The sad reality is that very few of the people taking this Prilosec actually need it. Prilosec and Nexium are proton pump inhibitors and like H2 blockers (Tagamet and Zantec) they effectively decrease your stomach’s ability to produce stomach acid. If you have an ulcer or inflammation in your stomach lining this can be remarkably effective at reducing or eliminating the pain--for the short term.

Please understand that none of these drugs do absolutely anything to treat the cause of the problem. What they do achieve, however, is causing you to have an incredible reliance on these medications for continued pain relief. The proton pump inhibitors are particularly notorious for this. It is exceedingly difficult to get off of them once they have been used for awhile. I never advise patients to stop any of the proton pump inhibitors cold turkey.

There's a phenomenon associated with these drugs called acid rebound. Because they slam the brakes on the acid-producing pumps in your stomach, when you stop taking them, that built-up acid can be unleashed.

When the acid rebound occurs the pain comes back with a vengeance. Even if there's no full-scale rebound, most people have some recurrence of symptoms because the proton pump inhibitors are powerful enough to let them resume bad habits. So what I typically do with my patients is switch them to an H2 blocker like Zantac, which has far less problems with acid rebound, and then they phase off that as their symptoms improve by modification of their diet.

Please don’t read the article I ran on Nexium, as the investigative journalists at the Boston Globe describe the hidden facts about Nexium and Prilosec that they don’t want you to know. The reason I don’t want you to read it? If you have an ulcer it might anger you so much you might have a flare up.

At the time the article was written prescriptions for Prilosec in the United States were more than $4 billion per year. That is one of the primary reasons that this travesty is allowed to continue. The sums of money we are talking about are absolutely extraordinary and it’s not surprising to observe extraordinary efforts to preserve this income stream.

Why You Want to Avoid Prilosec and Other Heartburn Medications

Heartburn medications such as Prilosec and Nexium can impair your digestion by significantly reducing the amount of acid in your stomach--this impairs your ability to properly digest food and actually makes your ulcers worse. Reduction of acid in the stomach also diminishes your primary defense mechanism for food-borne infections, thereby increasing your risk of food poisoning.

Additionally, if you fail to digest and absorb your food properly, you will not only increase your risk of stomach atrophy but also nearly every other chronic degenerative disease. So it doesn’t matter whether you obtain these medications from a doctor or buy them over the counter, they will still impair your health.

Avoid Drugs, Solve the Root Problem

When you are using the wrong solution for a problem, there is a high likelihood you may have unwanted and even unexpected complications or side effects. Therefore, my best advice to you is avoid using drugs whenever possible, for it is best to solve the root problem instead. How can you do this? Well, for starters follow this six-step process:

• One of the most potent solutions for improving the health of your stomach would be to optimize the good bacteria there. You can take large amounts of a high-quality probiotic. Alternatively, you can obtain some raw milk and let it stand overnight until it turns into kefir. The raw milk kefir is an absolutely amazing healing agent for your gut and inoculates it with trillions of good bacteria that actually help to repair the injured tissue. The bacteria also produce loads of vitamin K2 for free that further improves your health.

• Learn your nutritional type and follow a solid eating plan tailored to your specific type. If you don't know your type, please take my free online test now.

• Drink adequate amounts of clean water.

• Eliminate sugars and grains from your diet. The sugar and grains are one of the worst foods you could eat as they will have a profoundly negative influence on the beneficial bacteria in your gut and will seriously impair the healing process. Additionally, many people have subclinical gluten intolerance (celiac disase) so many will not improve the ulcer until they stop eating gluten grains.

• Eat one to two cloves of fresh, raw garlic per day to eradicate H. pylori, a factor for many with heartburn.

• Juice fresh red cabbage as this is particularly healing to the gut. However, please note that many people (especially protein nutritional types) do not tolerate large amounts of fresh vegetable juices.
  

Juice fresh red cabbage as this is particularly healing to the gut. However, please note that many people (especially protein metabolic types) do not tolerate large amounts of fresh vegetable juices.

Related Articles:

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Why Inhibiting Acid Production With Prilosec and Prevacid Could Make Ulcers Worse

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How to Cure Your Heartburn Now That Prilosec Will Go Over the Counter (OTC)