Functional medicine doctors and nutritionists have been telling patients this for years. Why? We knew that the body needs stomach acid in order to properly absorb minerals and break down proteins. It's why TUMS is a very bad form of calcium, because it neutralizes stomach acid thereby reducing the likelihood of being absorbed. For this same reason, anemia is quite common because iron is one of those minerals that needs stomach acid to be absorbed.
The terrible part of this news story is that they reveal that patients should not be on an acid reducing medication for longer than three 14 day bouts per year. That amounts to 42 days of these drugs for a 365 day year (about 15%). We all know people that "HAVE" to take these medications every day. It's a dilemma.
My approach is always very simple, figure out what is causing the stomach's sensitivity to acid and then take care of that. There's that old doctor joke that says "doctor doctor it hurts when i raise my arm" and the doctor responds with "stop raising your arm." Prilosec, Nexium, Prevacid, and Aciphex all function the same way. Doctor, doctor... it hurts when I secrete stomach acid. Only to have the doctor reply, "here take this and you won't secrete stomach acid any more." Inherently, the mind goes to that place: wasn't I secreting that stomach acid for a reason?
Hmmm.
