Weak digestion

Strong digestion is a key to health and longevity

Causes of indigestion

Insufficient stomach acidity

Do not make your stomach less acidic / 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

• Overeating and snacking between meals. The primary cause of most digestive problems is eating too much, too sweet, too often, every day. Do not snack between meals. Have a goal of eating two meals per day, and eventually one meal per day. Grow Youthful shows you how to do it.
• Sugar is added to virtually every manufactured food today. Sugar is the root cause of many ailments including digestive ailments.
• Grains, which contain anti-digestives such as phytic acid.
• Vegetable oils. These manufactured polyunsaturated fats are made from grains, legumes, seeds and nuts (not vegetables!).
• 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.
• Antacids and medications to reduce stomach acidity. Stomach acidity is discussed below.
• Processed foods, fast food.
• Anxiety, stress.
• Gallstones, thick bile, or cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder). Bile is essential for good digestion, the absorption of fat-soluble nutrients like vitamins A, D, E and K, and omega-3 fatty acids, and for good health. Bile is concentrated in the gallbladder, and helps extract fat-soluble nutrients from your foods in the small intestines. Insufficient bile may also cause bloating and indigestion. A diet with sufficient saturated fats from meat, fish and full-fat dairy are essential for these vitamins and their absorption.
  Tauroursodeoxycholic Acid (TUDCA) is used to treat a sluggish gallbladder that produces thick bile. It thins the bile and stimulates bile production, assisting with fat metabolism and extraction of nutrients from it.
• Intestinal diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or gastritis (inflammatory bowel disease or IBD).
• Pyroluria.
• Lactose intolerance.
• Fructose malabsorption.
• 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.
• Fast eating. Eating food quickly, without chewing it properly.
• Drinking too much while eating.
• Swallowing excess air (aerophagia).
• Caffeine - drinking excessive coffee, or sometimes tea.
• Genetically modified foods (mainly the early GM foods).
• 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.

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. Complaints caused by protein deficiency, other forms of malnutrition or the lack of certain micronutrients.
• Diarrhoea, irritable bowel syndrome, leaky gut, eczema, hives.
• A tendency to allergies. Poorly digested proteins tend to switch on allergies.
• Malabsorption, causing micronutrient deficiencies such as deficiencies in zinc and iron.
• 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. Yeast overgrowth means that food is fermented instead of being digested, resulting in wind, gas and bloating.
• Bacterial imbalance and overgrowth, SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), particularly if the gallbladder is sluggish.
• 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 less acidic / 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.

The home remedy treatment to make your stomach more acid 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.