Speaker 1: (00:00)
What's going on, everybody, Doctor Chad Woolner and Dr Buddy Alan. And this is episode 10 of the health Fundamentals podcast. And on today's episode we're going to be talking about the surprising truth behind acid reflux. So let's get started.

Speaker 2: (00:14)
You're listening to the health fundamentals podcast. I'm Dr Chad Woolner and I'm Dr Buddy Alan. And this show was about giving you the simple but powerful cutting edge tools you need to change your health and your life. So sit back and enjoy the show as we show you the path to your best life down to a science.

Speaker 1: (00:33)
So happy Friday everybody. Hope you guys are having a great day and hope you guys have totally exciting plans for the weekend. Um, we wanted to kind of dive in deep on a subject that's really important in that is acid reflux. This is a really common problem. A lot of people struggle with this. Uh, when it comes to acid reflux, how would we describe it to people if people, uh, I think most people know if they struggle with this. People do. And this is kind of coming off the heels of our last episode where we talked about, um, our gut health and depression and basically how all of that kind of comes together. And acid reflux or heartburn if you will, is really another one of those things. It's a symptom. It's a symptom of something greater. All right, so I'm going to go through a whole list of different things or different, uh, different ways.

Speaker 1: (01:23)
Acid reflux or heartburn manifests itself. And I want you to just listen to see if any of these ring true to you. Because if it does, if this is something that you're, you're struggling with on a, on the regular basis or your pop and Tom's on a regular basis, again, it's an underlying symptom of a greater issue. And so that's kind of what we want to tackle here. So obviously heartburn and you know, have you ever have a bitter taste in your mouth? I'm waking up in the middle of the night. Like you're choking. All right, a dry mouth. Um, you have maybe a really bad breath regurgitation, so you kind of burp up that acid, you know, you get that, uh, you burp and it's kind of burns in the same time. Um, nausea. You could have bloody vomiting, um, lots of belching or gaseous. You know, if you're getting tons every time you eat your bourbon and, um, you know, you're getting all of that, you have hiccups that are really difficult to stop.

Speaker 1: (02:16)
Um, hiccups are actually spasms of your diaphragm. And so if there's something irritating that, um, it can create those, you just, that, those nasty bouts of hiccups, um, you could have unexpected weight loss. I'm sure most people wouldn't mind that, that were, that are suffering from it would probably be not a bad symptom, but that's going to be more rare. Wale. And I think typically that's going to be also associated with some other serious problems. Absolutely. To be full. And then there's, um, increased discomfort when you're bending over or lying down. You know, you just get that burn hoarseness in your throat when you wake up. And then I'll honestly, uh, just the, the chronic throat irritation, um, how would even say, if you didn't mention it, maybe you did, but even just that deep boring chest pain. Yes. I think most people when they talk about, that's what they recognize.

Speaker 1: (03:00)
It's that kind of just deep nagging. You can't really pinpoint it. Uh, achy chest pain that's there. And then the longterm danger of that is you can get something that's called, and you know, this was kind of a, a scientific term, Barrett's Esophagus, which is basically the cells in your, in your esophagus start transitioning and become precancerous and then ultimately they can become cancerous. So obviously not something that we want to have to ever deal with. So let's talk about this. Fit for pronic longterm irritation and or inflammation is never a good thing in the body and it never turns into anything good. Um, that, that's one of the big problems. Uh, you know, that, that chronically untreated inflammatory problems, uh, very frequently wind up turning cancerous. Um, that's a, that's a really, really big problem. So, um, so in order for us to kind of understand this topic and kind of talk about the surprising truth behind it, um, the approach to managing, um, acid reflux, or at least the, the, the current paradigm, the way that we oftentimes do it is counterproductive.

Speaker 1: (04:10)
You know, uh, most of the approaches, whether the, whether they be prescription or over the counter approaches all have the same strategy in mind. And it would, it would appear like it would make sense. Um, but the problem when we kind of understand and unpack the, the whole real cause behind acid reflux, you'll see just how detrimental and harmful these things are and how counterproductive they are at solving the problem. Right? So most of the approaches are all designed to do the same thing, and that is do what? Right. Reduce acid, right? That, okay, acid reflux does, the problem is acid. Right? Um, so what we want to do is we want to neutralize that acid with some sort of a, a, a, a buffering agent, like a atomic tone or a, or some sort of a Rolaids. Or are there are rolling still or, or, uh, what's the other one?

Speaker 1: (04:59)
The pop pop fizz is the outgoing Elser Alka Seltzer, you know, all these different, uh, even the, uh, the good old pink bottle of Pepto bismal Dobyns now all those things. And then obviously the prescriptions. And then sometimes you have things that are a various forms of prescription drugs. One of them is a, what we call a proton pump inhibitor, which is ultimately designed to try and prevent the source of production of the acid to try and minimize the acid production, uh, in the, in the stomach. And so again, it would seem at first glance, like those would be very logical, uh, approaches to managing a acid reflux. Unfortunately, when you recognize kind of what's driving the acid reflux in the first place, you're going to, it's, it's one of those things where it's like, for those watching, it's the, it's the proverbial smack on the head, forehead smack.

Speaker 1: (05:47)
Like, Dang it. You know, why, why are we doing that? Right? So, so in order for us to kind of explain this, we have to kind of step back a couple of steps. Let's start with the, the, the, um, digestive process in the first place, right? So we start eating food. We have our esophagus into our mouth, and then it leads to our esophagus down the throat and down at the Esophagus, right where the esophagus meets the stomach, there is a muscle that that creates a contraction or a or a, uh, or a closure there called the pyloric sphincter and is basically a muscle that opens and closes, right? A sphincter is this muscle that separates or closes off the stomach from the Esophagus, right? And so the question that we have to ask is, number one, what is it that causes the pyloric sphincter to open the first place?

Speaker 1: (06:36)
And I think most people could intuitively figure this out, but it's the, it's, it's a pressure sensor, right? The minute that it senses pressure or weight upon it, right? So you're eating the food, it goes down the esophagus and then it, and then it, it rests there on that pyloric sphincter. Once it senses that pressure, it opens, right and so once it opens, the food drops down into the stomach. Now for the million dollar question, what is it that causes the pyloric sphincter to close? That's the important question. What is it? It is the acid. It's the acid is since his acid. That is what creates the closure. Now what is the problem? If there is too little acid in the stomach, it's not going to close very tightly. It doesn't close tight. It doesn't close efficiently or effectively and then we start getting that stomach acid seeking seeping upward.

Speaker 1: (07:28)
That regurgitation of the stomach acid, there is stomach acid there, but it's not a sufficient amount of stomach acid to create a healthy, strong tight muscle closure. That is the problem. That's kind of the hidden in plain sight problem or the surprising problem or the surprising truth behind acid reflux is that it's a problem with dwindling stomach acid and or you could even go so far as to say. Also additionally to that digestive enzymes a with poor diet, this shouldn't come as any sort of a surprise or shock. A poor diet can negatively influence stomach acid levels as an it lowers them. Okay. And so then on top of that, you have just the fact that as we get older with aging, stomach acid production also diminishes or decreases. And so then on top of that, you compound that with the fact that now we're introducing all sorts of either over the counter or prescription drugs to also lower stomach acid production.

Speaker 1: (08:27)
Then all of a sudden it's just compounding that problem again. Now you have a chronic issue that's just, it's more than it seems to be more and more frequent. Exactly, exactly. And so it's just, it's, it's kind of this perpetual cycle that low stomach acid leads to buy uloric sphincter that doesn't sufficiently shut it, doesn't sufficiently shut, creates more irritation and inflammation with more irritation. Inflammation. We take more, uh, Tom's, we take more Alka Seltzer, we take more whatever it is that we take to try and push that further. And you can just see the insanity of this whole process, this cascades. So, um, you know, what we don't want to say is it certainly by no means a magic pill or a magic bullet, but one of the first things that you can do to kind of begin the process that the catalyst, so to speak, of helping in this process is start actually believe it or not, introducing acid into your diet, right in the form of, there's a supplement that you can get online.

Speaker 1: (09:22)
Go to amazon.com and I'm sure you can get it for just a couple bucks called Betaine hydrochloride, and you start supplementing with that. And what that's going to do is the actual opposite thing. So I would say also logically in inherently, you're going to want to taper off the tums or the whatever it is that you're using to lower the acid start introducing Betaine hydrochloride. I would simultaneously introduced that, introduce into that as well. Um, uh, diet, digestive enzymes with your meals, right? Digestive enzymes help break down the food. And so that's gonna, it's gonna, uh, take a little bit of the burden and the load off of the stomach in the first place because you're going to be assisting with the Betaine hydrochloride as well as the digestive enzymes to help, uh, assist in breaking your food down. The food is going to break down more.

Speaker 1: (10:07)
And there's a whole nother topic we could get into in terms of digestive issues. There is that what happens when your food doesn't get effectively digested properly in the stomach is that what happens is it creates a host of other problems and that's how that to belching and you know, where you're always burping and you have the, basically you create a ton of gas, right? Well and not only pressure, not only that, I'm talking even longer term. Chronic is that if you're, if you're, uh, if your food is not getting properly digested, um, what that can lead to is food allergies and food sensitivities because what happens is, uh, they'll, they'll start to create inflammation in the gut and inflammation can lead to leaky gut, what they call leaky gut, where the food starts to kind of break through that wall. And all of a sudden, if these particles are larger than they should be, meaning it hasn't been broken down to its most simple form, uh, the body will wreck, begin to recognize it as foreign and all of a sudden that's when you start creating a lot of these, uh, food allergies and sensitivities and reactions and things like that.

Speaker 1: (11:11)
That's a whole nother subject. But, uh, the idea being is that we want to increase stomach acid through this supplementation, number one. But then obviously, uh, the idea is this, this isn't licensed to continue to eat the same crappy diet and just kind of be popping these things. But instead rather saying, okay, step number one, start introducing the supplementation to assist. Step number two, clean your diet up. Start introducing a lot more kind of, uh, anti inflammatory foods. You know, like the same things we've talked about in the past. A healthy fats. What else would you recommend? A healthy fiber. I eat vegetables, fruits, um, leaner, healthier proteins. Yup. Um, all of those are going to, again, Mo, this is a symptom. Um, chronic heartburn, chronic regurgitation, chronic issues here. Whenever we have symptoms are like, Gosh, I didn't use to have this problem. We can't think of it as, oh my gosh, I got to start taking Tom's like mom and dad used to, it's a, wait a second.

Speaker 1: (12:10)
Why is this happening? Because this is a result of something else that I'm doing. We've got to make some changes not doing. Yup. All right. So again, it comes down to we have to fix what we've been doing incorrectly. And so, yeah, you're right. Yeah. You know, we don't do ourselves any favors if we, if we kind of tried to lessen, you know, like, oh well I'm not that overweight or I don't eat that badly. Right? Or, yeah, don't soften it. Just like be honest with ourselves. It's like we know when we're not being as true to ourself or as true to a healthy diet as we should be. And if we're having the symptom just like, look, it's not about if all we're doing is, um, covering up the symptoms eventually were chasing other things that are going to be a lot worse. You don't want to use digestive enzymes or Betaine hydrochloride as a bandaid.

Speaker 1: (12:55)
It's not, it's not, that's not what it's intended for. Again, uh, I saw a great quote by doctor Mark Hyman online the other day. He said, and I think it was him that said this, he said, food is not like medicine. He said, food is medicine. You know, and so that's a really important distinction there that we need to understand is, I think that's something sometimes we can think of. It's like food is kind of like medicine. No, he's saying food is medicine. That should be, absolutely, that should be the primary form. You know, uh, in Chiropractic College, uh, we had what, two, three years of clinical nutrition in it, in a variety of forms because that is one of the most primary and in fact that is the primary intervention, uh, in terms of medicine speaking, uh, that people should be focused on, you know, is, is making changes to diet.

Speaker 1: (13:39)
That's one of the most powerful therapeutic interventions. A frontline that anybody can do, you know, in this whole process. And so if you're struggling with acid reflux, if he knows somebody who is number one, recognize that it's a symptom, that's not the problem, right? There's something else going on or an that's like the first step number two, uh, introduce pertain hydrochloride and digestive enzymes to assist the stomach and the number three. What a number, sorry, I wasn't expecting you took my head was totally elsewhere. I apologize. Number three, right? Dietary choices, making those dietary changes get with the program. Man. Sorry, I was off in Lala land for a moment. So, and that's all right. That happens. So that's right. So, uh, hopefully it's been helpful for you guys. Uh, if you know somebody that can benefit, uh, share this with them and, uh, make sure you subscribe to the podcast because we've got lots of great information, still yet to come. Uh, all sorts of great subjects that we love talking about and unpacking and uh, so, uh, yeah, we'll talk to you guys in the next episode. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you later.

Speaker 2: (14:45)
Thanks for listening to the health fundamentals podcast. Be sure to subscribe so that you stay in the loop. And in the note with all of the cutting edge health information that we share, if you know other people that could benefit from this information, please share it with them as well. Also, be sure to give us a review. These really help us to ultimately help more people. Last but not least, if you have questions that you want answered live on the show, or if you have ideas for topics that you would like us to cover, please shoot us an email and let us know at info@thehealthfundamentals.com.