Why Proton Pump Inhibitors should not be used long term

One of the most commonly prescribed drugs is proton pump inhibitors to treat acid reflux, indigestion or heartburn. The most commonly prescribed PPIs in New Zealand are omeprazole, lansoprazole and pantoprazole.  Some patients take it to overcome severe reflux or heartburn or as part of a triple treatment for H.pylori infection.  Others who use this group of drug do not have regular symptoms and use it as a preventative which in the long term can cause other problems.   

After a big meal, the esophageal sphincter (that connects your esophagus to stomach) can undergo some stress and reflux some contents up to the esophagus.  However, this should not happen often, or else you are overeating.   Cells in your esophagus are not designed to handle such acidic state.

If your portions are right for your size and activity, then overacidity can be an excess of hydrochloric acid or lactic acid.  Hydrochloric acid is the resident acid in our stomach released by the parietal cells.  It is there to facilitate digestion.  The pH of the stomach should range from 1.5 to 3.5. Lactic acid is the acid produced on fermentation of food in the stomach.  This can happen if food is passing through the digestive tract too slowly when the pH of the stomach is not appropriate.  When food is not digested properly in a timely manner, fermentation occurs and production of lactic acid is part of the process.  If proton pump inhibitors are taken to neutralise lactic acid from already inadequate hydrochloric acid, this will create a snowball effect, causing more problems in the digestive tract.  This is what I commonly see in clinic.

Antacids and proton pump inhibitors should at best be used as symptomatic care or as part of the triple therapy used short term.  The root cause of the heartburn, bloating and reflux is not because of the acid. 

Long term use of proton pump inhibitors causes many symptoms of nutrient deficiencies, because food does not get broken down properly and nutrients that need an acidic pH to absorb do not get the right environment to absorb.  This can lead to many long term problems like tiredness, cardiovascular problems, bone density problems and increased risk of fracture and increased risk of infection from altered gut bacterial balance. 

For common causes of acid reflux  and how to overcome it, refer to my article http://blog.nutriactionz.co.nz/2016/06/causes-of-acid-reflux-and-how-to.html

Lastly, know the difference between heartburn and a heart attack.  It can safe you your life!  If you are uncertain, please go to your GP or A&E clinic.  An immediate test can be done to check troponin, CK or myoglobin in your blood, to see if you’ve had a heart attack.

5 reasons why you could be struggling with constipation and what you can do

Constipation is a lack of regular bowel movement or bowel movements that require straining and does not empty completely.  Many people claim they are regular and their definition is once every 2 days or 3 days.  Being regular really means one to two bowel movements a day.  There is a problem if we eat 3 times a day, but we eliminate only once every 2-3 days.

Bowel emptying is a very important part of healthy living, detoxification and weight loss.  Our liver processes toxins and dumps them into the bowels for elimination.  In cases of delayed bowel emptying, the toxins can reabsorb creating increased toxic burden resulting in low energy levels, nausea, headaches, aches and pains or a crampy uncomfortable abdomen. 

If you have constipation, the first thing you need to investigate is your diet.  Are you having enough fresh vegetables, some fruits, seeds and nuts?  Fibre is required to bind and bulk.  Are you drinking enough water?  A normal healthy person requires 30mls of fluid (excluding coffee and alcohol) per kg body weight. 

Are you on any medication where the side effect includes constipation?  If so, it is time to review your medication.

Do you have a healthy gut flora?  Have you been on antibiotics more than twice in the last 2 years?  Are you on the oral contraceptive pill? If your gut microbiome is out of balance you could be constipated.

Are you stressed?  Our ancestors were hunter gatherers and stress meant that they had to run from the saber tooth tiger.  When trying to safe our lives in an emergency, our bodies do not get us to waste time visiting the lavatory.  That said, our modern day stress is different but the impact on the nervous system and signalling remains the same.  If you are stressed, get onto natural stress management protocols.

Do you have a habit of holding it in each time you an urge to defaecate that your body is losing its ability to move the bowels regularly.  If so, make sure you listen to your body’s signalling and go when you feel the urge.  To stimulate the large bowels, squatting for a period of time to induce the urge is a great strategy.  We used to have squat toilets until sitting toilets were invented.  We were not meant to be sitting and defacating at the same time!

Don’t underestimate the benefits of pooping regularly.  

Pineapple Mint Cocktail (alcohol free)

• 1 handful Peppermint leaves sliced and steeped in 1/2 cup hot water
• 2 tsp chamomile tea or 2 tea bags of chamomile tea steeped in 1/2 cup of hot water
• Fresh pineapple juice 2 cups
• Sparkling mineral water 1 cup
• Ice cubes

Steep the peppermint and chamomile teas and leave to cool.  Juice fresh pineapple and chill in the refrigerator.  Mix all ingredients together and add ice cubes and a fresh slice of pineapple on the glass with some mint leaves to serve.

Goji Shape Up Balls

100g organic goji berries

30g organic chia seeds
20g ground almond

1 scoop Shape Up weight management powder

2-3 drops stevia (optional)

1. Soak goji berries and chia seeds until water covers over the seeds and berries.  Soak for 1 hour.  The berries would plump up and chia seeds feel gel-like.
2. Put both soaked goji and chia into a blender and blend using pulse.  There will be some leftover liquid in the bowl.  If you prefer the balls a little more moist, use the water in the balls. (There should not be a lot of water left over)
3. Pour out into a bowl and add 1 scoop of Shape Up.  Mix well with a spoon.  Shape Up is our non-allergenic weight management protein with fat burners, herbs and minerals.
4. Roll balls together with your hands.  This quantity makes about 8 balls.  They can be chilled in a covered container for 3 days or frozen for upto 2 weeks.
5. This makes a good snack over the holiday season when you are travelling or camping or when you have to bring a plate of dessert to share.  Double or triple up the quantities if you have to serve more people.

How to stay on track this holiday season

As the silly season approaches and our social calendars are most likely the busiest compared to any other time of the year, it is important to maintain or improve your state of health that you have started your journey on.

Many people like to ask “Can I have this?”  This question almost always sparks a feeling of deprivation if the answer is ‘No’.  A better quality question to ask is, “Will this be beneficial for me?”  or “Does this move me forward or set me back?”

These strategies are useful to help you stay on track:

1. Volunteer to bring something to the gathering you are attending – this allows you to bring and consume food that will be kind to your body even if everything else available at the function does not suit you.
2. Keep eating normally during the day so that you are not starving during the day to allow some “space” or “caloric allowance” for the party.  Keeping your blood sugar balanced and eating adequate protein and vegetables during the day makes it less likely that you will overindulge at night.
3. Tactfully decline food and alcohol pushers – you are probably familiar with this type of person at a party who gets you to eat or drink more.  In certain cultures, this social etiquette is required to make guests feel welcome.  Tactfully tell the food and alcohol pushers that you are there for the people, not the food or booze.
4. Avoid / limit alcohol.  Alcohol is liquid sugar and provide empty calories.  Too much alcohol is also a burden on your liver which spirals you down.  Have some sparkling mineral water, limit your alcohol intake and have some lemon juice in water before your party.  You can make lovely cocktails that involve non-alcoholic beverages like chamomile tea, mint, pineapple and sparkling mineral water or fruit tea, lemon juice and soda water.
5. Stay active and value quality time together rather than focusing on the food – this is a time to spend quality time staying active with younger family members or engaging in meaningful conversations with older people.  Trekking, walking on the beach, biking or other activities that interest you and the people you intend to spend the holiday season with can be very meaningful and helps you stay on track.
6. Lastly, remember your goals.  Write them down in your diary, mobile phone or post it on your bathroom mirror.  

Alzheimer’s disease and what you can do to help yourself

Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic debilitating disease that erodes the quality of life of a patient gradually as is with his/her sense of independence and freedom.  It is a growing epidemic.  Internationally recognised neurologist and researcher, Dr. Dale Bredesen, suggests that conventional treatment of Alzheimer’s have failed due to an incomplete understanding of the cause and the pathway of the disease condition.   

Bredesen’s research has shown that a holistic approach which addresses the causes of neurodegeneration can result in reversal of symptoms in patients with mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer’s disease.  The major metabolic insults are for Alzheimer’s are inflammation, insulin resistance, high homocysteine, loss of hormonal support e.g. testosterone or estrogen, exposure to toxins including heavy metals and gastrointestinal toxins.

Functional testing may be necessary to determine which is the cause of cognitive decline.  Each person is unique, so is his/her pathway to suboptimal health and disease.  From a natural medicine perspective, using herbs and nutrients to regulate blood sugar and insulin signalling, addressing the dietary intake and lifestyle to reduce the inflammatory and toxic load, use specific activated B vitamins and serine to address  high homocysteine, and working with the hormonal imbalance will help to reverse symptoms of mild cognitive impairment.   Keeping aerobic and strength exercise a part of your routine 5 times a week, 45-60 minutes each time, and maintaining good sleep hygiene is an important first step in helping reverse mild cognitive decline.   Keep your mind active, maintain social connections through community and family.  Engage in activities that jog your problem solving centre.  Increase your intake of turmeric and coconut oil, adding it to your main meals, or your omelette or even making a golden tea out of it.  I have shared a recipe for golden milk in the NutriActionz blog.  

7 Reasons Why You May be Constantly Fatigued and How To Adddress the Problem

If you have slept through the night and still wake up exhausted, you have a fatigue problem.  Many people push through the day, in their tiredness, to fulfill their responsibilities for their work and families.  As fatigue is so common, many people deem it as normal.  What is common is not always normal!

Reasons why you may be constantly tired:

1. You are not nourishing yourself properly.  Eating on the run, picking up take outs and processed foods that are nutrient deprived and calorie dense gives your blood sugar big waves of highs and lows.  This often leaves you tired and wanting more sugary or carbohydrate rich foods.  It may also be due to a lack of good fats in your intake from wanting to restrict calories.
2. You have metabolic syndrome, are diabetic or prediabetic.  All these conditions result in disarrayed channelling of sugar into the cell for energy production.  Instead, sugar from the carbohydrates consumed is circulated in the bloodstream and causes oxidative stress, and an increase in abdominal fats from the resistance to insulin.  You should refrain from consuming high carbohydrate foods, and increase your intake of protein, good fats and vegetables.
3. You have a detoxification problem.  You may not be moving your bowels at least once or twice a day.  Constipation and the reabsorption of toxins can cause fatigue.  Or you may be moving your bowel too often, especially watery diarrhea and you are losing key minerals involved in energy production.  Detoxification is not limited to the bowels.  The liver, kidneys, lymphatics and skin are also key detoxification organs.  Hence if you are tired and have other symptoms like nausea, constant skin breakouts, bloated all the time, headaches, etc.  it may indicate that you need some detoxification care.  Hemaview live blood screening allows you to look at some of these imbalances live on screen and treat appropriately!
4. You have an undiagnosed thyroid problem.  There has been increasing detection of subclinical and clinical hypothyroidism as well as autoimmune hypothyroidism.  If you are tired and gaining weight for no reason, you could be having a thyroid problem that is undiagnosed.  The health system in New Zealand uses TSH as a measure of your thyroid health, which isn’t a true measure of the thyroid.  It measures the thyroid stimulating hormones which are produced in your hypothalamus, in the brain.  Having a number in range does not mean that you are converting and using the appropriate amount of thyroid hormones.  You could be having autoimmune thyroid issues which also results in fatigue.  At NutriActionz, we run complete Thyroid Profile in Australia to get a measure of 7 markers that can reflect the health of your thyroid.  We have seen numerous cases where TSH remains within range, but free T3 is low, or reverse T3 is high, or there are elevated thyroid antibodies causing the patient to be very fatigued.
5. You have constant low grade infection, always feeling under the weather.  Your immune system could be fighting some form of infection, acute or chronic, using up the little energy you have, leaving you depleted!  Exploring this cause of fatigue some times leads to the discovery of some serious undetected illnesses, like cancer! 
6. Your adrenals are exhausted from long term stress.  The depletion of your adrenals gives you a reverse energy production process, you wake up tired in the morning and have a lot more energy around bedtime at night.  Your cortisol and DHEA could be out of range.
7. Your digestive system and mitochrondria are not functioning properly.  You are not absorbing nutrients from your food either through inability to break it down properly, or making energy from it.  If you have hypochlorhydria, SIBO, gut permeability or gut flora imbalance, you may not be absorbing what you eat.  Your gut has the biggest exposure to many different substances in a day.  An inability to process through appropriately can leave you tired, bloated with or without heartburn, belching and flatulent, and not supplying the nutrients for your energy production powerhouse, your mitochondria, to make energy appropriately.  At NutriActionz, we treat gastrointestinal problems at the source.  Do not suppress your symptoms, get to the root of it, with our tests available and regain your energy! 

These are not the only causes of fatigue but are the common causes we see in clinic.  If you are constantly battling to get more energy to live your life to the fullest, or even to get through your day, you deserve to feel better.  You may have identified where your problem is, if it is a bad food intake you are having, improve that.  However, if there are other deeper issues that need to be investigated functionally, make an appointment with our clinic so you can treat the cause and regain your energy again!  Enjoy summer, enjoy your family and friends, and enjoy life!