Hi! This is Doctor George Best of Best Health & Wellness in San Antonio, Texas. And on this video, I am going to be discussing the common problem of poor digestion and I know this is a common problem because the medications are commonly prescribed for things such as Nexium Prilosec and that kind of stuff. They are among the most popular selling medications in the world, particularly in United States and there is a couple of different things that are very common causes for poor digestion and it isn't the deficiency of Nexium or Prilosec.
The first problem that is probably the most common is inadequate enzymes in the stomach and the GI tract, and this is primarily a problem that is caused by just poor diet choices. You can get a lot of enzymes in your system just from eating fresh fruits and vegetables, and there's just quite -- a lack of those things in your diet, creates a problem where you don't have enough enzyme production on your own to digest your food properly.
So for a lot of people, a simple fix for this is to supplement with enzymes and something, I use in my practice and we can get very good results in the vast majority cases, just supplementing the digestive enzymes.
The other problem is that a lot of people don't produce enough acid to properly digest their food. Now wait a minute, digesting, didn't produce enough, oh, what you are talking about, doctor I've got acid in digestion and I got acid out of the vazoo. Yeah, that's true but you've the wrong kind of acid. What you have is the acid putrefaction that's being produced by bacteria in the gut, and gas and acid production from improperly digested food because you don't have enough acid to digest your food properly in the first place.
The body is designed to digest using hydrochloric acid and at very high concentration of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. That's supposed to be there. Problem is that for a lot of people, they don't produce enough of acid. Again, primarily through poor lifestyle choices, poor diet habits, and so they aren't producing enough acid. They start creating a situation where their food does not digest properly and because their food is not digesting properly, they produce a lot of gas and secondary acid formation so the stomach and the upper intestines are not really design to handle.
The gas production produces pressure which can drive stomach products up into the esophagus and create heart burn. The acid blocking medication serve, they are commonly prescribed, usually help symptoms for a while. The problem is that when you use these things, you further cut down on your acid production in the stomach, you further worsen your natural digestive processes and so typically you start to lose your effect after you have been on them for a while.
The symptoms start to come back because your digestion just gets worse and worse and worse and so you can only take so much of medication and they start to lose effect and people wind up staying on this medications basically for a while because they know, oh, my god, if I am that on the medication, what am I going to do like if I get off of it.
Reasonable thought process there, but unfortunately it's counter productive. So for those people who are low on acid, I am going to tell you how to find that out in just a minute. Then you need to also supplement, in addition to enzymes usually, with a hydrochloric type of supplement and the safest means you just want to use this something called betaine hydrochloride or betaine HCL and several supplement manufacturers make the stuff. It's cheap and it works very well.
You got to be a little careful with how much you take and balance out your dosage but with using the appropriate amount, you’ll usually get much better digestion. It eliminates the acid in digestion, so it's kind of ironic you are taking acid to get rid of your acid in digestion, but it works.
So how do you know if you actually have shortage of stomach acid? Well, if you get a conventional medical blood test which is -- the blood chemistry screen that's typically done; it goes under different names; there is the one that they usually do that has 24, 26 different items on it and things like enzymes and things of that nature.
One of those items on that test is your chloride ions, being indicated as Cl- usually on the test. If you have decreased or way at the lower end of the normal range on the Cl- ions and that's usually an indication that you are not producing enough particular acid in the stomach. So if you start supplementing and if you are on low end of normal, you would just give us a lower amount of supplement. If you really, really decreased on the Chloride ion, then you would want to increase the dosage, and you can work with somebody who is experienced in using this type of stuff to get more specific recommendations based on what your findings are.
So those two measures taking enzymes and in some cases taking hydrochloric acid supplement, betaine hydrochloride you can greatly improve your digestion which will not only decrease your problems with acid indigestion, heartburn, gastroesophageal reflux and those types of things, but in a lot of cases it would also improve your energy levels and just the way you feel because you're digesting your food better, you are going to get more use from your food, you are going to get more energy and nutrients effects from your food, and the other problem that happens for this poor digestion is you won't have the immune system reacting to, for a digested food entering either the blood stream or entering the colon.
So a lot of advantages to making sure that you have your digestion. So that covers today's video, thank you for watching and I'll look forward to seeing you on another video or you can visit my blog for additional information at www.besthealthandwellnessinfo.com. Thanks again for watching.
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