This Common OTC can Wreck Your Health

How many people have taken the purple pill or something similar for acid reflux? This antacid medication (proton pump inhibitors) are commonly prescribed medications to suppress the symptoms of indigestion.Unfortunately, these and other drugs only mask the symptoms but never address the real issue and can cause serious long term health issues.

I had one person email and tell me she had to go get iron transfusions because she was on proton pump inhibitors for years and ended up severely anemic.It is impossible to have good health when you suppress the acid in your stomach. The body must adequate stomach acids to break down proteins into amino acid to make a healthy cell. When you add acid inhibiting medications you are jeopardizing your health.

But what can I do to Address the acid reflux Naturally?

I am going to explain why it is unwise to use these medications. If you deal with heart burn or acid reflux make sure you read this previous post on how to deal with access acid of the stomach

Your entire digestive tract, from beginning to end, is supposed to be a fine-tuned production line that carefully digests and absorbs the food you eat. Any time you have a digestive symptom of any kind, you want to fix it—not suppress the symptom with a drug. By masking a problem, another problem is likely to emerge, which is now proven to be the case with the overly-utilized proton pump inhibitor medications. When you induce an imbalance in the small intestine, bacterial imbalance and digestive lining injury with a drug is not only a problem to the health of your digestive tract, but it also sets the stage for far more dangerous diseases of aging. This is not a trivial issue.

While researchers showed that friendly flora was able to prevent the damage, this animal study is of short duration. That means that if you have to use these medications for some reason for a short term period of time or occasional use, you should take acidophilus like Optiflora with them and it may reduce their adverse side effects. There is no guarantee such a solution would work over the long haul, as your digestive tract can only be “punched in the nose” so often before it breaks.

If you are stuck in the predicament of using these types of drugs you should monitor your blood at least every six months to check for flagrant damage. Your hemoglobin, red blood cell count, and hematocrit should be in the middle of the normal range. If they are tending to be low in the normal range or out of range on the low side then there exists a major problem. Hematocrit is a score representing pressurization of your circulatory system, similar to the idea of an inflated balloon. If your small intestine becomes too injured then your hematocrit score will drop, like someone letting air out of your balloon. Your body will tend to increase your blood pressure in an attempt to compensate, setting into motion all sorts of problems.

Monitoring these scores can help you tell if you have really crossed the line, but good scores do not mean that intestinal damage is not occurring. Dealing with  indigestion is sometimes difficult to improve, especially if structural damage has occurred from an accident or injury. Nevertheless, you have many natural options that can help reduce pain and improve digestion, helping you to need less dangerous medication. Using drugs on a long-term basis for symptom management is a road full of potholes.

Drugs should only be used for a short term issue. You must fix the systems that are causing the issues of inadequate stomach and or why you having the heart burn which can usually be fixed with a few lifestyle changes and a few nutritional supplements that I mention is this post.

If you find yourself with inadequate acid asides from being on proton pump inhibitors you need these raw material to make stomach acid is B1 ( B best taken in an whole complex), iodine, zinc, & salt. Until you get your body working correctly you might add betaine hcl supplement.