Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition (54 page)

Administration of HCl/pepsin is contraindicated in peptic ulcer disease.

HCl can irritate sensitive tissue and can be corrosive to teeth; therefore, capsules should not be emptied into food or dissolved in beverages.

1.
Begin by taking one 350 to 750 mg capsule of betaine HCl with a protein-containing meal. A normal response in a healthy person would be discomfort—basically heartburn. If you do not feel a burning sensation, at the next protein-containing meal, take two capsules.

2.
If there are no reactions, after two days increase the number of capsules with each meal to two capsules.

3.
Continue increasing every two days, using up to eight capsules at a time if necessary. Build slowly to a maximum of eight capsules with each meal. You’ll know you’ve taken too much if you experience tingling, heartburn, diarrhea, or any type of discomfort, including feeling of unease, digestive discomfort, neck ache, backache, headache, fatigue, decrease in energy, or any new odd symptom. If you experience tingling, burning, or any symptom that is uncomfortable, you can neutralize the acid with 1 teaspoon baking soda in water or milk.

4.
When you reach a state of tingling, burning, or any other type of discomfort, cut back by one capsule per meal. If the discomfort continues,
discontinue
the HCl and consult with your health-care professional. These dosages may seem large, but a normally functioning stomach manufactures considerably more, about 2,000 mg per meal.

5.
Once you have established a dose (either eight capsules or less, if warmth or heaviness occurs), continue this dose.

6.
With smaller meals, you may require less HCl, so you may reduce the number of capsules taken.

Individuals with very moderate HCl deficiency generally show rapid improvement in symptoms and have early signs of intolerance to the acid. This typically indicates a return to normal acid secretion.

Individuals with low HCl/pepsin typically do not respond as well to supplements, so to maximize the absorption and benefits of the nutrients you take, it is important to be consistent with your HCl/pepsin supplementation.

Typically I will try to wean people off of HCl supplementation over time by using digestive enzymes, bitters, umeboshi plums, acupuncture, and stress management techniques.

Liver profile testing is useful for determining how well you are able to handle toxic substances. The liver is responsible for transforming toxic substances into harmless by-products that the body can excrete. It does this through the cytochrome P450 system in a variety of ways, including acetylation, conjugation, sulfation, and sulfur transferase. By examining urine or saliva, one can see how quickly the toxic materials are transformed. These tests can provide useful information about how well the body is able to detoxify a wide variety of substances.

One type of test is a challenge test. You take small amounts of caffeine, aspirin, and acetaminophen at home and then send urine samples off to the laboratory for analysis. Normal levels of cytochrome P450 are found in 50 percent of people tested. A low-caffeine clearance is found in about one-third of all people tested and indicates that your body is having difficulty detoxifying. High-caffeine clearance levels are found in people who have been recently exposed to high levels of toxins or smoke. Another way to measure liver detoxification pathways is to measure D-glucaric acid and mercapturic acid in the urine. D-glucaric acid is a general marker for phase one cytochrome P450 detoxification pathways. High levels of D-glucaric acid indicate the presence of environmental toxins such as pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, petrochemicals, and excessive alcohol intake. Mercapturic acid provides a measurement of glutathione conjugation. This test is easier on those who do not tolerate caffeine, aspirin, or acetaminophen.

Electrodermal testing, computerized electrodermal screening, electrical acupuncture voltage (EAV), Voll testing, and many other devices are widely used in Europe
after much positive research. Although this test has met with FDA resistance in the United States, there are many skillful professionals who use it to successfully diagnose and determine appropriate therapies.

The test measures the electrical activity of your skin at designated acupuncture points. You hold a negative rod in one hand, the practitioner places a positively charged pointer on a variety of points on your skin, and a meter measures the voltage reading between the points. The test can determine which organs are strong or weak, which foods help or hurt you, which nutrients you need or have excessive levels of, and how old patterns are contributing to your health today. It is a fast, non-invasive screening test that you do by simply holding onto a metal bar while being gently touched with a probe.

In this part of the book we delve into lifestyle and laboratory testing. The way we respond to everyday events and the way that we live our lives contributes to or detracts from our wellness bank account. Our lifestyle comprises the roots of our wellness tree. These roots feed our organs and body systems. The essential ingredients to build upon are represented in
Figure III.1
: spiritual and social connection, food, air, water, movement, a clean environment, sleep, a way to handle the stressors of daily life, and ways to balance our energetic output.

Figure III.1
The tree of life.

“Many of the things we claim to cherish—family relationships, cultural identity, ethnic diversity—were all intimately linked to the making and eating of food and now are changing as we outsource more and more of our food preparation to restaurants and industrial kitchens. Not only do we cook less than we used to, but more of us eat alone—at our desks, in our cars, standing at our kitchen counters. In America, the average family shares a meal fewer than five times a week.”

—Paul Roberts,
The End of Food

“Apprentices have asked me, what is the most exalted peak of cuisine? Is it the freshest ingredients, the most complex flavors? Is it the rustic, or the rare? It is none of these. The peak is neither eating nor cooking, but the giving and sharing of food.”

—Nicole Mones,
The Last Chinese Chef

Food is our most intimate contact with our external environment. What we eat, digest, absorb, assimilate, and excrete becomes us. You may already be eating a whole-foods, organic diet. If so, then the information in this chapter may be old news. But if you are like the bulk of the American population, you are probably overfed and undernourished. We eat more than we need to and are getting fatter and fatter. We also eat nearly half of our meals at restaurants or as takeout meals. If you are average, you eat more than half of your calories every day in highly processed, poor-quality, nutrient-poor foods. It’s like fixing your home with the poorest materials possible. No wonder we are getting sicker and sicker as a nation.

The energetics of food and the way that food talks to our cells provides an additional way of looking at food. Food is information. Food interacts with our genes, regulating or disrupting normal biological pathways. Each time we eat, we produce neurotransmitters that regulate mood and behavior; polyphenols in foods send messages to our immune system telling it to sooth and calm; food also contains chemical
messengers that tell our cells to replicate, excrete wastes, accept nutrients, and more. When we eat nutrient-dense, health-supportive foods, these messages are healthful and appropriate. But when we eat foods laden with chemicals, pesticides, and synthesized ingredients (such as food colorings and restructured fats), we aren’t giving our cells the right messages. Our bodies are familiar with foods that have been eaten for centuries. Manufactured foods and genetically engineered foods give different types of messages. The standard diet is inflammatory and is damaging the health of our individual selves, our families, our communities, our schools, and even our nation. What’s even more frightening is that our diet is becoming commonplace worldwide.

AVERAGE AMERICAN DIET

Flour and cereal products comprise 23 percent of our calories every day, nearly all of which (89 percent) are refined, which means that they’ve lost most of their vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and antioxidants. Refining of grains can affect blood sugar levels and lead to inflammation throughout the body.

We eat 17 percent of our calories from refined table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. The current estimate is about 496 calories a day and more than 22 teaspoons. Of course, it takes B vitamins, magnesium, chromium, zinc, and other nutrients to metabolize and use these sugars, but there aren’t any of these nutrients present in refined sugars, so your body has to steal them from somewhere else.