How Powerful is Your Stomach Acid?
How powerful is your stomach acid? when your stomach is usually working, you probably don’t think about it at all, but you can’t ignore it when it starts acting up. And right now, it’s speaking to you because all of a sudden, you have no stomach acid.
Why could it lead to infection? How powerful is stomach acid? And would you excrete food? Your stomach is powerful, and of all the digestive juices it produces, hydrochloric acid is the most extreme. This liquid form of hydrogen chloride is also used in fertilizers, fireworks, rubber, and steel. If you inhale it, you could suffer from nose and breathing issues.
But this dangerous acid is essential for your well-being, and without it, you’d be in big trouble. So, we’re going to follow a piece of food as it travels through your digestive system and into your acid stomach. But first, let’s see what happens typically when you eat. You bite into a delicious bagel. Immediately, your stomach begins to release gastric juices.
It uses three glands in your stomach lining to create this acidic concoction. As you chew and swallow your food, it becomes what’s called a boneless. It travels down your esophagus and into your stomach, where it gets mixed with the gastric juices. As I mentioned before, this mixture is potent, but luckily you have a protective shield made of epithelial cells in the lining of your stomach.
Without epithelial cells, the gastric acid would eat away at your stomach lining. As extreme as stomach acid is, it does four important things for your body. First, it breaks down protein. This is called pro dialysis. Second, it activates pepsin, which helps you digest the protein. Third, it kills any harmful bacteria that hitched a ride on your food.
And finally, your stomach acid sends a chemical signal that moves the food into your small intestine. After the food moves through your small intestine, it goes into your large intestine, and then, well, you know what happens next?
Your whole digestive tract from your mouth to your anus is vital for breaking down food, but your stomach is the star of your digestive system. So how would things change if you lacked stomach acid? Well, you take a bite of that delicious bagel, then chew and swallow it. The food hits your stomach, and then nothing happens. No gastric acids are waiting to tear it apart.
The food sits there, growing bacteria that could give you a nasty infection. Proteins and other nutrients wouldn’t be absorbed, leaving you with nutritional deficiencies. And the food might move into your intestine too quickly. It could come out whole at the other end called dumping syndrome. It’s a symptom of low stomach acid because you aren’t absorbing nutrients. You suffer from a lot of issues. The list is so long. So, let’s say you’d have terrible gas problems, heartburn, gastrointestinal infections, and eventually neurological issues.
Among other things, you’d have to eat every two or three hours, and you’d need to take small bites and chew your food thoroughly to help your body digest it, or you’d put all your meals in a blender. It wouldn’t be fun to drink your dinner, but it would be easier for your digestive system. You’d also need to be careful about what you eat and stay away from processed foods to reduce inflammation. And you’d need to take a ton of supplements.
And although they might make you nauseous, even these steps wouldn’t get you back to normal, and luckily, stomach acid doesn’t just disappear. But not having enough stomach acid or hyper chloralhydrate is a common health issue. In the United States, 22 percent of the population suffers from it.
Age, stress, processed foods, and overusing antacid can all cause problems for your stomach. The good thing is that you can always eat some ginger, fermented vegetables or drink some apple cider vinegar. They can reduce inflammation, breakdown food, and increase stomach acid, giving you a happier digestive system.
It’s easy to take your body for granted, but it works hard, and we should all treat it like the beautifully complex instrument it is. Taking care of your body could be as simple as going to the bathroom as soon as you feel the urge, even if you’re on a long road trip. But what if you held in your pee for a week? Well, that’s a story for another.