Heartburn, gas, reflux... your body has a message for you. Listen up!

By Andrea Bartels CNP NNCP RNT Registered Nutritional Therapist 21 Dec 2018

Heartburn, gas, reflux... your body has a message for you. Listen up!

Heartburn. Acid reflux. Gas. Bloating. Whether you’re experiencing any of these symptoms after a holiday over-indulgence or on a daily basis, it suggests your digestion could use some support!

Over the years in my nutritional counseling practice I have noticed that the older one gets, the more frequent and troublesome digestive symptoms become. That’s because as we age, our digestive capacity declines. Just think: if you’ve been eating an average of 3 meals a day, 7 days per week, 30 days per month, 12 months per year, by the time you reach 50 years of age you will have eaten over 54,600 meals! (That doesn’t even include snacks!)

The Forces Working Against You

Many factors in modern life have made good digestion more challenging to achieve:

1. Super-sized meals. Restaurants have been serving meals that could be shared by 2 to 3 people and calling them ‘personal’ portions. This places extra stress on the digestive system, demanding more digestive juices and enzymes to deal with the food.
2. Food is everywhere. Now even Canadian Tire is carrying supermarket foods. Food is a new currency, a social lubricant and an entertainment source. The more we see, the more we eat, and the higher the digestive burden.
3. Food contains fewer vitamins and minerals than it did 80 years ago. Soil exhaustion and erosion caused by intensive farming have depleted the precious nutrients used by the body to build new digestive juices and enzymes. Food processing further removes nutrients, and then food sits on trucks and shelves before we even buy it, which depletes nutrients even further. Without nutrient-rich food, we can’t build the enzymes to digest food properly.
4. Distraction. Sadly, these days few families sit down to eat together and focus on their food and each other. TV, tablets, phones, texting, driving work…these are all distractions that take our minds off what we are eating and how well we chew our food. Whatever the distraction is, it is costing you good digestion.

Why Popular Antacids are Not the Answer to Your GERD

If you suffer from heartburn, conventional antidotes can actually make matters worse:

Over-the-counter antacid formulas often consist of bismuth and aluminum---yet neither one is a required mineral for health; rather, they are actually toxic elements that don’t belong in our bodies. Meanwhile, those that consist of calcium carbonate (such as TUMS), can have unfavourable side effects like intestinal bloating, gas or constipation.

Use of prescription acid-reducers known as proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) have been shown to negatively affect protein synthesis (for example, strong nails, hair and bones) as well as compromising mineral absorption needed for a multitude of metabolic functions. Add to this the increased risk of bacterial infection of the GI tract when stomach pH becomes too high to kill invading microbes, and the risks make these drugs a questionable choice.

Preventing Over-acidity Without Dangerous Side Effects

Consider this: In order for proper digestion to take place, the stomach must release a proper amount of acid. However, the rest of your body tissues get injured by acids that result from eating processed foods, causing inflammation. Sugar, fried foods, refined flour products are just some of the foods that use up the body’s acid-neutralizers. Alkaline minerals such as those stored in the bones must be dumped into the blood to buffer the excess acids that would otherwise poison us. Now there isn’t enough to protect your stomach from over-acidity and the result is heartburn or acid reflux.

Using an acid-buffering formula that consists of alkaline essential electrolyte nutrients such as sodium and potassium in well-tolerated forms can help when taken preventatively on a daily basis. AlkaPure is a formula consisting of several alkalizing mineral compounds with the goal of rebalancing your pH so that digestion can occur without interference while the rest of the body is protected from hyper-acidity. With medical supervision, it can even be used to reduce dependence upon PPI drugs.