Indigestion? More Interesting Than You Think!

It’s a minor condition but a BIG problem, largely due to the B*S* advice out there. Doctors are about as ignorant as it comes. “Don’t eat spicy food” and “Take antacids” are the usual solutions and they don’t work and are w-a-a-y off.

To begin with, indigestion is NOT caused by stomach acid. In fact the commonest cause is lack of stomach acid: a pathological condition called achlorhydria (Latin: no hydrochloric acid!) But the well-established market share taken by Proctor and Gamble’s Pepto-Bismol (bismuth subsalicylate) is proof enough that people will believe any old nonsense, including TV advertizing!

Pink derision!

Then there’s the whole rigmarole of histamine 2 (H2) blockers, such as Zantac. We all know how that ended (but not how many people were outright killed by the stuff).

Of course blocking stomach acid doesn’t work, meaning it doesn’t solve anything. We need stomach acid: otherwise why would Mother Nature put it there? If acid is not the cause then an antacid cannot work. But when the symptom returns, silly old patient says to him or herself: “I must have it bad, I need MORE Pepto-Bismol.” Duh!

As for spicy foods, forget it. I can take any person with heartburn, indigestion, acid regurgitation and hiatus hernia, cure the symptoms by doing the right thing and then he or she can tuck into some lovely curries, Tex-Mex or even Thai green chillies. No problem. Spicy foods are not the problem! Achlorhydria is the main problem, as I said.

GERD

But what about gastro-esophageal reflux; the doctor says I have GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease)? Oh yeah? Well do you have symptoms every minute of every day? Of course not. So you have many hours a day, scores of hours a week, when you have stomach reflux but no indigestion! The doctor, presumably, is trying to tell you that you have a mechanical condition but it clears up several times a day and the symptoms magically vanish; then the reflux returns when you next eat something! I mean…

What the doctor doesn’t tell you—because most of them don’t know—is that we all have a degree of gastroesophageal reflux, meaning food travelling in the wrong direction. It’s especially common in people who are overweight and who eat poor food, meaning just about everybody!

But it is not bound to cause indigestion. Also it means that sitting up straight is a better solution than popping medicines. We all know how doctors and Big Pharma like to move drugs as a “solution” to any problem. Usually the “solution” doesn’t work and the patient—instead of being clever and saying it’s no good—takes more and more, because that’s what the doctor says to do!

Bacterial Ulcers

Ah, what about Helicobacter pylori? I hear you say. Remember the old days when people were told, in no uncertain terms, they had “an ulcer” (or ulcers). It was caused by excess acidity, they said. You must take lots of antacids and avoid acid or spicy foods. Stress is the major cause of ulcers… That was the canon. People even had to have an operation to cut out “the ulcer” and maybe a good bit of the stomach at the same time.

Some died as a result. Too bad. You always get some collateral losses.

In fact, it all turned out to be hooey (as indeed is a lot of medical “science”). The medical elite thought they knew what caused ulcers and stomach cancer. But they were wrong — and didn’t want to hear otherwise.

They were shown up and shamed by an Australian doctor called Barry Marshall. He did many biopsies and believed that the true cause was the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. But nobody would listen. In 1984 Marshall did the ultimate scientific test by infecting himself with the bacteria, developing the symptoms of the disease and then successfully treating himself with antibiotics.

Maverick doctor Barry Marshall

It was a miracle and Marshall, along with colleague Robin Warren, the pathologist at the Royal Perth Hospital who first identified the existence of the causative bacteria, rightly received the Nobel Prize for their discovery (2005).

So YES, H. pylori is a player in the story. But anyone who doesn’t know that and fix it FIRST does not deserve to be a doctor or healer; it’s so easy.

By the way, you may have noticed, doctors have stopped diagnosing “stomach ulcers”! That’s yet another example of how doctors got the condition horribly wrong and went on for decades screwing up patients, using false science!

But it’s interesting to reflect that in this day and age, with “doctor” Mark Zuckerberg running Facebook, Marshall’s discovery would have been suppressed as fake news and heavily censored, since it was contrary to the mainstream narrative, thus leaving people to suffer (including dying of unnecessary surgeries) to create more profits for the medical industry.

What Should You Do?

So, I have hinted there is a right way to deal with this problem. The clue is the on-off nature of indigestion. As with any health condition, I tell patients that if you can have one good day, you can cure it! If you have symptom-free days it means there is no damage, no body parts missing, no tumor, no degenerative loss. The good days PROVE you are OK, really!

So that’s step 1: observe yourself for a week. How much time are you symptom-free? The more the better, for the outcome.

Step 2 is start noticing what you are eating. Keep a food diary. There is ALWAYS one or more foods that trigger indigestion; maybe not every single time you eat it but often enough for it to be a suspect. I have a tendency to get indigestion after certain red wines, for example (but not Shiraz or Rioja). On the other hand, I LOVE curries and they never trigger unpleasant symptoms, no matter how “hot”!

Step 3. If no pattern shows up, try an exclusion diet. You can’t avoid just one food at a time, you have to give up a whole bunch. At the very least you must avoid ALL manufactured foods, because they are all adulterated in some way or another. But also you need to give up tea, coffee and alcohol.

If there seems to be an improvement, after 5 days, try reintroducing the foods one at a time. You could be very surprised! The commonest triggers are chocolate, dairy (especially cream), red wine and certain cheeses. That’s not “alcohol” but one specific version of it. White wine and champagne are generally very well tolerated but not red wine, because it contains up to 100 times the amount of histamine and you will perhaps know that histamine H2 receptors are very suspect with indigestion. That’s what cimetidine (Tagamet), ranitidine (Zantac), famotidine and nizatidine were for—to block histamine receptors!

Food allergies (in fact all allergies) tend to promote histamine, so it all makes sense.

Finally, if you get stuck, consider the entire trial and error, exclusion and challenge dieting routine, described in my book One Diet for Life.

Don’t be intimidated by indigestion. Be wise instead.

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor