Medications to treat stomach acid

Gastritis can prove to be a real pain for us, but thankfully there are lots of types of medicine to help us fight against its effects and avoid turining it into an ulcers. Although they should usually be combined with a healthy, good diet for gastritis, stomach acid can easily be lowered with medications. Stomach acid irritates inflamed tissue in your stomach, causing pain and further inflammation. That's why, for most types of gastritis, treatment involves taking drugs to reduce or neutralize stomach acid, such as:

• Antacids. Over-the-counter antacids (Maalox, Mylanta, others) in liquid or tablet form are a common treatment for mild gastritis. Antacids neutralize stomach acid and can provide fast pain relief.

• Acid blockers. When antacids don't provide enough relief, your doctor may recommend a medication, such as cimetidine (Tagamet), ranitidine (Zantac), nizatidine (Axid) or famotidine (Pepcid), that helps reduce the amount of acid your stomach produces.

• Medications to shut down acid 'pumps'. Medications called proton pump inhibitors reduce acid by blocking the action of tiny pumps within the acid-secreting cells of your stomach. This class of medications includes omeprazole (Prilosec), lansoprazole (Prevacid), rabeprazole (Aciphex) and esomeprazole (Nexium).

You Love to Eat, Don’t You?

If you’re starting to read this, one thing is clear: you just LOVE to eat, just like I do and just like at least half of the population of the globe does. Unfortunately, our love for food means we are prone to getting overweight, eating all sorts of unhealthy foods and eventually bombarding our body with toxins and all sorts of nasty stuff which, in the end, can have some really bad effects like gastritis, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome and other digestive system related diseases. So… what can we do, if we still love to eat?

Well, the first thing to do would be to “grow up” and stop eating all those tasty but unhealthy stuff – you know, the fast food type of stuff, the oily stuff and so on. But this is totally out of question (presuming that you’re not like me, already suffering from IBS which takes each and every tasty food from you). So… what to do?

One of the safest ways to keep your body and digestive system ready to battle the caloric bombs and the toxins of everyday’s food is a 5 day diet with fresh fruits and vegetables – apparently, this “living food”, often mistaken with “green food” means that you eat healthy for five days per week in order to keep your body up and running, help it detox and win a few more years for you to continue eating like hell. No, really!

So this diet I’m talking about consists of eating only fruits for short periods of time, along with vegetables – none of these being cooked. You’ll love them raw and your body will love them, too! Also, instead of water or the nasty sodas, you should drink tea, digestive tea, diuretic tea and avoid coffee at all costs. You can do that!

Following these short periods of time of eating living food (vegetables and fruits) it will be easier for your body to detoxify itself. But please, have in mind that, even though this kind of diets is better than nothing, it does not stand for a healthy living style that will be a pure heaven for your digestive system. So please have in mind to keep fats and unhealthy foods as low as possible, otherwise you might get to a point when you will regret. And that’s not nice at all! So stay healthy and IBS-free!

I'm Back!

My planned vacation has finally (and unfortunately) ended, so I am back home now, ready to take care of my body and mind and ready to share some advice on the way. And trust me, it's going to be a busy month October, since I am planning to start my detox program with Colonix and I'm going to both review it and offer a couple of days' impressions. Also, I have been testing Microhydrin for a while now and I'll be writing a very short review soon.

However, the most important thing of them all is the fact that I will probably have to write about my detox program during this vacation in a wonderful area on the globe - somewhere in the rather scary-ish (at first) country of Romania. But I tried, did my best and I am not at all disappointed. Actually, I will certainly re-visit this place next year, too. Anyway, this is just a teaser and a "I'm back" message, more will follow up during the following weeks. I'm sure we'll be more healthier if we follow all the advice I came with from the rather wonderful country of Romania. Anyway, let's all stay healthy and please allow me to rest following my long trip back home!

Short Vacation

I will go on a short one week-long vacation this Sunday and I will not be able to write while I am gone. However, for those interested in some good advice regarding diets for digestive system related problems, you can always choose my personal 7-day diet for gastritis. Also, since a good detox is never out of hand, find out here a few things about the magic of drinking water. And, most important than everything, stay healthy! Let's hope we'll meet again as healthy as possible!

Stem cells and inflammatory bowel disease curing

Investigators from a hospital in Massachusetts have found that infusions of a particular bone marrow stem cell appeared to protect gastrointestinal tissue from autoimmune attack in a mouse model, allowing the regeneration of the gastrointestinal lining in mice with a genetic mutation leading to multiorgan autoimmune disease. In other words, this means that bowel related problems such as irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel diseases could be controlled using these stem cells.

"Our findings suggest that MSC therapy could become a useful treatment for inflammatory bowel disease," said Biju Parekkadan, PhD, according to EurekAlert. "Several previous studies have observed these cells' ability to inhibit specific subsets of T cells and relieve symptoms in particular autoimmune disorders. But this is the first demonstration of their ability to suppress a broad-based autoimmune reaction and protect gastrointestinal tissue."

Autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system loses control over lymphocytes (white blood cells) that attack an individual's own tissues. Treatments for these diseases – more than 80 conditions, ranging from type 1 diabetes to rheumatoid arthritis to gastrointestinal disorders like Crohn's disease and IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) – are primarily directed against symptoms; and even those that target the immune system do not completely suppress the out-of-control response. Found in the bone marrow, MSCs give rise to tissues supporting blood cell development and secrete factors that can modulate several immune system activities. Their use has recently received FDA approval to treat severe graft-versus-host disease in children, which means that the first step has been made and there is a huge possibility we'll see more in the future!

Analysis of the animal's lymph nodes revealed that MSC treatment produced a significant reduction in inflammation of the colon. Surprisingly, cell-tracking studies indicated that the MSCs – which were administered by infusion into the peritoneum, the membrane lining the abdominal cavity – moved into abdominal lymph nodes rather than to the intestine itself. The presence of MSCs was associated with a reduction of activated T cells and changes in other indicators of immune system activity, indicating suppression of the out-of-control immune reaction. Let's all hope for the best. Stay helathy!

Symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome

It’s time to talk a little bit about irritable bowel syndrome symptoms or IBS symptoms because there is one thing that should always be remembered when it comes to digestive system related problem like this one: symptoms can vary from person to person and only your doctor should exactly analyze them for you, in order to make sure you get a proper diagnosis.

However, there are a few symptoms of the irritable bowel syndrome that usually stand out of the pack and these are: bloating, constipation (or diarrhea) and abdominal pain or discomfort in the lower right part of the abdomen (or the lower left part). Since I am a constipation IBS “owner”, I can tell you out of my own experience that you can generally try to have a bowel movement without managing to eliminate anything and that’s a common thing. Also, you can have cramps or feel spasms of your bowel, but these things usually go away after defecation. However, it is common for people with IBS to leave the bathroom with the feeling of not emptying the waste (actually, this was one of the most clear signs for me!)

Other irritable bowel syndrome symptoms can be excessive bloating and swelling of the abdomen and even the need to pass more wind. Together with these might come other symptoms like headaches, tiredness, backache and muscle pains. After all, there are many people who associate stress with IBS and they might be right.

Any of these symptoms might come mixed up with others, too and they can also completely go away for a few months, just to return as if nothing happened. Actually, that is one of the main things regarding the irritable bowel syndrome: symptoms come and go and usually change in between, especially from constipation to diarrhea. But one thing is clear: even though you can generally tell for yourself, after reading the list above, if you have IBS or not, the best thing to do is to go and ask your doctor.

And, if you have the power to do so, watch a pretty funny Youtube video I found today which kind of goes hand in hand with our topic of symptoms for IBS. If you are easily offended, don’t watch it!

Look Into the Future: Early Gene for IBS Identified!

Apparently, parents will be able in the near future (hopefully) to know if their children have the risk to develop an irritable bowel syndrome and cure it before it starts becoming a real pain! Just imagine how much would this scientific breakthrough help our kids!

It was a study of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in children that identified a gene that influences whether children get these diseases early in life, and therefore points to a potential new target for treatment. The findings of the international team that performed the study were published online this week by the journal Nature Genetics.

While several genes that influence susceptibility to the two diseases have been found previously, this study is the first to focus on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) with childhood onset.

Both genetics and the environment have an effect on the risk of getting inflammatory bowel disease – that’s a fact everybody knows. For example, if one identical twin suffers from Crohn's disease, the other has a 60 percent probability of getting it too. However, the incidence of disease has drastically increased over the last half century, because the environment has changed, as well as the way people lead their life today. So, please try to understand: we are doing it to ourselves and we have to stop. Because, the way it is now, the future does not look nice…

Anyway… back to the study and its IBS/ulcerative colitis findings: it compared the DNA of more than 1,000 children diagnosed with all sorts of inflammatory bowel diseases at the average age of 11 with 4,250 disease-free children, and confirmed the findings in a larger set of patients established by the British Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium - the authors used gene chip microarray technology to scan thousands of one-letter alternative genetic "spellings" spread throughout the patients' DNA. Most of these made little difference when it came to affecting the risk of inflammatory bowel disease, but a few stood out, and two had not been seen before. Just imagine how important! Because scientists were led to a gene whose activity they found was associated with the degree of inflammation in the colon. And there is encoded a protein that lengthens the duration of an immune response by regulating the longevity of activated white blood cells, meaning that it could be the answer for our problems! Let’s just hope that the doctors and scientists and researchers are able to create a good medicine to help our kids in the future. Although IBS could certainly be controlled in a more natural way: by living a healthy life!