Taking Acid Reflux Medication
Is a Really Bad Decision

If you are taking Acid Reflux Medication, you might want to really pay attention to this, because your health might just depend upon it. Heartburn drugs and acid reflux medicine, especially those knows as Proton Pump Inhibitors, or PPI’s, are seriously bad news for your long term health and can affect just about everything from your gut, to your bones, to your heart, to your brain.

It’s ironic that these drugs are considered so safe that they are one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States, because the more research that is done, the more and more dangerous side effects they seem to have.

The problem is that these drugs are only intended to be given short term, for a few weeks or less. That is what they are supposed to be prescribed for, but more and more people are remaining on them for years and even decades.

Since they were never intended for long-term use, few studies were done to find out the consequences of taking acid reflux medication for longer than a few weeks at a time. Now these heartburn drugs have been on the market long-enough to find out what happens over the long term, studies are showing just how damaging to your health these drugs can be.

Types of Acid Reflux Medication

There are actually several ‘classes’ of acid reflux medication that act in quite different ways. We’ll go over them by their classes just briefly, and each of them have their own set of side effects, so I’ll refer you to the individual page of each drug or class to provide you with more information.

Proton Pump Inhibitors: You can read more about them on the Omeprazole Side Effects page.
H2 Receptor Blockers like Ranidine and Cimetidine
Carafate
Tums
Baking Soda

The last two aren’t really acid reflux medicine, but they are often used for acid reflux, so I included them here because they are acid reducing substances.

Each of these drugs have their own set of problems that, if you are interested in, you can click on the link to each drug, if it’s blue and underlined, to learn more specific information about them. However, on this page, we’ll merely be going over the problems that occur when acid is lowered.

The Consequences of Lowering Acid

While this should be self-evident, these drugs lower acid levels in the stomach. They generally do this quite well, and for most people, they provide relief of heartburn. While that seems great, almost no one thinks of the long-term consequences of lowering acid in the stomach, they only focus on the relief that they feel and not WHY they were experiencing heartburn in the first place, or what the consequences are of lowering acid levels. But they should think about this, since their health may very well depend upon it.

The many dangers of acid reflux medication.

The stomach is SUPPOSED to be acidic. In healthy people, the stomach is nearly as acidic as battery acid. There are many good reasons the stomach is as acidic as it is, including:

Killing parasites, bacteria, and viruses that enter the body in the food and drinks we eat
The production of nitric oxide
Absorption of nutrients, such as Calcium and Vitamin B12
Keeping the small intestinal environment favorable to Good Bacteria
Triggering the muscle between the esophagus and stomach to keep tightly closed

When anti reflux medication is taken, it disrupts this delicate balance of the gastrointestinal system and can lead to serious nutritional deficiencies such as:

Low Calcium Levels
B12 deficiencies that can lead to: Elevated MCV Blood Levels, Macrocytosis, fatigue, Hyperhomocystenemia, or even Alzheimers Disease from Your Antacid
Magnesium Depletion

As well, these Antacids Can Ruin Your Gut and allow pathogens like the H Pylori Bacteria to colonize the stomach and cause more nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, and Increased Intestinal Permeability that can lead to ‘incurable’ chronic illnesses such as autoimmune diseases.

Nitric Oxide is a potent regulator of blood pressure and mucus production in the stomach that is created from certain foods, but only in the presence of high acid levels. Decreasing nitric oxide production through acid reflux medicine or using Anti Bacterial Mouthwash can and does lead to heart disease.

Acid Reflux is Not Normal

Everything in the body is connected and built to work a certain way. You cannot do things to the body, such as lower acid levels in the stomach, and not expect to have negative consequences. What doctors and patients should be doing is not figuring out how to lower acid levels when someone experiences heartburn, but seeking to find out the cause of heartburn instead of simply throwing acid reflux medications at the problem.

You lived your life just fine for many years with high acid levels in your stomach. High acid levels are not the problem, they are critical to the proper functioning of the body. A few common problems that are almost always overlooked as causing Stomach Burning are:

Ironically, in the vast majority of cases, high acid levels are not the problem, but too LOW acid levels are the problem. The solution, that is very counterintuitive, is to Increase Stomach Acid through methods such as diet and supplements.

If you are experiencing heartburn and exploring acid reflux medication to solve it, I urge you to first consider getting tested and treated for the H Pylori Bacteria, if you have it, and getting the Acid Reflux Remedy and follow the program to see if that solves your problem. Taking heartburn drugs long-term is not a real solution, and will almost certainly lead to worse health problems later on.