As you learned in my last article, it is my belief that people can screw up most anything and that healthcare is BIG business. Meaning that your good health is bad for business. Last month I wrote about the importance of drinking a lot of water. It would make a lot of sense to talk about food this month. Except that you can drink the Nectar of the Gods, but if you can’t digest it, it won’t do you any good. So the topic for this month is your digestion.

Lots of people have digestion problems. So what do we take? If you answered Antacids, you are wrong, Wrong, WRONG! In the words of the dear Paul Harvey, here is the rest of the story:

Everyone has inactive digestive enzymes that hang around in the stomach (enzymes chemically break food down). When you start to even smell food and know a meal is on the horizon, your stomach starts to release very strong acid. Acid is your friend. The acids will not only break foods down but they will also activate the digestive enzymes.

You mechanically start the breakdown of food by chewing it, but that chewed up mess has to be broken down chemically into very small particles so it can cross the lining of the small intestine. If the food in your stomach is not broken down it’s because there isn’t enough acid. When that happens, the food just sits there. And rots. It is the rotting food in your stomach that gives you indigestion. The antacid helps temporarily because it decreases the sulfuric acid produced by the rotting food. But you need hydrochloric acid to keep the food from rotting in the first place. Sulfuric acid is bad for you. Hydrochloric acid is good!

So why don’t you have enough acid? Well that tends to be due to a B vitamin deficiency combined with a lack of zinc. This is also where we get into another vicious problem. The Standard American Diet, AKA S.A.D., tends to be depleted of real natural vitamins.  The Big Business food manufacturers figured out a long time ago that if their food had any significant nutritional value, mold, bugs etc. would spoil it. They (Big Business, Big Brother, Big Whatever) decided to process the bejeebers out of food-like substances so that it no longer had any of that pesky nutrition. Since we all like to see the nutritional content say something on the side to the package, they “enrich” the product (just hurts too much to call it food) with synthetic vitamins that nothing can use. This way the shelf life is for eternity. Good business. Don’t they just make God proud?

You take B vitamins and zinc and you still have indigestion? Well, if you can’t digest it, it isn’t doing you any good (remember the Nectar of the Gods part?). Also, many, if not most, of the vitamins you buy are just not worth the money you pay for them. I tell my patients, “If it has a commercial, don’t buy it.” Instead of putting their money into producing quality foods, they spend an enormous amount on advertising mediocrity.

Zinc is another problem. You see, it takes zinc to absorb zinc. So if you have a zinc deficiency you have to find a VERY absorbable liquid form. Many alternative doctors will give you the zinc taste test. Very simply, you put liquid zinc in your mouth and hold it there for a minute. If it tastes like water, you need lots of zinc. If it tastes like a skunk’s behind you are doing good. It is amazing how many people that have been everywhere and done everything to improve their stomach problems and get better just by taking liquid zinc and quality B vitamins.

Have you had this problem for really long time? You may need to start taking hydrochloric acid. Most older folk need to take hydrochloric acid anyway because you start to produce less acid as you grow older. That is why most digestive problems develop as you get older. But this is not limited to older folk, so listen up! Here is how it works. Get some hydrochloric acid tablets and take one with a meal, take two with the next meal, take three with the next meal, etc. At some point in the process, you are going to get an upset stomach. That means you just took one pill more then you needed. If 5 gave you a problem take 4 with each meal. After a while, you may start to develop your own stomach acid and 4 pills will be too much. Start taking 3 pills until that becomes a problem, and so on, etc. The goal is for your body to be doing what it was designed by the good Lord to do, work properly! By the way, taking something that stops the production of acid while you are trying to get your body to produce acid is stupid. So figure out what all those pills are for and get your doctor to take you off some if they are doing that. Also, if you still have an occasional indigestion problem, and we all do especially around the holidays, just drink a little baking soda and water.

What if this does not work? Well, if you take hydrochloric acid and it really upsets your belly, you may have gastritis and/or an ulcer. Don’t panic. Unless it is bleeding to the point that you are anemic, it can be healed at home. The old time doctors talked about Vitamin U. U stands for ulcer. It is found in cabbage juice. Juice one-fourth a cabbage four times a day. Drink it fast. Cabbage juice will oxidize quickly and taste like you are sucking down a porcupine. If this is too inconvenient, many alternative doctors can sell you something with Vitamin U instead. My office uses Gastrazyme from Biotics Research. Another problem that will lead to stomach problems is a deficiency of L-Glutamine. Regardless, you have got to get that stomach fixed so it can resume being acid again.

Do you have a history of gall bladder problems? The function of the gall bladder is to store bile produced by the liver. Bile works on fats so you can bring them into your body. Now don’t freak out about fats. They are essential to your survival, you just eat the wrong ones! The gall bladder is located after the stomach in the digestive chain of events and it gets stimulated by acid to dump bile into the chewed up partially digested meal. If you do not have enough acid in your stomach as God intended, your gall bladder will not release bile. Without bile, you don’t absorb fat (which leads to problems with your nervous system), your cholesterol goes up (because releasing bile is the ONLY way your body has to get rid of cholesterol) and bile that sits around doing nothing turns to stone! By the way, that stone thing usually does not require surgery. We’ll talk later.

How about Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel? Gee, if you put something in your mouth and it rots in your stomach and you force it through the tube of your digestive system do you think it might be a problem when it reaches the end of the line? You bet’cha. Most lower bowel problems solve themselves when the upper digestion is corrected. In the meantime, start taking acidophilus, chlorophyll, and aloe vera.

If this were rocket science, we would not be here. We just keep screwing things up.