CURE FOR ESOPHAGEAL REFLUX – 44% OF THE POPULATION
Hello all! The following is an excerpt from Dr. Tim O'Shea's website, Thedoctorwithin.com. It's such great information that I had to share it with you! Hope it enlightens you!- Dr. Mike
CURE FOR ESOPHAGEAL REFLUX – 44% OF THE POPULATION
Can’t really blame it on the holidays – this epidemic is with us all year long. National Institutes of Health figures cite as high as 44% of the US population affected.
While NIH has about as much credibility as CDC for inventing epidemiological statistics out of thin air, it doesn’t take much imagination to see GERD as a disease endemic to the American lifestyle. It’s everywhere.
Do you get that burning in the chest at night? Do you wake up choking?
In the Enzymes chapter, we go into the physiological deconstruction of the disease, in a fair of amount of detail. Processed food by definition has no enzymes – it cannot then be well metabolized and absorbed as nutrition, or passed along through the tract.
The result is not just blockage but putrefaction and absorption, as the foreign, manmade sludge triggers the immune response.
The chronic situation that ensues typically involves the gut mucosa, from the esophagus all the way on down. Chronic inflammation, coupled with digestive enzyme depletion – all this brings on pain.
The acidic medium irritates the already inflamed cells lining the gut. After years of eating hydrogenated processed foods, normal digestion has long become a distant memory.
The pain is commonly described as a burning. Usually it begins as a transient localized stab. But as the condition becomes better established, the burning sensation can become prolonged and extend all the way from the back of the throat down into the stomach.
How bad can it get? Depends on the IQ of the owner. And how willing he is to adjust lifestyle to avoid symptoms. In this case, symptoms have a direct bearing on the progression of the condition – the more pain, the greater the irritation and edema surrounding the epithelial cells of the gut lining.
If diet excesses persist, inflammation can introduce fibrosis, scarring, and eventually metaplasia. Esophageal cancer has been one of our most common cancers for decades. Certainly no mystery about causation here.
The sequence above is the most typical pathway. But the body is talking to the individual all the time, sending frequent then constant pain messages that say, hey! stop shoving all that trash down the hatch. I can’t deal with it.
Often an incident will send the patient running to the emergency room for an upper GI and a scrip for industrial strength Prilosec. Or any of the other proton pump inhibitors, like Nexium, Prevacid, etc.
Drugs have a very low track record for curing reflux – they make a temporary condition permanent. Mainly because they pretend that temporarily relieving the pain by stomach acid suppression will solve the problem. Which of course it doesn’t, because the problem wasn’t pain – it was blockage from indigestion.
Here is a whole category of unnecessary disease-promoting drugs. Their sole stated purpose: inhibiting production of digestive fluids. Why on earth would you want to do that?
Only one possibility: drug sales.
Whatever happened to Hippocrates and primum non nocere? The only thing medicine takes care not to harm is their bottom line.
This is not even mentioning side effects. From the PDR here are just few of Nexium’s side effects:
* allergies
* gastroenteritis
* anemia
* abnormal liver function
* weight gain
* arthritis
* fibromyalgia
* depression
* migraine
* dysmennorhea
* asthma
* dyspnea
* Barrett’s esophagitis
* back pain
* chest pain
* loosening of the skin
* bloating
* constipation
* cough
* difficulty swallowing
* dizziness
* hypertension
* fever
* indigestion
* joint or muscle pain
* loss of appetite
* mood changes
* muscle spasms
* nausea
* osteoporosis
* pains in the stomach
* seizures skin rash
* hives
* itching
* sore throat
* vomiting
* reflux
Wait a minute: reflux as a side effect? Thought that’s what the drug was for…?
All these risks just because we’re too lazy to correct our diet and stop eating trash? Wow.
Drugs stop pain by stopping digestion. Inhibiting digestion compounds the blockage. But all too often, the forces of Domino’s and Cinnabun and Pieology and Taco Bell and Burger King and Pepsi and Doritos, etc. will prevail.
And acute esophagitis frequently evolves to the pre-cancerous Barrett’s Syndrome after a few years.
So much for the deterioration of all things. But there’s actually some good news – an escape from the downward spiral. The cure is very easy to understand, perhaps a little less so to accomplish.
It involves just 3 steps:
– hydration
– enzymes
– clean diet
Most people are dehydrated. Working your way up to 8 glasses per day takes a conscious effort. Many are starting at zero. Ice doesn’t count.
Just keep in mind the simple hydraulics of it all – you’re trying to clear out impacted sludge that has been dried out and hammered into place in your gut for months or longer. So at the very least it needs enough water to begin the flushing. 8 glasses. See chapter.
Enzyme supplements: 3 caps, 3 times a day. Adds back the enzymes that have been removed in processing. SeeDigestazyme section.
Clean diet. How can we hope to clear the digestive tract of impacted food if we’re adding to the toxic load with heaps of new indigestible processed foods every day? At the very least no hydrogenated oils, no pasteurized dairy, no refined carbohydrates. See New West Diet.
Been using Tums, Prilosec or Nexium for years? That’s just what they want. How’s that working out so far? Chronic disease spells chronic drug sales.
But if you’re interested in breaking free of the cycle, try the above. The only time it fails is when the patient doesn’t follow through. For most people it’s not a question of will this method work or not, but rather, how long will it take. With perfect compliance, it rarely takes this simple program more than a very few weeks to resolve even the most persistent cases of reflux.