Gastric acid

Omeprazole is the generic name for the biggest one.

And what happens when you do that? Well, stomach acid is not a design flaw.

It is there for multiple reasons.

We want stomach acid.

It's essential to have stomach acid because without it, we don't break down protein.

You need it to absorb minerals like calcium and magnesium and iron, and that's critical for, of course, bone health and blood health and energy and all of these types of things.

It's critical for the absorption of B12.

And you need it as a frontline defense against the stuff we just talked about, which is food poisoning, because stomach acid is also known as the acid barrier.

So let's actually talk about these stations, station by station, line by line, so you can see where things might be potentially going wrong for you.

Okay, so we have stomach acid, station one.

Actually, no, rewind.

We have the first station that is so important and so overlooked.

And this is chemical digestion.

This is kind of the star player.

And this is our stomach acid.

Stomach acid, it breaks down protein into smaller pieces.

And there's a big role of the gut microbiome.

So all of that... slurry or mix that comes in from your stomach into your microbiome in your small intestine large intestine all the way on down healthy or not healthy right once we you know the content of that and once it gets in there the biochemical makeup basically will trigger a lot of other events that's why you need stomach acid which was in one of those podcasts recently as well those different things the acidity the different enzymes that are in there a lot of this stuff is going to contribute to the microbiome balance and vice versa.

So typically, if you're having gallbladder problems, there's oftentimes some stones.

So how do those form? So this is basically when the bile composition becomes imbalanced.

Then you've got organs including your liver, gallbladder, and pancreas that contribute to things like bile production and digestive enzymes that we need to break down all the different elements of our food.

You've got stomach acid, you've got the intestinal lining, you've got mucus that needs to be on the m- intestinal lining.

You've got an enormous amount of immune activity going on within the gastrointestinal tract itself.

You've got nerves there communicating backwards and forwards with your brain.

So your stomach isn't simply holding, uh, like a ho-- it's not just a holding tank f- for when your food goes into it when we eat.

It's a very deliberately acidic environment.

So stomach acid, also known as hydrochloric acid, or you may have seen it referred to as HCl, hydrochloric acid, HCl, supplements, for example.

It has several really important jobs.

Mechanism.

And we're going to definitely dive into the stomach acid piece.

That's actually something that's a really big part of my practice.

And we'll get there, especially as we talk about the medications that are blocking stomach acid.

But I think this happens a lot in the natural healing space.

And I think there's this place where the natural healing space and the new age space intersect.

And when everything becomes too acidic, yes, that's a problem.

When everything becomes too alkaline, that's also a problem.

I wanna take the concepts that sound incredibly complicated on paper and break them down into simple, universal language.

So today, I'm diving into a topic that sounds straightforward but is actually an absolute marvel of everyday chemistry, and that's stomach acid.

And I'm going to look at what it actually is at an atomic level, how your body manages to produce stomach acid without destroying its own stomach, and exactly why certain modern drugs are designed to switch that system off.

Now, that would be something like a proton pump inhibitor.

Now to understand stomach acid, we have to start with a definition that trips a lot of people up in chemistry class.

If you open a textbook, it will tell you that an acid is a substance that donates a proton.

At this point, we also need to understand what an atom is.

So an atom tends to be the nucleus which has protons and neutrons and electrons whizzing around.

Is, you have to be looking at, well, what's going on in your gut? And for our acne sufferers, there is almost always some type of digestive, uh, dysfunction.

So whether they have low stomach acid, where they don't have enough, uh, stomach acid to be breaking their food down.

So if that's happening, you can be eating the best diet in the world, but if you're not absorbing your nutrients, then-

Mm-hmm

It is going to be leading to symptoms like bloat, constipation, diarrhea.

Mm-hmm.

And that's just from having low stomach acid.

Right.