND, New Leaf Natural Therapies, sensitivities

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Digestion, Pain, Sensitivities & Intolerances, Working with Over 50's, allergies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.