Re: ...gotta the enzyme question for you???

[Guest guest]

Lynn-

>Could you re-give me the information on enzymes and using ginger juice

>that you were telling me Sunday night? What type of enzyme? How many

>and how much ginger juice/ Oh yeah..how often on the ginger juice if

>you're having reflux?

>

>(for context -this is what uses for his digestion. My mom has a

>serious problem with falling dead asleep after meals and

>suggested she may need way more enzymes than she's presently taking.

>Plus fresh ginger juice for acid reflux problems. Sunday night I'd

>been drinking wine so his answer really didn't stick much LOLOL)

They're separate but related issues. Postprandial fatigue can be

caused by malnutrition, excess carb consumption, digestive

insufficiency, some combination thereof, or even other problems. My

understanding is that reflux is almost always proximately caused by

hypochlorhydria -- stomach acid is what signals the lower esophageal

sphincter to close, and when there's not enough acid, it doesn't

completely close. Over time it actually atrophies, meaning that just

taking supplementary stomach acid in the form of betaine HCl or even

somehow restoring native HCl production won't actually cure reflux

but could even make it worse. The root causes of hypochlorhydria are

various, including some kind of poorly understood autoimmune reaction

which damages or kills the stomach's parietal cells, allergies,

dysbiosis, perhaps liver problems, and so on.

Ginger juice is a fantastic remedy for reflux, because it actually

stimulates the body to rebuild the lower esophageal sphincter. It's

the only treatment that I know for a fact can fix it once its

atrophied. The standard protocol is to take one teaspoon every day

upon rising for three weeks, but this didn't work for me. I switched

to taking one to two tablespoons per meal and I kept it up for a few

months, and that did the trick. YMMV. I've also noticed I've

started to backslide just a little recently, so maybe I didn't keep

it up long enough.

I don't know anything about your mom's health and diet, so I can only

say that one or more of several different things might

help. Depending on what she's eating, she might need to lower her

carbs, particularly her refined carbs, or even go on the SCD. She

might need to take some digestive enzymes, pancreatin being the most

obvious candidate. (I'm pretty skeptical of plant-based enzymes for

digestion.) She might need to take supplementary stomach acid in the

form of betaine HCl with pepsin, which is a protein-digesting enzyme

normally produced by the stomach. Since the parietal cells produce

HCl, pepsin and intrinsic factor (the molecule which allows people to

efficiently absorb B12) any impairment of their function means that

both HCl and pepsin are needed, and supplementary B12 is probably

needed too, because without intrinsic factor, a maximum of only 1% of

dietary B12 can be absorbed, and that's only if the ileum is

otherwise in good health, which isn't exactly common in cases of

hypochlorhydria.

In my experience, it's a mistake to take an HCl supplement without

enough pepsin. I did it for a long time because pepsin really

aggravated my reflux and I didn't know what else to do, but those

supplements without adequate pepsin don't improve digestion and

absorption nearly as much as they ought to.

At the moment, I'm taking NOW brand betaine HCl. Each capsule

contains 648mg of betaine HCl and 150mg of pepsin. I can't recommend

it wholeheartedly because of the fillers (the capsule is a gelcap,

which is good, but it also contains silica and magnesium stearate)

but I haven't found any filler-free HCl with pepsin, and while I can

find bulk HCl, I can't find bulk real pepsin, just fungal analogs.

Thorne Research's Bio-Gest, which is commonly recommended in

alternative circles, has several problems. Each capsule only

contains 480mg of HCl compounds, and half of that is glutamic acid

hydrochloride, which might pose excitoxicity dangers. And each

capsule only has 35mg of pepsin, though it's more concentrated, so it

might be equivalent to 56mg of the supplemental pepsin found in other

brands. IIRC glutamic acid hydrochloride is less potent by weight

than betaine HCl, but assuming they're equivalent, that's a ratio of

8.57 mg betaine HCl to 1mg pepsin (assuming the extra concentration

means something), whereas NOW (and any other similar high-pepsin

product) has a much more favorable ratio of 4.32.

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