Dr. Diane Mueller (host of the Microbes and Mental Health summit) explains links between stomach acid, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disorder), and food sensitivities. She describes lower esophageal sphincter physiology and argues that low stomach acid—not only excess—can cause reflux by preventing proper sphincter closure; about 80% of people may improve when given stomach acid. She warns against long-term acid suppression, notes poor digestion increases risk of food reactivity, and highlights the gut microbiome and T regulatory cells (plus vitamin D/A) as important for restoring tolerance; strict avoidance for ~6 months may allow sensitivities to resolve.
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Hey, everybody. In this video, we're going to talk about food reactivity and gerd. GERD is gastroesophageal reflux disorder. And one of the things I want to focus on this with this conversation is stomach acid. So I'm Dr. Diane Mueller. I recently hosted the summit called Microbes and Mental Health. And I've been answering questions on this channel that have come in that I think are really useful for a wider population. So when we're talking about food reactivities and gerd, there's a few different things to talk about here. Now, stomach acid. So oftentimes people think of stomach acid as bad, right? Like too much stomach acid, it can come up, it can lead to gerd, to heartburn, to ulcers, to esophageal cancer, to all these different things, right? But here's the thing. We need stomach acid in order to digest our food. If we don't have stomach acid, we don't break down our food, we don't get the nutrients out of our food, and we have a lot of gastrointestinal problems. Now, a lot of times when we're trying to treat things like food reactions or gerd, people are given antacids. One of the problems with this is understanding how the physiology, how the mechanisms of the esophagus and the stomach work. So coming down the esophagus, we have a lower esophageal scale, sphincter. Sphincter is a muscle that opens and closes in kind of a round like fashion. So we have this sphincter that opens and closes like this, that connects the esophagus to the stomach. So typically, we want this sphincter to remain closed that prevents acid from the stomach to leak into that esophage. It prevents that from happening so that the acid essentially stays in the stomach where we want it to be. So what can happen for people when they are having heartburn, when they're having reflux, is that sphincter is not totally closed and then acid starts coming up. Here's what's really interesting. The signal to that sphincter, one of the signals of actually closing is having enough stomach acid. So if you have low stomach acid, what can happen is that sphincter can remain slightly open and then some of the little bit of stomach acid that you have actually comes back up. So for most people, for about 80% of people, they actually do better. And their GERD resolves by giving stomach acid, not by taking it away. And that's because of that sphincter Closing now. There are some people that legitimately do have too much stomach acid. And for those people, things like protein pump inhibitors may be useful while you're getting to the root, but not good to use long term, right? We don't want to suppress our acid long term because that means we're not digesting our food long term, right? That means we're not now we're not getting our nutrients. And when it comes to things like food sensitivities, if our food is entering our intestinal tract where it's not very broken down because we don't have stomach acid and we don't have proper digestion, our body has a higher likelihood of actually reacting to that food. We want to make sure that food is being broken down because that is one thing that is going to change sensitivities. Another thing that's going to change sensitivities is making sure our gut microbiome is healthy, right? That is our immune system. We have a process in our body called T regulatory cells. T regulatory cells train the immune system to recognize things that are not our own cells, but also not bad. So we have this tagging mechanism in our immune system, right? So we tag things as like human cell, don't attack, immune system, bad immune system, attack. And then there's something in the middle where not human, but not bad also don't attack. That's where food sits in. So our T regulatory cells help with this process. They regulate our immune system, so help prevent it from attacking parts of our body or our food that aren't supposed to be attacked. And one of the things that helps our T regulatory cells work is the health of our microbiome. So with food sensitivities, oftentimes if you're reacting to things, it's good to get them out, out of your body to heal leaky gut. But it's also really good to get your microbiome working to properly help T regulatory cells. Other things that have been shown to help T regulatory cells function are things like vitamin D and vitamin A. So we can think about some of those to get our T regulatory cells working. Oftentimes after being very strict about a food for about six months, then sometimes if it's a sensitivity, not an allergy, then we can typically bring those foods back in and we see sensitivities go down, the stricter you are about that, the more chance it has to repair. And remember, you know, whether we're talking about gerd, whether we're talking about food sensitivities, we're talking about these inflammatory processes, and we're talking about mental health when we're talking about fibro pain, headaches, any of these different things. Lowering the inflammatory processes by getting some of these root causes fixed is going to contribute to the puzzle picture for the overarching things. Remember, your body is connected. What's happening in your gut is going to impact other areas of your body, so keep that in mind. The these are some helpful things for you guys to try. Please keep asking your questions. It helps me curate good content. Surprise. Subscribe to this channel if it's helpful, and please don't keep me a secret. Please tell your friends and family about this channel if it's helpful. All right, See you next time.
