Your stomach always knows what it has to do to keep you healthy and free of disease. It does this by changing conditions in your stomach to accommodate how you eat, what you eat and when you eat it. Diseases like heartburn or acid reflux and just stomach upsets occur when you eat a poor diet or eat improperly. This causes your stomach to distort its functions and in this process distorts the function of the surround valves which control the movement of food moving in and out of the your stomach.
Here's how your stomach works. The HCl acid in your stomach likes to be at strength of between a pH of 1 to 3. A hormone called "Gastrin" maintains this acid strength. When your stomach acid becomes weak, a pH above 3, "G cells" in the lining of your stomach release Gastrin. The gastrin hormone activates "parietal cells, also located in the stomach lining, to release HCl acid. As more acid is pumped into the stomach, the pH drops down below 3 which signals the G cells to decrease or stop the release of gastrin.
When food comes into your stomach it is usually a pH of 6-7. This causes your G cells to pump out gastrin so that the stomach lining can inject HCl into your stomach to start breaking down your food and to lower the pH back to 2-3.
Gastrin also controls the stomach muscles. It controls the stomach contractions, which move your stomach contents back and forth. When the food has been mixed and broken down, the contractions move the food into the duodenum and small intestine.
When your stomach excretes high levels of gastrin, a condition called hypergastrinemia, you become more susceptible to stomach cancer. How can excess gastrin be excreted? Excess gastrin can be excreted when your stomach wall is thinned, nonfunctional, or atrophied. And, excess gastrin can also be excreted when you take an acid blocker drug like Prilosec when you have heartburn, acid reflux or GERD.
If you block the creation of HCl with a drug during your meal, your stomach is signaled to release gastrin to produce more acid. Since a drug is blocking acid creation, the G cells believe that not enough acid is being released into the stomach so more gastrin is released.
Taking a 20 mg of Prilosec can result in the production of 3 to 4 times more gastrin. When you take more Prilosec, 40 – 60 mg, this can result in 10 times more gastrin than needed. Long-term use of Prilosec put you at risk for stomach cancer.
Now, you can see how just one drug when used to excess can create an even worst disease then the one it is trying to prevent or cure, when it is used for a long time. For this reason it is best to look for natural ways to deal with heartburn, acid reflux, or stomach distress. Correcting your diet and using natural remedies can help to cure your stomach problems and will keep you away from stomach cancer.
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