Greetings!
Eric Bakker.
Thanks for coming back to me.
I'm a naturopath.
Got a question from a subscriber here who wants to know if she's got hypochlorhydria,
or low stomach acid.
She wants to know some of the signs and symptoms of that.
So, let's talk a bit about the stomach function and about hypochlorhydria.
I learned a lot on a trip I made to the States back in 2003 when I went to hear Dr. Alan
Gaby speaking, very interesting, Jonathan Wright and Alan Gaby in Seattle.
I'd been practicing already for many, many years prior to that, but that 2003 trip really
made me understand a lot more about stomach function.
Dr. Wright, Jonathan Wright, is long retired now, I believe.
Incredible doctor, one of the most important influences for many, many functional medicine
doctors in America and around the world, but Dr. Wright was a very big believer, going
back probably as far as the '70s, that people with stomach problems, particularly low acid
production stomach were exhibiting signs of over-acidity.
So, common theme, for example, to experience when you've got hypo, which means you're low,
chlorhydria, you know, stomach acid is heartburn.
Many doctors never believed this until they actually devised a special capsule, which
could be swallowed, to determine stomach acid viability, and they did find that.
They discovered that many people with heartburn in fact had a low-acid stomach, not over-acid
stomach.
So, many people watching this video, for example, who are taking an acid blocker or a PPI drug,
proton pump inhibitor drug, there are many of them on the market, like Nexium for example,
it's a billion-dollar drug, many people take these stupid drugs believing they've got too
much acid in their stomach, where in fact, they haven't got enough, so then when they
take these drugs, they're in fact lowing their acid production even more, which creates huge
fatigue problems, and headaches, and all sorts of digestive problems, so, not a good idea.
I'm not a fan at all of drugs for digestive system action.
I think it's stupid.
To me, it's like and American Express credit card, you know, with twenty-something percent
interest, or if you go to these loan sharks and you borrow a hundred bucks to pay a power
bill or something like that.
To me, that's stupid as well.
Dumb.
Or borrowing money to pay loans.
It's just crazy.
To me, that's what these drugs are like, you know?
You're just basically buying time, and you're creating serious underlying disfunction, so
it's not a good idea taking drugs for the GI tract 'cause in most cases they can be
entirely fixed up.
Anyway, let's look at the five key things, all right?
If we're going to look at the five key signs and symptoms of [inaudible 00:02:56], the
first one's bloating and belching, so air coming up, burping, bloating.
If your stomach's not functioning properly and you're eating food, it's not going to
break that food down properly, so that food's going to sit there for quite a while, and
it's going to cause a lot of gas and bloating in the upper digestive system particularly
when it tries to move down to the small intestine because you need a very good-functioning stomach
to create an excellent pancreatic enzyme output.
So, the pancreas is a gland that sits here in the middle of the body, and its aim, basically,
is to help to produce more enzymes to help to really improve the breakdown of the food,
and it relies on a very nice acid mixture coming from above to convert its enzymes from
an inactive to an active form.
I've discussed this in other videos.
So, if the stomach has got the pH a little bit too high, not low enough, ie.
it's not acid enough, it's going to create a problem at the pancreas, and this is where
indigestion comes in, and discomfort, in the middle of the body, and also sometimes feeling
a little bit like crappy here.
So, the stomach is a little bit higher up.
Now, people often get confused, and they say, "My stomach doesn't feel good.
My stomach ..." Well, unless you come from another planet, or are an android or one of
these AI creatures, your stomach usually doesn't sit down here.
Your stomach sits up a bit higher up, about here.
Okay?
In fact, many people with stomach problems think they've got a heart attack.
Many guys end up in the emergency room with indigestion thinking they're having a heart
attack 'cause it's in a similar region.
So, if the stomach's pH is not right, indigestion occurs very easily, very easily, particularly
after a meal.
Second one is heartburn.
So, heartburn very much occurs with low-acid stomach.
In fact, it's a red flag for this condition.
Eating a high-protein food, for example, or a high-fat food going into the stomach with
low acid can create major pain and problem, major heartburn for people.
We're going to talk in a minute after, at the end of the video, on a couple of different
tips and tricks you can do to find out if you've got the right acidity in the gut.
The third one is indigestion.
All right?
Indigestion.
So, indigestion can be a terrible symptom.
You could be sitting there and have a lot of pain.
Indigestion can come anywhere from here right down to lower down, as it travels through
the small intestine, it's not broken down properly.
It can sit there like a lump.
And, of course, people with indigestion often get gas.
It's a little bit like a backfire in a car.
If the combustion's not good, and then of course you're going to get a backfire through
the tailpipe, which is like, [inaudible 00:05:41], farting, or producing gas, okay?
So, indigestion comes often and is related with bloating and belching, so many people
with bloating end up with indigestion.
Those two symptoms go together.
The fourth one is undigested food particles in the stool.
So, have a good look at the stool regularly to make sure that you are digesting food properly
and you're excreting waste, you're not excreting undigested food.
That could mean you're not chewing food properly, and poor chewing leads to poor pooing, right?
Dr. Gaby, at the conference in 2003 had a saying, "Small stools; big big hospitals.
Big stools; small hospitals."
Think about it.
So, the fifth one ... And of course, undigested food, you know, number four, that comes from
poor acid, so you're not breaking food down properly, so make sure you chew very well
'cause that will significantly help, even with the low-pH stomach or high-pH stomach,
it will help break that food down further and more easily in the gut.
Eating food while being on technology is not a great idea.
So, the fifth one is the flow-on effect of all of these problems: fatigue, tiredness.
If the engine's not working properly, and you can't get gas properly in the engine and
have good combustion, you're not going to get power to the wheel, so you're going to
have a car that misfires, that stalls, that lacks power 'til it gets tuned up.
In your case, tuning up isn't grabbing all the components, throwing it out, and putting
a new spark plug in.
In your case, it's going to understand that we need, maybe, some digestive enzymes for
a while, we need to chew food properly, we need to select the right foods, we need to
eat in low-stress environments.
These things are all going to significantly help to stop the fatigue as a flow-on effect.
Candida is often a consequence of hypochlorhydria or poor-functioning stomach.
Candida can thrive easily in a stomach that's not functioning properly.
It can be taken in through food.
It can be there already in the GI tract and flourish when the gut becomes dysfunctional.
Same with bacteria, same with parasites.
Having a very powerful acid stomach with almost ensure that if a parasite gets in there, it's
going to die before it has a chance to get further down.
Rectal itching is another symptom I see with some people.
So, we talked about the two methods for stomach, so one thing you could do is get a good teaspoon,
a heaped teaspoon, of baking soda or bicarbonate of soda, and put that in eight ounces of water,
you know, 250 [mils 00:08:20] or or eight ounces.
Give it a stir, and then drink that.
Then you should notice ... It's like having soda.
You should notice a big burp not long after you've had that 'cause that's the acid being
neutralized by the bicarbonate of soda, exactly what the pancreas will do when it squirts
bicarbonate of soda into the small bowel, all right?
You will notice sometimes, healthy people who have a meal, chew it, swallow it, and
not long after, it could be 10, 20, 30 minutes after, they can have a couple of burps here
or there, and that's that bicarbonate of the pancreas neutralizing stomach acid.
It's not uncommon.
Healthy people with have that quite often.
So, you will have a burp with bicarbonate not very soon after you've swallowed that.
That's a healthy gut.
If you don't, and then you're burping with bicarb, that could be a big problem, could
be lack of stomach acid.
The other one you can do is to take a digestive enzyme, particularly a very powerful Betaine
pepsin supplement, there are many you can get from different companies, and take a capsule,
and then with each succeeding meal, increase by one capsule, one capsule.
So, for example, for breakfast this morning I could take one capsule, for lunch today
I could take two, for dinner I could take three, following morning for breakfast four.
I keep stacking it up until I notice a bit of heartburn, or reflux, or pain behind the
sternum, or over-acidity symptom.
That means I've reached my threshold.
Now, a healthy guy like me, I can't take any more, usually, than two Betaine pepsin or
I feel sick.
I've seen some people take 30 to 40 capsules per meal.
I'm not joking.
Especially very elderly people.
So, this is what we call the tummy tolerance method of determining stomach acid.
If you forgot that, go back on this video and watch what I said here about stacking
that up, so that's a good test for you to determine what your level of stomach acid
is.
So, you've got the bicarb or baking soda test, and you've got the tummy tolerance test.
Think about it.
And the last thing I'll leave you with is, check out CanXida Restore.
I think I might have a container here.
It's in the green bottle.
This is a digestive enzyme and a probiotic combination.
The CanXida Restore works quite well for hypochlorhydria.
You just take one capsule with each meal, usually for a couple of months, and chew food
properly, and make the correct selections, and that will go a long way towards helping
you recover from hypochlorhydria or underactive stomach.
Thanks for tuning in to this video.
I hope that it was educational, and you got some information from it.
Thanks very much.