Much like antibiotics, heartburn drugs of all kinds are grossly over-prescribed. According to most health care professionals, perhaps one in a hundred people actually need these drugs, while 99 out of 100 really need to change their diets and/or use harmless alternatives.
There are probably as many natural remedies for hyper-acidity as there are prescription drugs, so one has many choices. If you are not sure what to do, a natural health care professional will be able to help.
Since stress, poor lifestyle choices such as cigarette smoking, and physical inactivity can cause hyper-acidity as well as just about any disorder, efforts should definitely be made to make major changes in these areas.
Too many people in the U.S. may be taking stomach-acid-suppressing drugs such as Nexium and Prevacid, new research suggests. The drugs, known as proton pump inhibitors, help those with serious stomach and digestive problems, but the risks may outweigh the benefits for people with less serious conditions, experts say.
Proton pump inhibitors can have rare but serious side effects, including an increased risk of bacterial infection and bone fracture, according to several new studies in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Proton pump inhibitors are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S. In 2009, they were the third-largest class of drug in the country with $13.6 billion in sales, representing more than 110 million prescriptions, according to IMS Health, a health-care market research firm.
Nexium and Prevacid (which is also available as a generic drug, lansoprazole) are the two most popular proton pump inhibitors, according to the most recent government data. Other drugs in the class include Prilosec, Zegerid, Protonix, and Aciphex.
“These medications definitely have benefits for a vast number of patients, but they also carry some really meaningful risks of diseases that can be catastrophic,” says Dr. Michael Howell, the lead author of one of the studies and the director of critical-care quality at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “Every doctor should look at every patient and give them the lowest level of gastric acid suppression that they think is safe. For many patients, that would be none.”
According to Dr. Mitchell H. Katz of the San Francisco Department of Public Health in an editorial accompanying the reports, which were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Katz noted that 113.4 million prescriptions for the drugs, known as proton pump inhibitors, are written each year, and large numbers are sold without prescriptions.
The widely used family of acid-reducing drugs that includes Prilosec, Nexium and Protonix increases the risk of bone fractures by about 25% and can more than double the risk of contracting the troublesome bacterium Clostridium difficile, new studies released Monday confirm.
The increased risk is not thought to be caused by the drugs themselves, but by the sharply reduced levels of acid in the stomach and intestinal tract, which make the organs a more hospitable environment for infectious agents like C. difficile and which can impair the uptake of the calcium required for strong bones.
The drugs have also been shown to increase the risk of pneumonia.
The family of drugs, which also includes Losec, Zegerid, Prevacid and omeprazole, is widely used to treat conditions in which excess stomach acid causes pain and bleeding, including ulcers, and gastroesophageal reflux disease, in which stomach acid is regurgitated into the esophagus. But the drugs are also widely used to treat simple heartburn, and that is the condition for which they are most widely overused, experts said.
“Harm will result if these commonly used medications are prescribed for conditions for which there is no benefit, such as non-ulcer dyspepsia [heartburn],” Dr. Deborah Grady and Dr. Rita F. Redberg of UC San Francisco said in another editorial.
Among the findings of the reports:
Pharmacologist Shelly L. Gray of the University of Washington and her colleagues studied 130,487 women in the Women’s Health Initiative. After an average of eight years of follow-up, they found a 47% increase in spinal fractures and a 26% increase in forearm and wrist fractures but no increase in hip fractures. Overall, the increased risk of fractures was 25%.
Dr. Michael D. Howell of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and his colleagues studied more than 100,000 patients discharged from hospitals over a five-year period. They found that incidence of infection with C. difficile increased with increasing doses of proton pump inhibitors. The hard-to-treat bacterium causes severe diarrhea and other medical problems and can be deadly if not properly treated. About 0.3% of those who received no proton pump inhibitors during their stay contracted C. difficile infections, whereas about 1.4% of those taking the most powerful drugs at least twice a day contracted the bacterium, a 366% increase.
Dr. Amy Linsky of Boston Medical Center and her colleagues studied 1,166 patients being treated for C. difficile infections. They found that 25.2% of those who were taking proton pump inhibitors suffered a recurrence of their infection, compared with 18.5% of those who were not taking the drugs, a 36% increase in risk.
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Try the natural alternatives:
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With respect to diet, the best thing to do is eat frequent small meals throughout the day instead of the usual 3 large meals. Drink more spring or purified water to help dilute acid excess. Therapeutic vegetable juices include carrot, spinach, beet, cucumber, parsley, celery, cabbage and potato. These should be used liberally throughout the day (2 quarts daily). Raw potato juice just before breakfast can help reduce acid regurgitation. Avoid red meat, alcohol, hot sauces, spicy and fried foods, added salt, caffeine products, sugar and refined carbohydrate products.
If you use aspirin, replace it with white willow bark capsules. At least this will not further aggravate the discomfort.
A large number of people suffer from hyperacidity because of an allergy to milk protein (casein) or gluten found in most grains. Food allergy or sensitivity testing might be a good idea in the more stubborn cases failing to respond to other diet and supplement changes.
Supplements that have a healing effect against H. pylori include garlic, wild mountain oregano oil, berberine, lactobacillus acidophilus and other probiotics, bovine colostrum, essential fatty acids (flax seed oil, cod liver oil, salmon oil, evening primrose oil, borage oil), licorice root tincture or herbal tea, choline, lecithin, PABA, bismuth, bentonite, goldenseal, slippery elm, burdock, manuka honey, ginger root, mastic gum and aloe vera juice.
It should be noted here that the long-term use of licorice can elevate blood pressure in some sensitive individuals. The glycyrrhetinic acid component of licorice is what is responsible for this potential side effect. The best way of getting around this problem while still taking advantage of licorice’s ability to protect the gastrointestinal lining from acid irritation is to use deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL). Many herbal brands manufacture DGL, a supplement widely available at most health food stores and pharmacies specializing in natural remedies.
The four herb combination of burdock, slippery elm, Turkish rhubarb and sheep sorrel (a.k.a. Essiac) is effective for a wide range of gut problems including hiatus hernia, duodenal ulcers, gastritis, colitis, Crohn’s disease, non-specific indigestion, irritable bowel syndrome, hemorrhoids and bowel infections. It can be used alone or in combination with DGL, aloe vera juice or prescription medications in more resistant cases. Check with your doctor or naturopath for a personalized treatment regime.
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