NSAIDs and proton pump inhibitors, common over-the-counter drugs for heartburn and pain, may damage your gut lining and mitochondria, potentially triggering inflammation and heart problems.
These drugs are actually one of the best ways to create leaky gut that anybody ever came up with. And this was known about by the drug companies when they were introduced in the 1970s. In fact, it was so well known that by law, you couldn't take these drugs for over two weeks period of time because they were so dangerous with that effect. Now, of course, we eat them like candy. And so anytime we produce leaky gut, we produce inflammation. And that inflammation in turn actually produces more pain. And if you have more pain, you'll take more of these drugs and the cycle continues. Yeah. So one of the things that I really urge people to do is get these seemingly harmless NSAIDs, ibuprofen, Aleve, Naprosyn, out of their medicine cabinets. The second group in the same box are the PPIs, the proton pump inhibitors. Yeah. Now, to take people back to high school biology class, we actually make energy in mitochondria by pumping protons across the mitochondrial membranes. When proton pump inhibitors like Nexium, like Prilosec, like protonix came out, they were a miracle in terms of the treatment of ulcers because we had something to stop stomach acid production. But like any good idea, when we then make them easy to obtain for the treatment of heartburn, What we didn't know was that these things were not specific for the proton pumps in the stomach. They affect all proton pumps. Proton pumps are what drive mitochondrial function. When we poison the mitochondria in our heart and specifically poison the mitochondria in our brain with proton pump inhibitors, It's no wonder that congestive heart failure strongly correlates with proton pump inhibitors, and NSAIDs strongly correlates with proton pump inhibitors, all for the sake of relieving heartburn.
