Stomach Acidity: The Other First Priority

Digestion is the absolute starting place on the journey of improving health. Not the microbiome, not intestinal health, not mold, not the liver. Poor digestion can contribute in some way to any health issue. Likewise, improving your digestion can enable your body to self-correct, which can create a restorative domino effect in the healing direction.

Good digestion happens when the combination of adequate stomach acid and bile flow work together like a one-two punch. Some benefits of this are as follows:

The pHs are at the right level in the right places.
The microorganisms have regulation.
The esophagus is protected by a valve that was custom made before you were born just for that purpose.
Bowel motion is regulated.

The first punch comes from the acid in the stomach. The stomach is like a crucible, a sturdy container designed to withstand extremely acidic pHs. The very high acid level has several significant health supporting purposes, including the following:

Breaking food down
Killing microorganisms that enter in food and water
Maintaining a stomach environment that is inhospitable to bad bacteria like H. pylori

The second punch starts with a final digestive blast at the top of the small intestine when very acidic stomach contents meet the alkaline bile spurt. Bile then takes over the digestive process as described in the post on bile.

Do You Have Low Stomach Acid?

Inadequate stomach acid can cause a number of symptoms. So before you start thinking, “But I have….” whatever impressive name or acronym has been pinned to your health situation, we need to ensure that the bile and the stomach acid are working in rhythm to dismantle food into the raw materials we need to run the body.

If you experience any of these, even sometimes, it may be that your stomach acid is too low.

Heartburn related symptoms:

Need antacids
Symptoms similar to acid reflux after a meal
Upper digestion pain or pressure after a meal
Feel your hiatal hernia acting up after a meal

Malnutrition related symptoms:

See undigested food in your stool after a meal
Constipation
Low blood pressure

Gas related symptoms:

Get gas after a meal
Feeling bloated after a meal. Or put another way, having your clothes be tighter at the end of the day than they were at the beginning of the day.
Burping after a meal (even small burps)

The Consequences of Low Stomach Acid

Heartburn

There is a valve at the top of the stomach that is made functional and well-sealing by the presence of adequate stomach acid. If the stomach pH is not acidic enough, then the valve is not tightly sealed, and it flops open. This can let the stomach contents flow upward into the esophagus.

Depending upon the pH of the stomach contents, this may or may not cause discomfort. It may feel like terrible heartburn all the time, it may appear only as reflux at bedtime, it may show up as an incessant need to clear the throat, a cough, a lost voice, or it may have absolutely no sensation at all.

Malnutrition

The consequences of not adequately breaking down food in the stomach are terribly under-appreciated. If the food isn’t broken down all the way, it is left in a state the body can’t make use of. The body then has to treat that food as a problem instead of a resource.

The body recognizes only nutrients: fatty acids, amino acids, minerals, vitamins, water, sugars. Minerals won’t be extracted from the food unless the stomach is fully acidic. And where are you going without your minerals?! Not very far. They are the keys that make all of the enzymes run. They regulate where fluid goes in the body. They determine the speed and type of metabolism you’ll have. You need minerals to be extracted from food to even make stomach acid.

Gas

Ignoring poor digestive capacity is like sweeping food scraps under the kitchen rug to rot. And that’s exactly what happens to it in the body. Food that doesn’t break all the way down gets fermented by bacteria, resulting in several of the symptoms previously mentioned.

So, even if you eat a healthy whole food, if your stomach isn’t fully acidic, then the whole food will be treated like a taxing load and will contribute to your health concerns.

What Can Be Done About Low Stomach Acid?

The first thing that needs to be done in addressing low stomach acid is to make sure you have adequate bile flow. If you start acidifying your stomach without adequate bile flow to neutralize the acidic stomach contents as they leave the stomach, you can injure your small intestine. The small intestine isn’t meant to handle acid. So you always want to support bile flow while you’re getting your stomach acid going.

Once you have bile flow underway, then you might consider an acidic supplement to take with meals such as Malic Acid (affiliate link) or a special Betaine HCL (affiliate link) that has no pepsin in it. You start with one pill at one meal and gradually increase from there.

It can be tricky to restart stomach acid because often bad bacteria set up camp in the stomach if there isn’t enough acid to keep them out. When you try to acidify the stomach with bad bacteria present, the bacteria get reactive. This may cause some blow back, literally. When you take an acid pill with your meal, the bad bacteria produce gaseous byproducts in the stomach. This gas can blow open the valve at the top of the stomach and push the now more acidic contents of the stomach up into the esophagus, which burns.

I will work with you to coach you through this.