Weak digestion
Strong digestion is a key to health and longevity
Causes of indigestion
Insufficient stomach acidity
Do not make your stomach more alkaline
Strong digestion is a key to health and longevity
One of the keys to health and longevity is having strong digestion that can extract all the nutrients from the food you eat. If your digestion is weak, you can eat the best food in the world, yet still suffer from a variety of complaints caused by malnutrition or the lack of certain micronutrients. It really is that simple. You cannot enjoy good health and long life if your digestion is not working as well as it should.
Young people tend to have highly acid stomachs and good, strong digestion. Their glands are able to produce good quantities of digestive enzymes. As people age, their production of stomach acid and digestive enzymes weakens. Old people tend to have digestion that is slow and temperamental. In those cases where people with weak digestion have managed to strengthen it, there is usually a quick improvement in their skin, hair, nails, strength and energy, mental outlook, and a wide variety of ailments that they have been suffering from.
Indigestion (dyspepsia) is an uncomfortable feeling in the stomach and upper abdomen after a meal. It usually occurs after eating and drinking too much, or eating the wrong foods (over-indulging). It can be accompanied by nausea, bloating, and belching. Indigestion frequently causes heartburn (stomach acid reflux) that leaves an acid-vomit taste in the mouth and irritates the oesophagus. It can cause bad breath.
Causes of indigestion
- Antibiotics can have a disastrous effect on your digestion. The antibiotics destroy the good bacteria in the digestive tract that have taken a lifetime to build up. A healthy gut biome is the key not only to your digestion, but also to health throughout the rest of your body. Without a good balance of bacteria in your digestive tract, you really cannot enjoy good health and will be prone to ailments ranging from heart disease and circulatory problems through to diabetes and cancer.
- Processed foods, fast food.
- Genetically modified foods.
- Aging.
- Coconut oil is supposed to be a health food, but I have noticed that whenever I cook a meal using a couple of spoons of coconut oil, I can feel it in my stomach hours later, and may even suffer a little reflux. If you regularly use coconut oil, it is one of the first oils to try eliminating.
- Anxiety, stress.
- Intestinal diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or gastritis (inflammatory bowel disease or IBD).
- Pyroluria.
- Overeating, Fast eating.
- Lactose intolerance.
- Fructose malabsorption.
- Drinking too much while eating.
- Swallowing excess air (aerophagia).
- Caffeine - drinking excessive coffee, or sometimes tea.
- Excessive fatty or spicy foods, depending on your body type.
- Alcohol - drinking excessive alcohol.
- Smoking.
- Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).
- Exercising with a full stomach.
- Various pharmaceutical medicines such as aspirin, ibuprofen, Losec and other proton pump inhibitorsor and many others including some supplements.
- Stomach diseases such as peptic ulcer or cancer.
- Gallstones or Cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder).
Insufficient stomach acidity
Heartburn and reflux are caused by too little acid in your stomach, not too much! If your stomach is not acid enough, food sits in your stomach for too long, and eventually the fermenting gases bubble up, burning your throat.
Strong stomach acid breaks down your food easily, cleans up waste by-products, and kills and digests harmful bacteria, parasites and fungi. Many nutrients depend on strong acid for absorption, and if your stomach is not acid enough, you will be deficient in them.
Insufficient stomach acidity is the cause of many diseases, like:
- Acid reflux, and symptoms of pain, blockage and heartburn, also described as gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GERD or GORD).
- Poor digestion of foods with recognisable foods appearing in faeces.
- Diarrhoea, irritable bowel syndrome, leaky gut, eczema, hives.
- A tendency to allergies. Poorly digested proteins tend to switch on allergies.
- Malabsorption, causing micronutrient deficiencies.
- The pyloric sphincter will not open properly to allow the stomach contents into the duodenum. The food sits in the top of your stomach for too long and digests slowly.
- Gas, burping and heartburn immediately after a meal. Bacterial and yeast overgrowth means that food is fermented instead of being digested, resulting in wind, gas and bloating.
- A tendency to get gut-sourced infections and parasites since acid is required to sterilise the contents of the stomach.
Do not make your stomach more alkaline
Do not use antacid tablets. They contain aluminium and indigestible calcium, are toxic and harmful, and have no benefits whatever. Anti-acids, antacids and drugs which inhibit the production of acids give short term relief to the symptoms. However, they do nothing to heal the problem, and over time make it much worse.
Alkaline water causes acid reflux and weak digestion.
In summary, the home remedy treatment is the opposite of the pharmaceutical treatment. Drugs such as Losec and other proton pump inhibitors try to slow down the production of acid in your stomach. For this reason, there is little point in using apple cider vinegar at the same time you are taking any drugs for this problem - they will be working against each other.