Episode 418: The Acid Reflux Episode: GERD, H. Pylori & the Root Cause Deep Dive
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
If acid reflux keeps showing up, the answer isn’t always “too much acid” and it’s not always as simple as popping antacids either.
In this replay episode, Erin breaks down what might actually be driving reflux, from the way digestion moves through the body to the little valve between your stomach and esophagus that can let acid sneak back up where it does not belong.
She also gets into why stress, overeating, pregnancy, gut imbalances, bile, sleeping position, and even old emotional patterns can all be part of the picture.
If you’ve been avoiding spaghetti sauce, waking up with burning in your chest, or wondering whether H. pylori is the reason for EVERYTHING, this episode will help you zoom out and look at the bigger digestive picture.
P.S. Check out Erin’s FREE Digestive Guide to learn the real reasons behind low stomach acid.
In this episode:
What cocktails, coffee, chocolate, peppermint, overeating, pregnancy, and certain medications all have in common
The “one-trick pony” problem with running a GI-MAP and calling it root cause care
Why acid-blocking drugs are meant for short-term use, and what happens when stomach acid gets suppressed
Why bitters are one of Erin’s favorite tools for getting digestive juices flowing (plus, the treatment strategies she recommends)
Resources mentioned:
Get Erin’s FREE Digestive Guide.
Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort of The Funk’tional Nutrition Academy are now open! If you’re ready to become a certified functional health practitioner, apply now.
Uncover the hidden root causes behind bloating, fatigue, and hormone imbalances with The Gut Panel.
Join Erin’s 20 day audio course, Manifest Your Wealth to rewrite your money stories and bring more abundance into your life.
Manifest Your Health is our neuroscience backed membership designed to help you reconnect with your body, regulate your nervous system, and finally break out of the symptom loop. You can join anytime for less than $2 a day.
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Happy July. I'm taking a couple of weeks off from the podcast so I can soak up all the main sun, but that doesn't mean you have to. Today we're pulling another episode out of the Vault because it's something we talk about legitimately every single day in practice with our clients. Over half of our clients come to us with some type of gut or digestive issue. So think bloating, ibs, sibo, constipation and acid reflux is a huge one we see. We can often see root causes of GERD and reflux on our gut panel, which is a stool test and analysis that you can purchase anytime using the link in our show notes. But today I'm going to go even deeper than that into deeper root causes, both physical and if you stay all the way to the end, you'll hear me talk about the emotional aspects too. If you've got chronic acid reflux, you really want to make sure to stay to the end because emotional root drivers of our chronic symptoms can be such a big piece of our overall health puzzle that we just don't give credence to. If you are looking to explore more of the mental, emotional and energetic roots of your symptoms, that is exactly what we do inside our Manifest Your Health membership and app. Right now we have over 200 people rewiring their health from the inside out and you can join anytime for less than $2 a day. So lots of different factors can contribute to acid reflux and gerd. Let's get into them all today.
Welcome to the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast, spelled with a K because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach creating a new model that I call Intuitive Functional Medicine where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal and this show is going to show you how to if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend because you never know whose life you might change.
Erin Holt:
Hello my friends. I am genuinely so happy to be here with you today.
Gratitude is on my mind in a major way. Hopefully I don't start crying. I just, I kind of felt the little pricks behind my eyeballs and I'm like, oh, am I gonna. Am I gonna cry? Am I gonna do it? We are halfway through Manifest yout Wealth, which is my money mind, and it is About a lot more than money. I will say that we are, we have a private community group and part of this, the work that we do is what I call abundance mining or sharing wins. So a lot of people over the past couple of weeks have been sharing their wins, have been sharing their successes and to witness the transformation in the major league shifts that are taking place. We're not just talking about making money, we're talking about so much more than this. One of the first questions that I ask folks is if you could describe your relationship 2 money into receiving in one word, what would that word be? And a lot of people said avoidance.
And the thing about that is we can't really change what we're in avoidance of. So the fact that people are looking at this stuff head on, talking about it, thinking about it, even sitting down with their partners to discuss this stuff, this is really, really big work. And it's just an honor to be the guide through all of this, the vessel that gets to bring this work out into the world. It kind of didn't make a lot of sense because I don't know if I've shared this with you all here, but the end of last year, in the beginning of this year were very, there was a lot going on, a lot of company changes, a lot of infrastructure changes. And so we just had a lot going on. I also hired two new agencies and we had just closed down at the beginning of February. We had just closed down the enrollment for the Functional Nutrition Collective and I was gearing up to open the cart for the Functional Nutrition Academy, my practitioner training academy. And so it just did not make sense on paper to birth, to create and to launch a brand new program.
In the middle of all of that, my team was like, my marketing agency was like, ah. But I just, I was like, you guys, I have to do it. It's like the head is crowning. This baby needs to be birthed. It needs to come earthside, like now. And I'm so, so, so glad I listened to that internal drive because now I get to see the fruits of my labor, which is so many people benefiting from this work. And I'm just really, really happy. And by the way, you can still, absolutely still purchase that.
I believe I'm just going to leave the cart open. I don't really know what's with it, but for now it is still available and so you can join, you can jump in anytime. But all that to say, gratitude is on my mind and I want to let you know how grateful I am for you here, your presence here. It is really cool that I get to be part of your life in some capacity, even if I don't know you irl in some kind of weird way. I am a part of your life if you're listening to this podcast. So thank you, I guess is really what I wanna say. I appreciate you.
So today we're gonna talk about reflux. How's that for a segue? I have been promising you all another H. Pylori episode and that is coming for sure. Before I did that, I wanted to back up a couple clicks and do an episode on reflux first because reflux can be a symptom of H. Pylori and what I don't want to happen is I don't want everyone listening, diagnosing themselves with H. Pylori and googling H. Pylori treatment and putting themselves unnecessarily on a bunch of antimicrobial herbs. I don't want that to happen. Especially because some of these herbs can be caustic to the mucosa and can actually make reflux worse.
But also because I think we're really potentially over treating H. Pylori in the functional medicine space, especially anyone running GI maps. So I thought it was really important to start the conversation here before we jump into H. Pylori probably next week. With that said, I, I do wanna caution you, be mindful of practitioners marketing themselves as gut experts in only running GI maps. It's a little one trick pony. It's giving a little one trick pony to me. It's not really always a root cause approach and it doesn't take into consideration the process of digestion.
If we're just starting everybody with a stool test, even though the microbiome is super important, it's not actually always the place to start when we're looking to support and correct digestive problems. And I would absolutely categorize reflux as a digestive problem. As you've probably heard me say countless times, digestion is a top down, north to south, top to tail process and it really should be approached as such. So without that understanding, someone might run a GI map on you. They might see a scrap, a whisper of H. Pylori and think, aha, we have found the reason for your reflux, when in actuality it might be some of the other things that we're going to discuss today. So again, this is why I wanted to start here. Now with that said, I do want to just tease this out.
Let practitioners know. If you're a practitioner listening to the show. I want to let you know that we're now accepting applications for FNA spring cohort, the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy. This is the practitioner training and mentorship where we will teach you how to think about things in a very comprehensive and discerning way so that you can help your clients, your patients in a much more comprehensive and discerning. So if you're interested, you can go to functionalnutritionacademy.com Functional is spelled with a K. You can read all about it, you can apply. If you're a good fit for the program, you can get on the phone and talk to someone on my team and yeah, we're getting started May 1st. Very exciting.
Okay, so acid reflux, or GERD, gastroesophageal reflux disease, it's pretty darn common. Current estimate is that anywhere between 18 to 27% of the US population has got it. It's probably higher than that. Of course, we can get acid blocking drugs over the counter and so we can kind of suppress symptoms indefinitely. And so perhaps not everybody is going to their doctor or their, you know, healthcare provider to discuss their reflux. Let's talk about common symptoms. So, you know, if you've got it, the first one is obviously heartburn, which is the best way I can describe it, is like a burning sensation in the chest that can radiate outside of the chest. Some people actually think it's chest pain because you can feel uncomfortable in the chest.
Obviously this is not medical advice. If you ever feel chest pain, call your doctor. Don't just chalk it up to heartburn. But sometimes, especially if you're unfamiliar with heartburn or reflux, it can be a little bit jarring to feel sensations in your chest. Sometimes it can radiate all the way up to the throat.
Sometimes you can feel it in the upper back. And it usually happens after eating, especially if you're lying down after eating. We'll talk about the reason for that. Certain foods or beverages might trigger it and you might notice like, oh, if I eat spaghetti sauce, I really feel it, but if I eat something else, I don't feel it. Food repeating on you can also be reflux. It is quite literally refluxing up on you. You can feel like an acidic liquid or even sometimes partially digested food in the throat or the mouth. It could be accompanied by a sour or even a bitter taste.
And that is a good sign of acid reflux. Sometimes people have difficulty swallowing or even coughing just because acid, acid is coming up into the throat, sometimes not super Common. But some people can actually have sinus symptoms because the acid can travel all the way up into your sinus cavities in your nose, especially if you're, like, laying down sleeping. And this can inflame the nose and irritate the sinus cavities and the lining. So those are some of the more common symptoms of reflux. And why would we get those symptoms? Well, basically it's because the stomach is designed to hold stomach acid, but the esophagus in the mouth and even the sinuses are not. So if hydrochloric acid, the high acidity of our stomach acid, moves into a place that's not equipped to handle it, it's gonna cause problems, it's gonna cause discomfort, in pain. And that's really just true for the whole body.
When something in the body is where it's not supposed to be, it's going to cause problems. And the same is true in reverse. When something that's no longer in the body or something that's supposed to be in the body is no longer there, it's going to cause problems. The body is brilliantly designed, which is why we're always trying to bring it back to baseline, bring it back to homeostasis, because when it's there, it works really well. And so when stomach acid is someplace that it's not supposed to be, it's acidic, it hurts, it burns, it doesn't feel good. Now, there are some other symptoms that kind of get lumped into reflux pain when you eat food. So when, like, food is actually sitting in your stomach, more of like a gnawing pain, like a severe sharp pain, like a little mouse is chewing in there. I've heard people describe it as, or even sometimes a pressure, if that's going on, that might be more than just reflux.
Those are actually the typical symptoms of a gastric ulcer, a stomach ulcer. So we'll get more into that next week. I just really want to prioritize and focus on reflux for now. So if you get it, if you're getting the heartburn symptoms and you also have pain while you're eating, stay tuned. Come back, back next week, we'll talk more about ulcers.
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Now there's conventional treatment for reflux and gerd and then there's functional medicine treatment for reflux and gerd and they're kind of on opposite sides of the spectrum. So the conventional healthcare treatment of reflux is they're essentially saying this is happening because there's too much acid. So therefore we're going to try to shut down stomach acid production through acid reducing drugs. Things like a PPI for example. Now the problem with that is pretty much what I said before. If Something's supposed to be in our body like stomach acid, and then we suppress it or we remove it. That's going to lead to a host of other problems. If it's designed to be there and we remove it, we're going to cause more downstream problems.
And so you want to always kind of weigh out the pros and the cons. I'm not saying that there's never in a time or a place for acid suppressing drugs, acid blocking drugs. I'm just saying you want to understand the potential downstream side effects of it. And the chief issue with using them is that the guidelines for use really recommend using the lowest dose for symptom relief for the shortest period of time. And they're really only designed for short period of use. However, that's not how they're being utilized or even prescribed. It's excessive doses for a longer duration. And with that, we can see a lot of downstream side effects of suppressing stomach acid long term.
We need stomach acid to start to break down our protein. We need stomach acid for the rest of the digestive process. Gosh, I feel like I've talked about, about this so much on the podcast, so for the sake of time, I'm not going to get into like an ode to hydrochloric acid. It's on my website. If you go to the digestion page on my website, it breaks it all, all down. But low stomach acid long term can set us up for low nutrition because it helps us to absorb the nutrients, the minerals in our food and some of the vitamins in our food as well. So kind of a big deal. And so we, long term, we can see nutrient deficiencies, we can see an increase in fracture risk, we can see issues with our mental health and not something to use long term.
Okay, now the functional medicine perspective is pretty much like the opposite end of the spectrum where we're looking at reflux and saying, oh, that's because you're not producing enough stomach acid. And so the kind of go to remedy for that is to give somebody stomach acid replacement. So something like a hydrochloric acid supplementation or apple cider vinegar or recommending lemon juice. Now, now this can be brilliant for those who need it. And I leverage this often. You know, it can be super, super, super helpful. However, in certain situations with reflux, giving someone hydrochloric acid can actually be more harmful than good. So again, this is where the discernment comes in and we're going to kind of get into all of this today so you can hopefully Troubleshoot some of your own reflux root causes and start to understand what might be contributing to yours if you do in fact struggle with acid reflux.
And now, before we get further, I do want to mention that I have an absolutely free digestive guide for you on my website. If you go to thefunctionalnutritionist.com digestion you can download that right away. And that is a brilliant guide, if I do say so myself. It is a brilliant guide for walking you through the top to tail north to south process that is digestion. And you can tinker around with extra experimenting with hydrochloric acid supplementation, other digestive support. So after you listen to this episode today, you might be like, oh, I really should maybe trial some of these things. And that gives you the exact strategy for how to do that. I created that for free for folks who are looking to support their own digestion.
So hopefully you use it as it was intended to be used.
I only say that because one of my friends and colleagues, she's an RD who specializes in pcos. She was kind of on a rant about how she makes these free guides for her clients to like help them. And she has a bunch of RDs who just swoop in and download her free guides to then reproduce. And she's so angry, which totally, you know, having your intellectual property stolen from, you know, other professionals is never a fun thing, but it happens all of the time. And I just have to like, I, like, I can't lose sleep about this. I can, I can't invest any energy in it. I just have to laugh about it and just be like, I don't know, karma, karma is a real thing. So if you're gonna steal from your colleagues, just good luck to you.
I don't even know what to say. I don't know what to say. So if you wanna use that in a way that it wasn't designed for, go for it. Good luck out there, I guess. I don't know.
Okay, digestion, Digestion has a lot of different components to it. In our bodies. We get the mouth and saliva, we, we have swallowing the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the large intestine, liver is involved in digestion. Remember, that's where bile is made. We've got the gallbladder that stores and releases bile. And there's also a series of very under discussed valves. And perhaps the reason that they're under discussed is because the name of these valves are sphincters. So if you can say that Word without laughing.
You are a better man than I. So these sphincters, they're basically circular muscles that open up and close, and they're passages in the body, throughout the digestive tract that regulate the flow of certain substances like our digestive juices and feces. So we have the lower esophageal sphincter, or the les. And this is going to come into play a lot in today's conversation. This is where the esophagus meets the stomach, and so it protects the esophagus from the reflux of gastric content. So remember, the stuff in the stomach is super duper acidified as long as we haven't curbed that acidification with acid blocking drugs. So it should be really acidic. And the lining of the stomach is totally equipped to handle that.
The esophagus is not. So that's why we have that, that sphincter valve in place to close so that things are moving in one direction. Harry Styles. Oh, side note, my family started watching the Voice again. Scott and I used to watch that all of the time. And Niall from One Direction. I mean, I'm too old for One Direction, but I was like, niall's kind of a babe. Anyway, I digress.
So we're moving in one direction, we're moving down, and it's preventing that wash up from acid to come back up into the esophagus. Then we have the pyloric sphincter at the bottom of the stomach, and that allows food to pass from the stomach to the top of the small intestine. We have the sphincter of odi, which is just obviously like the best one because it has its own personalized name. It's the valve at the exit of the bile duct and pancreatic duct into the duodenum. So it allows for bile and pancreatic juice to flow into the small intestine. And then we have the ileocecal sphincter, or the ileocecal valve. That's how I learned it. And that is at the where the ileum, which is the last portion of your small intestine meets the colon.
And then of course, we have the anal sphincter, which we all know and love. So I bring all of this up because GERD or reflux, is more often than not a muscle problem. It is a valve problem. It's a sphincter problem where that valve at the lower end of the esophagus, the LES valve, fails to close properly. It is weak, it's loose, it's not locking up like it should. And so we have the acid in the wrong place. We have that acid that should remain in the stomach, cruising up into the esophagus. And what happens when things are in the wrong place in the body? It can cause pain and discomfort, especially when we're talking about acid.
So we can see these symptoms even with low stomach acid. It's just that, that even if we're not making a ton of stomach acid, even if we have a little bit, it's still acidic in comparison to the esophagus. And the esophagus is not equipped to deal with any acidity like that. So it doesn't necessarily mean if you have acid reflux, that you have too much acid. It's not like your body's producing so much acid that it's spilling up and over. We can see acid reflux even with a low production of stomach acid. So hopefully that helps you understand what's going on just a little bit more and where the symptoms actually comes from. But the real question then becomes, okay, so if we're getting chronic reflux because the LES is, is not functioning, that valve isn't functioning appropriately, what causes that? So I want to talk through some of the reasons for it.
There are actually certain things, like certain foods, smoking, and medications that can weaken that muscle. And when it's weak, it's not closing properly. So alcohol is a big one, throwing back your cocktails. I mean, we've probably all experienced acid reflux in response to drinking too much. Smoking can do it as well. Like I said, spicy foods, coffee, chocolate, mint and peppermint, all of these things can loosen the les. Doesn't necessarily mean that, like coffee, chocolate and peppermint is bad for you. It just can contribute to that weakening of the les.
Medications that weaken the les. Calcium channel blockers. These are commonly used for high blood pressure. Nitrates, bronchodilator, theophylline, I believe it's. I'm saying that right. But it's a treatment for asthma and other lung problems like emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Beta 2 agonists, again, another medication used for asthma, also COPD and then benzodiazepine. So all of these things can loosen and weaken that LES and contribute to acid reflux.
So you can see how just running a stool test isn't going to necessarily give us the answers that we need if we're taking these medications. And that's probably what's contributing to our reflux and then anything that increases intra abdominal pressure. So any type of Pressure in the stomach can lead to les being kind of lax, being kind of like weak. So if there's anything that's any pressure in the stomach that's kind of like pushing upward on that sphincter, it's gonna cause that sphincter to just kind of like be a little leaky. It's not gonna be like w, but it's going to leak some things out, like acid. And so certain things that can do this pregnancy is a big one. This is why we get, we can get acid reflux with pregnancy. Obesity is another one.
If you, if you have a lot of pressure being pushed up, overeating can also do it. That just makes sense. If you're overfilling your stomach, we will, you know, you're going to have a leaky sphincter muscle. Fermentation and gas. So we often see this with, with sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, where things are just kind of fermenting. It's producing a lot of gas and that can open up and weaken that valve. Same deal with high methane levels. So if you have a methane dominant SIBO situation, that can lead to backward flow.
So we can see reflux. We can also see burping, nausea, constipation. We can see pretty often with high methane levels as well. Another thing thing is hiatal hernia. So a hiatal hernia happens when the stomach moves out of its normal position from like in the abdomen and actually bulges through the diaphragm. That's the muscle that kind of separates the chest and the abdomen. So hiatal pernia can also put excessive pressure on the les that valve and lead to muscle laxity of that valve. So one thing I'm actually really excited to announce is that in FNA we're doing a physical medicine series where we have different doctors and different specialists come in and teach us about physical medicine.
Because sometimes with chronic health challenges, no amount of digestive support is going to help without like actual hands on body. Sometimes it's more of an anatomical issue. And hiatal hernia is absolutely one of those times, like you actually may need hands on bodies. You might need an adjustment to help out with that. But hiatal hernia can be a pretty common contributor to chronic reflux. So just kind of put that on your radar if it's not there already.
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If you are a woman anywhere near the vicinity of 40, you've no doubt heard about creatine. We need it for our muscles and our brains. Everybody's talking about it, but are you actually taking it? And if you're taking it, are you taking it in the form that actually works well in your body? Two specific things help with this. Electrolytes help with absorption, and magnesium supports activation. That's why I love Qualia Creatine+. It combines two clinically studied forms of creatine. Creatine monohydrate and a magnesium chelate that helps your body turn it into the form that gives your cell energy, all with electrolytes so you can actually absorb it. I know I've talked about creatine before. This is the one I use. I mix it into my water every day when I work out. It stirs easily and has no taste so you can mix it into whatever beverage you're drinking. We are way past the dark ages of creatine being just for gym bros. Creatine is critical for energy metabolism, cognition and healthy aging. It's not just lifting like a bodybuilder. Go to qualialife.com/funk for 50% off. And here's a bonus. Use the code FUNK for an additional 15% off your order. That's Q-U-A-L-I-Alife.com/funk and use code FUNK. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode.
Now we'll get into low stomach acid, which is like functional medicine, sweetheart. Stomach acid, part of its role is to start to break down the food proteins that we eat. So if we don't have enough stomach acid, we're not really breaking down and digesting our food. So food can kind of just like hang around in the stomach a little bit longer than, than it should or it's just not being broken down. Appropriately enough, stomach acid, a properly acidified stomach also sends signals to the rest of the digestive tract to release other gastric juices as well. So enough stomach acid, an appropriate level of stomach acid is really important for the appropriate breakdown of food. And if food isn't breaking down and it's just kind of like hanging around, that can lead to increased gastro gas gastric pressure as well. Now signs of low stomach acid.
I'll just kind of give you a laundry list so you can start to map out like, huh, could this potentially be part of my situation? So a big one is feeling like food just sits like a brick in your stomach, especially protein heavy foods. You just feel like a prolonged sense of fullness after eating. You might have aversion to protein where you just don't have the appetite for it. You might get bloated or have a distended belly after eating. You might have gas after eating, but just like that, that indigestion or sometimes even the nausea after eating can be a sign of low stomach acid. There's other like non digestive clues that we might be dealing with. Low stomach acid, weak peeling, cracked fingernails, sometimes skin issues like acne. So if you're dealing with those symptoms in addition to reflux, then low stomach acid could potentially be contributing to your reflux.
Now, low hydrochloric acid and gallbladder problems can often go hand in hand. Like I said, hcl, stomach acid is responsible for helping to stimulate the release of some of our digestive juices, including bile. It does this via cck. And if we're not producing and releasing enough bile, that can absolutely contribute to some digestive issues. I did an entire episode on gallbladder health and bile. I believe it's episode 255, so you can absolutely go check that out. But something that's not talked about that much is bile reflux. So we can have acid reflux, but we can also have bile reflux, which is essentially when bile backs up into your stomach and sometimes even all the way up into the esophagus.
And it can happen alongside acid reflux, or it can happen independently of acid reflux. The symptoms kind of overlap. So symptoms of bile reflux are upper abdominal pain. That pain can get pretty severe, frequent heartburn and then nausea. So again, overlap between the two things. Acid reflux or bile reflux. What happens is that bile is making its way into the stomach, which it doesn't really belong there. Ideally, bile and food mix in the duodenum and enter your small intestine.
Then that pyloric valve. I told you we're going to talk about sphincters and valves a lot. That pyloric valve doesn't close properly. Just kind of like exactly what we were talking about with the les. So it's not appropriately closing. And when that happens, the bile can come back into the stomach. And remember what I said, when things in the body end up in places they shouldn't be, it causes problems.
So this can lead to inflammation of the stomach lining, and that doesn't feel good. That can cause pain and discomfort. Now, in addition to this, if the LES isn't working properly, then both bile and stomach acid can then reflux into the esophagus together. So it's like double whammy if those valves aren't working properly. So what leads to bile reflux? Number one is peptic ulcers. Come back next week because we'll talk more about ulcers. But it can. The ulcer can actually block the pyloric valve, so it's not opening or shutting appropriately.
And then also gallbladder surgery. So if you've had your gallbladder removed, definitely listen to the gallbladder episode. It's a big one. So when we remove things from the body that are supposed to be there, we must might have problems. It is not a judgment. It's not a criticism. People get real big mad whenever I talk about gallbladder surgery. They're like, I needed to do it to save my life.
And I'm like, I'm all for that. I'm all for saving your life. I would never, not tell you to do something to save your life. I want your life here. Love that for you. But also, we have to understand that there are downstream side effects when we remove an entire organ from our body. That's just the body being the body, baby. Just the body be in the body.
So knowing that, how can we support ourselves? That's what that episode is all about. And then. And then we can ask, hey, maybe is there a bacterial component to reflux after we've been through all of these things, and then that's when we start to think about things like H. Pylori, which we'll talk about next week. So let's talk about some treatment strategies for supporting yourself if you do have reflux because it can be very uncomfortable and it can lead to a lot of chronic problems if it's not addressed. As I said earlier, the functional approach can sometimes be to just give somebody hydrochloric acid. The problem with that is that digestive support like hydrochloric acid can be contraindicated when somebody has gastritis. Gastritis is when the protective lining of the stomach becomes irritated, damaged or inflamed.
I refer to it as like having a boo boo on the inside. What do you think it would feel like to pour acid on a boo boo? Not good. Not good at all. It's like pouring gasoline on a fire. So actually a clinical pearl. So practitioners, if you're listening, take note if you don't already know this. If you give somebody HCL supplementation and they experience pain, that can sometimes be like a little back door reveal to gastritis. So I would look into gastritis for that them instead.
If that happens, what we actually need to do is lay down the slippery silk blanket that should be there. The lining of the stomach should be like a slippery silk sheets or something like that. And we need to spend some time repairing the lining of the stomach before we can go in and put something caustic like acid in there. So things that can help with the this are DGL marshmallow, aloe, slippery elm. I like to make a little powder concoction where I'll get DGL marshmallow and slippery elm and I will buy them in bulk in powder and mix them all together with a little bit of warm water and drink that down. That can be so soothing for the gastric mucosa, can be really soothing for heartburn and acid reflux flux without causing any type of pain, discomfort or problems for gastritis. And you want to spend some time kind of reinstating that silk blanket supporting the gastric lining maybe like a month or two months before you trial the acid again. And there might be underlying rationale and reasons for that gastritis, which is what we'll talk about next week.
Another thing that you really need to do into practice if you have reflux is lowering your stress. I know it's annoying, nobody wants to hear it, but yep, it causes a lot of problems, really wreaks havoc on the old body, chronic stress can suppress stomach acid. It dramatically impacts digestion and, you know, the overall top to tail, north to south process. So this is something that needs to come online in any type of treatment strategy for reflux. Other things you can do, reducing the high acid foods, not, not overeating, not drinking and eating at the same time. Because a large volume of water or a liquid while you're eating is also going to put that pressure, that, that pressure on the les sitting up straight.
So that's a big one. Like, are you hunched over? Are you eating food while you're like on the couch watching tv? Sitting up straight can really help make sure that everything's kind of online in alignment and the digestive tube is set up as it's supposed to. Not lying down immediately after eating, that makes a big difference. Some folks with chronic reflux have to sleep on their left side or on their back due to gravity, the shape of the stomach, and the angle of the connection between the stomach and the esophagus. Sleeping on your left side can actually reduce reflux. As somebody who struggled on and off with reflux, I can attest to this. I always sleep on my left side, always sleep on my left side. So that's just kind of like a little pro tip.
Sometimes I can get away with sleeping on my back and if I'm elevated. So that's the other thing. If you're gonna sleep on your back, make sure you have a pillow, you're propped up, and so it just puts the body in an angle where it's not going to be prone to reflux. And then we can bring in some digestive enzymes, some bile support. Again, my free digestive guide walks you through all of this. Go to thefunctionalnutritionist.com digestion digestive bitters. We talk about these a lot here on the show, but the bitter taste really gets the digestive juices flowing.
So it can get saliva going, it can get stomach acid going. Pepsin, pancreatic, digestive enzymes, bile, kind of like hits all of them. But something else that bitters do is help to increase the tone of that lower esophageal sphincter, that les valve. So that's obviously very important given everything that we've discussed today. So bringing bitters online, whether you just get bitter, like the herbs in tincture form, and you can just drop them into a little bit of water, there's some that you can pump underneath your tongue. I also like a spray bottle, so I keep that in my purse. So when I'm out to eat, I just spray them and they taste bitter. It tastes real bitter.
All right, so just a heads up. But then of course, we can work in bitter foods as well. Things like citrus rinds, watercress, arugula, endive, dandelion greens, radiccio. Dandelion root tea is another nice bitter. So making sure you're getting plenty of those into rotation on the reg can also help with the reflux. And you know, it probably wouldn't be an Aaron Holt podcast without me at least giving a head nod to the fact that there are also metaphysical and emotional roots of acid reflux. I don't think we have time to get into it all today, but I. When somebody's dealing with chronic ongoing reflux and they've like kind of tried all of the things where my mind goes, is anger.
Like, where is. Where are you angry on the inside? Do you have any internalized anger? Anger with no appropriate outlet? When I think of gastritis, when I think of burning, I think of anger. And, you know, maybe this is a great topic for a whole other episode, but I at least wanted to bring that to your attention and start to think about, think about where you might be carrying anger inside without an appropriate outlet. All right, so like I said, most likely next week I'll be back with H. Pylori. If not next week, then definitely the week after. But it's coming, it's coming, it's coming soon. So hope this was helpful and I will check you next week.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of The Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.