CFS and ME treatment: Stomach Acid Transcript

You Tube – ME and CFS Treatment – Stomach Acid

Alex:  Hi, I’m Alex Howard and I’m with Tanya Page from the nutrition team at the clinic.  And today we’re going to be talking about stomach acid and its role in CFS and ME treatment, Fibromyalgia, Lyme disease and that group of illnesses.  And I think this is particularly interesting because stomach acid not working the way that it’s meant to actually has a really big impact on symptoms, and on situations, and it’s actually also quite simple to treat.

Tanya:  Absolutely.

Alex:  So maybe a good starting point would be what stomach acid actually does, what it role is in the body?

Tanya:  Well it’s got a massively fundamental role, and that role is to digest the protein for your food without which you can’t grow, repair or rejuvenate, so that’s pretty key.  It’s 2^nd but really, really important role is also for immunity, because essentially the stomach is the first line of defence of the immune system, so anything that gets in through your nose or through your mouth is going to hit the stomach, so if the stomach acid isn’t strong enough, you’re kind of shafted at that point, so….

Alex:  And of course it being the beginning of the whole digestives system, other things we’ve talked about in other blogs that will be available at various points, from Candida and parasites and constipation, all these things can, if it’s not working in the beginning, it’s going to affect everything that’s happening further down.

Tanya:  Absolutely.  Yeah, so the other really important function of stomach acid in CFS and ME treatment is to actually trigger the pancreatic enzymes to be produced from the pancreas.  Those are the things that digest the bits of food that don’t get digested in the stomach, so if you don’t have enough acid leaving the stomach to trigger the hormone that tells the pancreas to produce pancreatic juice with all the digestive enzymes, you have poor pancreatic function, so it’s hugely important on so many levels that if the stomach acid is not right, you get an affect all the way down the gut.

Alex:  So what would be some of the more obvious symptoms someone would get from having low stomach acid?

Tanya:  Ok, this is an area that’s not very well understood by the medical professional either unfortunately, but essentially if you get bloating, or flatulence or burping after food, that’s generally a sign that your stomach acid is too low.  The reason for that is that the protein in your stomach isn’t being broken down quick enough, so the carbohydrates in there start to ferment, and that fermentation produces carbon dioxide, that pushes your stomach acid up your oesophagus and you get that sort of acid-reflux, or you can literally get the burping from the carbon dioxide, or flatulence later in the day, so that’s generally the feeling.  And most people understand that, those sorts of symptoms as being high acid and in fact it’s the converse.

Alex:  And people often would say antacids and that kind of thing to try and fix it, and it just perpetuates the problem.

Tanya:  Indeed, absolutely.

Alex:  Ok.  So how do we test to find out if someone’s got low stomach acid in CFS and ME treatment?

Tanya:  Well that’s the fun bit!  We have 3 ways of testing…

Alex:  Tanya’s aware of my great pleasure in burping, farting and these kinds of things.  [Laughing]  It’s my inner child coming out in my work.

Tanya:  [Laughing]  Yeah, so we have 3 ways of testing in CFS and ME treatment, and the cheapest to the most expensive, and the easiest way really is to use Bicarbonate of Soda, so just your average bicarbonate of soda, and we can do the bicarbonate burp test with that, so essentially you just take a little bit of…

Alex:  It’s great fun at doing at parties actually.  [Laughing]

Tanya:  Indeed.  It has to be on an empty stomach; just a little bit in some water to get it down into the stomach, and on an empty stomach essentially.  The stomach acid should be pretty strong and the alkaline nature of the bicarb should react with the acid in order to produce carbon dioxide so you’ll either burp or you’ll get bloated, or you’ll have flatulence later.

Alex:  Sounds like fun.

Tanya:  So that’s the basic testing.

Alex:  That’s the cheaper option, yes.

Tanya:  So that’s the nice cheap option and we often use that to keep an eye on things.  Now what should happen is you have quite a lot of belching, so not the sort of thing you’d want to be doing in public, so…

Alex:  Or the kind of thing you might want to do in public, [laughing] if you have a childish side like I do, but anyway.

Tanya:  [Laughing]  Yes, so most of our patients in CFS and ME treatment don’t have any reaction to bicarb at all and even non-M.E patients often have no reaction to this at all…

Alex:  Which means they’ve got low stomach acid?

Tanya:  Yes, so it’s a bit of a ‘Heath Robinson’ method, but you know, it’s a good cheap way of finding out you know ‘Ball Park,’ what’s going on.  Then we have something called… to get a little bit more accuracy on it, something called the ‘gastro test,’ which is essentially… I won’t be able to really show you because you can’t see it, but essentially it’s a capsule full of string, and you pin the string onto the side of your mouth, swallow the capsule which takes the string down into your stomach, sits in your stomach for about 7 minutes, and the delightful bit is pulling the string back up again and then you just develop the colour on the string; it’s a Ph sensitive piece of string essentially, and you can see specifically what your acid levels are in your stomach, all the way up to the oesophagus, up to the mouth, and that gives us a much clearer idea.  There’s a colour chart that you can refer to, so you should be well down on the colour chart and a lot of people are up towards the alkaline or neutral levels which is a bit of a disaster.

Alex:  [Laughing raising arms up]  So that being how we test for it, what do we do about it?

Tanya:  Well, actually it’s fairly simple.  What you basically have to do in CFS and ME treatment is artificially put in some hydrochloric acid which you can put in, in tablet, liquid or capsule form, and that’s really just to bolster the basic amount of stomach acid so you can digest your food better.  When you do that you can actually absorb the minerals that you need to produce to produce your own acid, so we have kind of a dosing procedure where we increase the dose of stomach acid in order to do this because everyone needs a different dose, and once you start building up that level to an almost normal point, then you just don’t have to supplement anymore, it’s really self-regulating.

Alex:  Great.

Tanya:  The only problems we get sometimes, if people have very, very low stomach acid in the CFS and ME treatment, the mucous layer around the stomach that protects the stomach from digesting itself can be a little bit weak because it doesn’t need to be strong because there’s no acid in there, then we have to use other methods to actually soothe and heal the stomach wall before we put the acid in, but it’s basically very straight forward.

Alex:  Ok, fantastic.  Well thank you for your time.  [To Tanya]  Hopefully that’s been useful to people watching the video.  Again as I say at the end of these videos, if you’re a patient at the clinic receiving CFS and ME treatment, then your practitioner will already be looking at this.  If you want more information, an information pack and a 15 minute chat is a great starting point.  So thanks for watching, thanks Tanya, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Video Blog: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: IBS psychology and physiology

Welcome to this week’s video blog. We are very excited to be sharing the first of a new series of videos with Anna (Director of Psychology) and Tanya (Director of Nutrition) discussing each of the range of symptoms of ME and CFS from the perspectives of both departments at the clinic. These videos are a fascinating insight into the clinic’s truly integrative approach, whilst also really helping to understand how to best work with different symptoms and truly get to the bottom of them. The first video discusses Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and offers some powerful insightful perspectives.

The second of our videos this week is the latest instalment of Alex and Sanna live in Stockport. This video is the first of several videos from the talk taking questions live from the audience. Questions include extreme fainting in ME and CFS, and how to break out of boom and bust. As always, please do add your comments and questions to the videos.

Video Blog – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome CFS: The Stages of Treatment

Welcome to this week’s video blog. When the first draft of this was written, the sun was shining in London, England were still in the world cup and it hadn’t yet rained at Wimbledon. Alas, one of these has already changed at the time of sending. It just goes to show how much can change in twenty-four hours!

On a separate note(!) our first video this week is with Sanna from our nutrition team talking to Alex about the importance of approaching treatment on the nutrition side of the clinic in stages. For example, trying to do more “sexy” treatment programmes such as Mitochondrial treatment before dealing with the basics can not only be less cost effective, it can also actually slow down the treatment process. Alex and Sanna also discuss why patient specific treatment is so important and at the core of OHC values.

Our second video is the latest instalment from Alex and Sanna’s talk earlier this year in Stockport. In this video, Alex and Sanna talk about the role of adrenal fatigue in chronic fatigue and ME, along with its link with digestion.

Please do comment on our videos and post any additional questions you might have. Finally, thank you for those of you that have been asking about further transcripts of our videos. Just to let you know, we are on the case and plan to start adding them to our blog with next weeks newsletter. So, watch this space!

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome CFS: Talk from the Optimum Health Clinic part 1

Welcome to this week’s video blog. Our first video this week is the introduction to Alex and Sanna’s talk in Stockport a few weeks ago. Although the video finishes on a bit of a cliffhanger, we promise to bring you the next part very soon! In the video, Alex talks about his own recovery story, why depression is the result of M.E. as opposed to the cause, and explains what really motivated him to search for answers to his own recovery from CFS and ME.

We have recently had some feedback that some of you would prefer to read rather than watch our video newsletters, so, we have started the process of transcribing them for you. The first transcript is from Alex and Anna’s video a few weeks ago about emotions and ME, and is available to read here.

We are also now taking applications for our professional training courses starting in June 2010. These courses are an amazing opportunity to accelerate your recovery path on the psychology side, whilst also open up future career opportunities. A short video explaining more about the courses, along with our prospectus and information for patients is available at www.TheOptimumHealthClinic.com/training We have a few spaces left for our early booking discount of nearly 1/3 off the courses, so please do e-mail alex@TheOptimumHealthClinic.com asap if you are interested in finding out more about the discount and getting any questions answered.

Finally, Alex’s life changing seminar Conscious Transformation is running again next month for the only time this year. You can read all about the seminar at www.ConsciousTransformation.co.uk and if you decide to join our professional training courses, you will additionally receive a free place.

Inflammation and Chronic Fatigue Causes

Inflammation, as dubbed by Time Magazine, is one of the chronic fatigue causes and is a secret killer found to be the foundation for such diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, arthritis, heart attacks, Fibromyalgia, allergies, obesity and many more diseases. While many of these diseases are not related nor caused by the other, the one factor they all have in common is inflammation. Inflammation has become (epidemic).

Inflammation is an auto immune response. The body detects an invader, usually a virus, parasite or bacteria and sets of the mechanism to destroy them.  The body’s auto immune response does not decrease, making inflammation one of the chronic fatigue causes. It continues to attack thinking the invader is still present. Symptoms of chronic inflammation are swelling, pain, and redness at the point of irritation.

During the auto immune response pathogens are killed by free radicals. These are oxygen rich particles that injure and kill cells they come into contact with. When they are directed at the invading particles such as bacteria, virus or parasites this is a positive response. These free radicals rid the body of various diseases. When this free radical process goes unchecked, it becomes one of the great chronic fatigue causes, and the cells continue to be bombarded by free radicals to the point of destroying healthy tissue. The free radical process in its normal state is the process of aging. Where the imbalance occurs is when an individual gets one of the above mentioned diseases.

The body does have a natural defense against free radical attack. The presence of anti oxidants lessens the negative effect of free radicals. Chemically, free radicals are oxygen rich and anti oxidants is oxygen deficient. When these two particles come into contact they become stable. The body is no longer under attack and inflammation slows. For the chronic fatigue sufferer this means that the pain, swelling and redness decreases in their joints.

When the body does not have an adequate supply of anti oxidants, free radicals are out of balance and stress on the cellular level occurs. If left unchecked free radicals have a devastating effect on the cell membranes, blood vessels, joints, and nerve endings.

Inflammation is caused by poor eating habits. Type B malnutrition is a diet high in calories, but very low in nutrients. The result is obscenity accompanied by poor health that manifests into low grade infections including urinary tract infections, gum disease, Chlamydia and stomach ulcers. Inflammation becomes epidemic and is one of the major chronic fatigue causes.

Poor Gut health is caused by a poor diet. The immune system is centered in the intestines. If the health of the gut is poor, the immune system will be poor. A diet low in fiber and nutrients will cause an imbalance of good bacteria to bad. This condition is termed gut dysbiosis and is caused by too much sugar, white flour products and highly processed foods. A low fiber diet can lead to constipation which will prevent toxin and bad bacteria from leaving the body. The immune system suffers and can no longer protect the body. Chronic inflammation is the result.

Prolonged stress reduces the intestines ability to maintain a health balance which leads to low grade infection, parasites, attack from parasites, viruses and bacteria. Stress is one of the great chronic fatigue causes because it reduces the presence of cortisol which is a naturally occurring anti inflammatory hormone in the body.

Obesity causes inflammation because fat cells act like immune cells. The higher the concentration of fat cells the higher the concentration of an inflammatory immune response.

Free radical stress triggers the body’s immune response. These oxygen rich particles are aggressive against body tissue. When the invader is a bacterium, virus or parasite this attack is healthy, but left out of balance the present of free radicals can damage healthy tissue.

The environment plays a crucial role in the body’s bombardment from free radicals. The heavy metals-mercury and aluminum, exhaust fumes and pesticides cause a free radial response in the body. Too much sunlight causes sunburn and the body will send out the free radical immune response to heal the damaged skin. Sunburn is extremely painful on the joints and muscles.  Physical exercise causes a free radical response in the body. While a modest amount of exercise is healthy, extreme exercise is counter productive and unhealthy.

Hydrogenated and Trans fats produced from burning vegetable oils causes the release of free radicals. Over or highly processed food, deep fried foods and refined foods when eaten are filled with the broken down oils that create the free radical immune response in the body.

A diet low in anti oxidants becomes one of the chronic fatigue causes.  Foods that are rich in anti oxidants are organic fruits and vegetables.

The smartest approach for an individual suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome is to fight their disease with a nutritional approach. They should avoid foods that contain grain allergens such as: wheat and dairy from cows that have wheat as the mainstay of their diet. These allergens create a chronic inflammatory response in the body. Avoid white flour, sugar, foods high is starch content such as: potatoes. These foods lead to an increase in poor gut health by raising the level of bad bacteria which results in an increase of inflammation.

Reduce the consumption to 3 times per week or avoid altogether consuming red meat. Red meat is high in saturated fats that promote the free radical response in the body. Avoid carbonated beverages, coffee and tea as these are acid promoting and will increase inflammation.

Reduce foods that cause an allergic reaction. Common allergic foods are eggs, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, aubergines, plums, oranges, and rhubarb. These foods can trigger a reaction of swollen joints, stiffness, and achy muscles found in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms.

The second approach for individuals with Epstein Barr chronic fatigue is to increase those foods that decrease inflammation. Foods to increase are: Fish, lean organic chicken, turkey, and soy grass fed beef.  These foods help maintain a stable blood sugar and keep insulin levels balanced.

Increase the intake of alkalizing foods such as: cherries, carrots, apples, blackberries, cucumbers, pineapple, grapes, kiwi, bananas, kiwi, chard, mixed greens, and spinach.

Use olive oil instead of other vegetables for cooking. Olive oil will not break down and cause the free radical response that the other oils will. Increase intake of foods high in Omega 3 such as: tuna, herring, nuts, sardines, seeds, mackerel, walnuts, flax oil/seeds, and anchovies.

Nuts and seeds also contain Omega 6 which is anti inflammatory.

Foods high in vitamin D should be consumed daily as a deficient of vitamin D cause inflammation in the body. Foods with high concentrations of vitamin D are: eggs, cod liver oil, beef liver and meat, salmon, mackerel, tuna, and herring.

As an alternative to wheat, use rice, spelt, barley, millet, guinoa or amaranth.

Anti inflammatory spices such as cayenne, rosemary, and turmeric should be added to food whenever possible.

An alternative to dairy milk that was obtained from cows that consumed wheat is rice, almond or soy milk.

Lifestyle changes can help reduce inflammation for the patient with a chronic fatigue diagnosis. Proper mouth hygiene: daily brushing, flossing and rinsing will reduce the presence of gum disease.

A limit amount of sunshine daily from 20-30 minutes is healthy and will increase the absorption of vitamin D. Avoid sunburn, though as this is pro-inflammatory.

Increase physical exercise to 30-60 minutes up to 5 times a week. This increase in physical exercise will help lubricate the body’s joints, increase metabolism and strengthen muscles. If an individual with chronic fatigue syndrome exercised more than the recommended amount the effects can be unhealthy.

Create a plan for reducing stress. Added stress from the workplace, home, or social situations causes hormones to become imbalanced and that leads to inflammation.