How to Heal Your Gut: A Complete Guide

Waiting on the Lord

This article is part of my book Dance Your Way Through Life: The Ultimate Guide to Optimal Health. You can get the book here.

In this article we will review all of the priorities for healing your digestive center. In the words of the famous Dr. Bernard Jensen, Father of Colonics: “Death begins in the colon.” What this morbid quote also means is that life begins in the colon, too. This is why healing your center should be your first health priority. Use the following points along with your functional medicine doctor (or team) to develop a specific action plan that addresses your particular needs and your gut will thank you for many years to come.

My Gut Story

Colonoscopies are not fun, nor are they something to jump into unless you have serious cause — but did you know that I got a colonoscopy when I was just a few years old? Well, now you do. I later learned that my childhood gut issues were the result of many factors all intersecting into a perfect storm. I’m not allergic to dairy, but sometimes early casein exposure can trigger ear infections in small children.(1) This was probably the case with me, because I had lots of unexplained ear infections. These ear infections resulted in antibiotics, which decimated my gut as a child, and because I was also born C-section, that altogether lead to serious gut issues from the start of my journey.

Add this to the fact I was born with lower stomach acid and took antibiotics for various things throughout my life, and what you get is no surprise that SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and regularity issues were pretty common. Today my gut is doing much better, but it is an ongoing practice of discipline between eating right and keeping an intake of good, research-based products that can reduce inflammation and help promote a healthy microbiome.

Healing the gut is a complex process and it can sometimes be very nuanced. My goal with this article is to map out the basics and tools involved so that you can compose a plan that is relevant and effective. So the following are important pillars of gut health, in no particular order.

Heidelberg & HCL

Your stomach is a powerful furnace designed to crush and burn food so it can get absorbed into the fine membranes of your intestines. The harsh environment of a healthy stomach is also a check on pathogens and bacteria that you may have swallowed. This prevents colonization of your precious intestines by intruders, and keeps bad guys who already live there at bay like Candida or other bacteria.

There are many factors that can influence the levels of your stomach acid, and consequently, the pH of your stomach and early parts of your small intestine. Just this simple factor alone can be responsible for many health problems and age-related decline. Whether it’s stress, genes or nutritional insufficiencies, low stomach acid will result in undigested food entering your intestines where it is poorly processed, leading to less nutrition. The control of the stomach as a gatekeeper also weakens, changing the pH of those areas and allowing the overgrowth of certain bacteria. Since the gut is related to practically everything, this leads to all kinds of emotional and physical problems.

So, how do you know if you have low stomach acid? The gold standard is something called a Heidelberg stomach acid test. Don’t worry, you won’t be asked to crash any giant blimps into a nearby field, but you will have to swallow a little pill that can get an accurate reading of your stomach acid levels and generate data. Outside of this, there are more indirect and less accurate ways of evaluating stomach acid levels, like the baking soda test or taking an HCL supplement before a meal and observing the result. There is a theory that blood type associates with stomach acid levels, with A being the weakest and O being the strongest. Observe how you react after heavy amounts of protein and fat and notice what foods, if any, cause you upset.

To me, these are highly arbitrary and a waste of time when you can get ultimate certainty through a simple test. With these matters it helps to work with a functional medicine doctor who can help you determine to what extent your HCL production may need support. If you do go with supplementation, finding a comprehensive option that has betaine HCL, pepsin and some digestive bitters (herbs that stimulate the natural digestive process) would be ideal. Doctor’s Best on Amazon has a good option. If you can’t find one with digestive bitters then try to find a product with at least the first two because pepsin works to process proteins, and it’s activated by hydrochloric acid (HCL) in your stomach.

For some people, this intervention alone is enough to drastically alter their nutrition and lifestyle. Whether you end up using HCL intermittently or for life will be determined by what’s going on and how you keep track of it. It’s worthwhile to note that many people who suffer from acid reflux actually have a low stomach acid problem.(2,3) How does this work? The burning sensation you feel when you have acid reflux is because stomach acid is burning your esophagus (the tube connecting your stomach to your mouth). One way this can happen is that the undigested food in your stomach (from having low stomach acid) forces the production of extra gas which can be experienced as heartburn.

Another reason is that fats relax the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) valve.(4) Fats are digested slower than proteins and carbs, triggering your poor little stomach to produce more acid, and with the valve being open, that acid can reflux back upwards creating heartburn. The problem with modern patent medicine is that it sees these issues as black and white, giving many people with low stomach acid dangerous drugs that further lower their stomach acid and ruin their digestion. In these cases, the focus should be first on eating high-quality foods, and then adding in supplemental digestive support for the proteins and fats to mitigate gas or help the body break down the meal faster. Betaine HCL and digestive enzymes after a meal will finish the job.

Unfortunately, most doctors don’t know these things and they just throw antacids at a person’s problem without further investigation or dancing. In October of 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed against one of these popular antacid interventions (Zantac), alleging that it led to the creation of a cancerous chemical byproduct in the stomach. Yum. Besides this extreme example, antacids can cause a whole host of problems because they don’t actually help realign your digestive system, especially if you have low stomach acid and are misdiagnosed. If used long term, they can create dependency, increase your likelihood of infection or cancer and can be a source of toxins like aluminum.(5)

In the end it’s important to do your homework and explore all of your options. Having an aligned digestive system is of utmost priority for your health and the link to every other health outcome you want. You do not get another stomach, so treat it well and give it all the love and support it needs.

In the above sample you can see a few important things. The green represents the pH being detected, with higher being alkaline and lower being acid. When I swallowed the pill it detected acidity, which is good and normal. But then comes the alkaline test, where you swallow some nasty bicarbonate fluid to challenge your stomach to re-acidify. As you can see it took about 33 minutes for the stomach to get back to a low pH. For someone that is no compromised in this area, the time should be about 15-20 minutes. Anything between 30-45 minutes and you have impaired digestion for whatever reason, whether it is genetic or nutritional or something else.

Another thing that is measured is the gastric emptying time, or gut motility. In my case either the pill was a little stuck or my stomach was pretty grouchy and slow that morning, as you can see I waited about another 30 minutes for the pill to move into the small intestine and begin rising in pH (since the small intestine is more alkaline). So between these three measures (starting pH, reacidification time and gastric emptying time) a Heidelberg test can look at several core factors of digestion and help you take proactive action.

Generally, dosage for betaine HCL ranges around 500-750mg per pill and some may need just one while others may need a few. Take betaine HCL after you are done eating, not before. If your stomach gets too hot, you’ve reached your limit so take one less pill as your dosage.

As for improving reacidification time, the cause may be genetic or it may be nutritional. If you are already on a comprehensive nutritional plan, it is likely genetic. Gastric emptying time can be improved with gut motility supporters, like ginger. I have some organic ginger sitting around in a serving box and I take 1/4 TSP after my major meals to help keep the gut moving.