You regularly suffer from heartburn. Your GP prescribes the acid blocker omeprazole, or perhaps you bought a packet of Rennie yourself at the chemist. Within a few days the burning feeling is gone. Problem solved, right? Or is a much bigger problem building without you being aware of it.
Once you understand what stomach acid does in your body, you also understand why suppressing it is the start of far bigger problems for a lot of people.
What stomach acid does
Most people only think of that burning feeling when they hear stomach acid. But stomach acid has two jobs your body cannot do without.
The first is protection. Everything you eat and drink, and that enters your body through your mouth, carries micro-organisms such as bacteria, yeasts and sometimes parasites. Your stomach acid is the first line of defence that takes out these uninvited guests before they reach your gut. You can compare it to a security guard at the entrance of a building. As long as that guard is standing there, nobody simply walks in. The moment you take the guard away, anyone can stroll inside.
The second job matters for digestion. Your stomach breaks food down and mixes it with stomach acid and digestive juices, so that further along, in your small intestine, your body can absorb the nutrients. If there is not enough stomach acid, your food is simply digested less thoroughly. And what is not digested properly, your body cannot absorb either.
What happens when you suppress your stomach acid
Acid blockers do exactly what the name says: they hold back the production of stomach acid. The burning feeling disappears, because there is less acid. But that also weakens the two jobs I just described.
Less stomach acid means that pathogens (harmful bacteria, yeasts and parasites) can make the crossing through your stomach more easily and end up in your gut. Normally they are made harmless before they reach your gut. Now they have a free run. And once those unwanted guests settle in your gut, that can lead to all sorts of symptoms: from a bloated feeling and stomach pain to diarrhoea or constipation.
On top of that, your food is broken down less thoroughly. Fats and proteins are not fully digested, which can cause gas in your gut and farts you cannot let slip unnoticed, because everyone can smell them.
You may also have the feeling that your food sits in your stomach like a brick for hours. That is not because you ate too much, but because your food is not being broken down enough.
And then there is a third consequence that few people think about. If your food is not digested properly, you also get fewer nutrients out of your meals. You may eat well, but your body can take less out of it. Over time that can lead to shortages of important nutrients, which you can feel in all kinds of ways: tiredness, a weaker immune system, a cold that will not clear, getting ill more often, and skin problems such as eczema. And gut problems, of course.
Why this is so often overlooked
The tricky part is that the symptoms caused by long-term use of acid blockers are often not connected to the acid blocker itself. Someone develops gut problems and goes back to the GP. The GP examines the gut, but does not look at the acid blocker that has been taken for two years.
In our practice we see this regularly. People who have used acid blockers for years and do not understand why their gut problems never improve. More often than not the acid blocker is part of the problem, not of the solution.
That does not mean acid blockers are always wrong. Sometimes a doctor prescribes them for a specific reason, for a limited period. That can be necessary. But if you have been taking them for a long time without medical need, or because they were prescribed once and nobody has looked at it since, then it is worth knowing what they really do in your body.
The question few people ask
What we often see is that acid blockers relieve the symptoms for a while but do not tackle the underlying cause. The burning feeling goes, but the reason your stomach reacts that way stays. An acid blocker deals with the symptom, not with the actual cause of your acid symptoms. Meanwhile new problems build up, because your digestion and your protection against pathogens are weakened.
The question many people never ask themselves is this: why did my stomach produce so much acid that it became a problem? Or: is it really too much stomach acid causing the symptoms, or is it a shortage, which leaves the acid relatively stronger?
Compare your stomach acid to a glass of squash. First you pour the syrup into the glass, then you top it up with water. If you do not add enough water, the mixture is far too strong. This is a common cause of acid symptoms too. Simply because there is not enough stomach acid, which makes the concentration of the acid too high and irritates the stomach.
Other factors play their part as well, such as the food you eat and the stress that affects your digestion.
In the book 'First Aid for Your Gut', Jeroen explains step by step how your digestion works and which factors can make it go wrong. Because only when you understand what is happening in your body can you really change something about it.
What would change if you tackled the cause instead of suppressing the symptom?