The body is intelligent and that is the premise I use to explain what is going on for health. Does the body know when it wants oxygen and remove CO2 yes it has you breath and if you need more your body has you breath faster. Like when exercising. Does the body know when you need rest yes it has you sleep. Does the body know when it needs water yes it makes you thirsty. All these are obvious and if you fight against them you lose. Does your body know when it need nutrition Yes it has you eat? If what you ate did not give you the nutrition your body needs it has you eat again. It will have you eat until it has the nutrition it needs. There is a clinically recognized diseased call pica and normally caused by a deficiency of a mineral or minerals when this happens the people eat nonfood items like dirt, paint, stuff in the cats litter box and so on. Now if those things are not available but the fridge is full of food and you eat that it is not called pica even if the cause is the same. Think about it and does it make sense? no. What happens if you have a problem in digesting food and you cannot get the nutrition your body needs. Your body will have you eat until it gets what it needs. There is two basic reason you are not getting nutrition one is you are not eating it second is you are not absorbing it. Calories and sugar are very easy to absorb by your digestion but others are much harder some complicated vitamins and fats. Have a look at some common chronic ailments. High blood pressure is there a reason for it probably yes. If you exercise the blood pressure goes up because the body requires it. If the blood flow through the kidneys is not sufficient the kidney put out a hormone called renin which tells the body to increase blood pressure. If the body is under stress like fight or flight the body increases the blood pressure. There is many things that the body when it needs more blood will trigger high blood pressure. Then if these things are happening is it a good idea to take a drug to force the body to decrease blood pressure without looking for the cause? Pain is a way of the body telling you that there is a problem is it good to take a drug to relieve the pain without looking for the reason it is there? If you had acid reflux would it be right to neutralize the acid without knowing why it was there? Drugging a problem away over and over is insanity. They say insanity is doing something over and over and expecting a different result.
In the case of acid reflux, I'd have to say yes neutralizing acid is a good thing whether you "know the cause" or not. Continued episodes of acid reflux can irreparably damage the esophagus leading to more severe problems, and even cause cancer in extreme cases. It would be preferable to know the cause but in any case, neutralizing the acid is a good idea.
I don't know of any reflux treatment that would remove ALL stomach acid. Most antacids neutralize excess acid, and the PPIs block some acid production.
Sorry, I'm not watching some 30 minute video from another peddler. I know the causes of acid reflux. From WebMD... At the entrance to your stomach is a valve, which is a ring of muscle called the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). Normally, the LES closes as soon as food passes through it. If the LES doesn't close all the way or if it opens too often, acid produced by your stomach can move up into your esophagus. This can cause symptoms such as a burning chest discomfort called heartburn. If acid reflux symptoms happen more than twice a week, you may have acid reflux disease, also known as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).
Your right but you did not go far enough to find when the acid reaches the right level that valve closes. The PH of the stomach is or should be 1 to 1.5 for proper digestion. If you get your information from drug companies you get what they want to sell.
I watched the video, @Martin Alonzo and found it pretty good. I differ on a few points and found that, as complex as he detailed it, he still simplified it. @Beth Gallagher I can guarantee that the process is more complicated than is outlined on WebMD, as that is written for the most part for lay readers with minimal medical education. Anyway, I have related in part my wife's issues with GERD. Her MD, who for the most part was reasonable and educated, put her on PPIs for almost 2 decades to control her GERD symptoms. What resulted was severe digestive issues that endangered her life. She used to sneak out in the middle of the night and use heat on her abdomen to relieve the pain she was in. She was always gulping something or other to relive the pain. I persuaded her to see another doctor (integrative medicine) who was an internist who was trained in natural methods as well. He simply gave her a few drugs to relieve the infections that had developed in her upper intestine, and put her on an exclusion diet. She went through the regimen and after two weeks of excluding most foods from her diet until many of her symptoms subsided, she began to add one food at a time to see what caused symptoms She had severe reactions to rice and all forms of flour, even many gluten-free varieties. Dairy products caused problems and lactose-free products were not much better. After being on high dose of PPIs for years, she is now off all the digest drugs and is healthier than she has been in may years. The video's contention that you cannot supply your mineral needs from diet was very wrong, however. If you eat kelp and seafood, elements will be obtained that would not be in a land-based diet.
Probably. I don't know what it is or where it was harvested. Some people pulverize it and mix it with salt. I also buy it in 50-pound bags and use it in my fertilizer mix to grow my food. I don't know if you watched the entire video, @Frank Sanoica, but the guy made a few points and explained some of the feedback mechanisms involved in the stomach and digestion. He made some assumptions and statements that were not complete, but it was good as far as it went. He promoted iodized salt, which is better than no iodine but KCl is not the optimum iodine to use for supplementation. It is just the cheapest and easiest. We have good stuff here, but the story is that the Korean community here was harvesting so much kelp that it was destroying the kelp beds, so the state put a stop to it. We also have glacial silt, which is good as fertilizer, but not so good as food. The presenter's nutrient claims were the big flaw in his video. There are many minerals needed for health, and the are, for the most part depleted, but his claim that it is impossible to obtain them without supplements simply isn't true if you have access to food from the ocean. Almost all of the body's enzyme systems require cofactors, most of which are trace minerals such as zinc, cobalt, vanadium, chromium, etc., but they usually act as catalysts and are not consumed, so the only intake need if you have a good base to begin with is to replace those lost through excretion, perspiration, etc.