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Is Your Antacid Making You Sick?

By |2020-09-15T20:38:01-04:00September 15th, 2020|Categories: Gut Health|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

Heartburn has been in the news a lot lately — and I’m not talking about the heartburn you get from watchingthe news. All those stories about COVID 19, peaceful protests, looting, and the upcoming presidential election are certainly enough to cause indigestion. But before you reach for that “little purple pill” to relieve your heartburn, consider its potential impact on your overall health.

As highlighted in a number of recent reports, prescription and over-the-counter drugs commonly used to alleviate symptoms associated with heartburn, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), acid reflux, and ulcers, may increase the risk of numerous health conditions, some of which can be fatal. Among these risks are cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and cancer.

Most recently, the news buzzed about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) recall of all prescription and over the counter (OTC) ranitidine medications, commonly known by the brand name Zantac. The FDA discovered a contaminant called N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) in some ranitidine products that “increases over time and when stored at higher than room temperatures and may result in consumer exposure to unacceptable levels.” NDMA is a probable human carcinogen (a substance that could cause cancer).

Ranitidine is a histamine-2 (H2) blocker, a class of heartburn medication that’s normally not nearly as harmful as another class of medications commonly used to treat heartburn (I should say commonly overused) — proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). One study of PPIs — Estimates of mortality associated with proton pump inhibitors among US veteranswas published in May of 2019 in the British Medical Journal. In that peer-reviewed study, researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs-Saint Louis, Saint Louis University, and Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis concluded that taking proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) is associated with a small excess of cause-specific mortality, including death in 45 out of every 1,000 people. Another study published in 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that long-term PPI therapy is associated with an increased risk of hip fracture.

Other potential adverse side effects associated with PPIs include Continue reading…

Why Am I Always So Tired? Autoimmune Gastritis Could be to Blame

Persistent fatigue is a tough mystery to solve. Causes include anemia, anxiety, depression, infection, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), poor diet, too little or too much exercise, poor sleep, liver or kidney disease, and the list goes on. One of the most overlooked conditions that can cause fatigue is autoimmune gastritis— a chronic inflammatory disease in which the immune system mistakenly destroys parietal cells— cells that produce the stomach acid and intrinsic factor (IF), which the body needs to be able to absorb vitamin B12.

As a result, people with autoimmune gastritis often suffer from pernicious anemia — a condition in which the body is unable to absorb the vitamin B12 needed to manufacture healthy red blood cells. Without sufficient numbers of healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body, it is no surprise that people with pernicious anemia suffer persistent fatigue.

When we think about autoimmunity, a few specific conditions come to mind including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), multiple sclerosis (MS), juvenile diabetes, hyperthyroid, and Lupus. Of course, there are others.

What we don’t often consider are the less discussed or less aggressive autoimmune conditions that can have a large impact of how we feel day to day, lead to more progressive illness, and are often associated with the development of additional autoimmune conditions.

Unfortunately, conventional medical doctors often overlook autoimmune gastritis in patients who report chronic fatigue. They may test for anemia and treat it with iron supplements or test for B12 deficiency, see that your B12 level is fine, and never consider whether your body is actually able to absorb and use that B12. Even worse, some people who report fatigue are simply diagnosed as having Continue reading…