Moreover, they are also advocates of sustainable, humanitarian farming practices and the promotion of healthy, untainted foods.

An animal that got to live its life on a farm grazing in pasture, they argue, is a far cry from the crammed and deplorable conditions found in most factory farms. It's for this reason that they claim to be "conscious carnivores" and purveyors of a more sustainable future. Quality, rather than quantity, is a central tenant of the Pale diet. It's for this reason that people on Pale are content to spend two to three times more on their foods than what's found at regular supermarkets. Clearly, Paulo meat-eaters and vegetarians are going to forever disagree on the ethics of the matter. Fundamentally, vegetarians argue that it's never right to raise, kill, and eat another animal, whereas Pale folk contend that personal health takes precedent, and that it's normal and natural for us to eat meat; it's what we're evolved for. Dietary habits are an incredibly personal thing. Fewer subjects raise more controversy and heated opinions than food politics. Ultimately, however, when it comes down to making dietary choices, it tends to be about what works best for the individual - whether it be on account of health, environmental, or ethical considerations. 

Essentially, people need to ask themselves about Soma Biotics  how their food choices make them feel about themselves as moral agents, and how those choices impact on their personal health and well-being. Before we can even talk about stomach acid, we need to spend a little time talking about how it fits in the digestive process. Most people believe that when you eat a meal it drops into a pool of stomach acid, where it's broken down, then goes into the small intestine to have nutrients taken out, and then into the colon to be passed out of the body -- if you're lucky. Not quite. What nature intended is that you eat enzyme rich foods and chew your food properly. If you did that, the food would enter the stomach laced and digestive enzymes. These enzymes would then "predigest" your food for about an hour -- actually breaking down as much as 75% of your meal. Only after this period of "pre-digestion" are hydrochloric acid and pepsin introduced. The acid inactivates all of the food-based enzymes, but begins its own function of breaking down what is left of the meal in combination and the acid energized enzyme pepsin. Eventually, this nutrient-rich food concentrate moves on into the small intestine. Once this concentrate enters the small intestine, the acid is neutralized and the pancreas reintroduces digestive enzymes to the process. As digestion is completed, nutrients are passed through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream. 

Processing and cooking destroy enzymes in food. (Any sustained heat of approximately 1180 - 1290 F destroys virtually all enzymes.) This means that, for most of us, the food entering our stomach is severely enzyme deficient. The food then sits there for an hour, like a heavy lump, and very little pre-digestion taking place. This forces the body to produce large amounts of stomach acid in an attempt to overcompensate. In addition to failing in this attempt (much of the meal still enters the small intestine largely undigested), there are two major consequences. This is obvious. In an attempt to overcompensate for lack of enzymes in the food, the stomach produces an inordinate amount of stomach acid to compensate, leading to acid indigestion. Taking antacids or purple pills doesn't actually solve the problem; it merely eliminates one of the symptoms. Ultimately, though, it passes even more quantities of poorly digested food into the intestinal tract where it leads to gas, bloating, bad digestion, chronic digestive disorders, in addition to blowing out your pancreas, which tries to compensate by producing huge amounts of digestive enzymes for use in the small intestine. All of this is exacerbated by foods and beverages such as alcohol (especially beer), high sugar foods, and caffeinated foods (coffee and tea, etc.) that can actually double acid production. 

The simple solution for most people and excess stomach acid is to supplement and digestive enzymes which can digest up to 70% of the meal in the pre-acid phase, thus eliminating the need for large amounts of stomach acid and also taking tremendous stress off the digestive system and the pancreas. One other factor which may be contributing to the problem is a hiatus hernia, in which part of the stomach can protrude through the diaphragm into the chest cavity allowing food and stomach acid to back up into the esophagus. Combine a hiatus hernia and excess stomach acid and you have the potential for great distress. The standard treatment for severe hiatus hernias is laparoscopic surgery -- and mixed results. Fortunately, there are chiropractic alternatives that can be quite effective. In either case, dietary changes and supplemental digestive enzymes are likely to produce significant results, and out creating problems further down the digestive tract. Drinking 2-4 ounces of organic, stabilized, aloe Vera juice every day can also help soothe irritated tissue in the esophagus and help balance out digestive juices in the stomach. If you spend years forcing your body to massively overproduce stomach acid to compensate for the lack of enzymes in your diet, what do you think the long-term consequences might be in terms of your ability to produce stomach acid? Eventually, your body's capacity to produce stomach acid begins to fade and a concomitant loss in your body's ability to sufficiently process food in the stomach. 

The health consequences can be profound. Low production of stomach acid is quite common and becomes more prevalent and age. By age forty, 40% of the population is affected, and by age sixty, 50%. A person over age 40 who visits a doctor's office has about a 90% probability of having low stomach acid. Consequences can include: Poor digestion. Not only is there insufficient stomach acid to break down food, there is insufficient acidity to optimize the digestive enzyme pepsin, which requires a pH of around 2.0. This results in partial digestion of food, leading to gas, bloating, belching, diarrhea/constipation, autoimmune disorders, skin diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, and a host of intestinal disorders such as Cohn’s and IBS. It is estimated that 80% of people and food allergies suffer from some degree of low acid production in the stomach. Many vitamins and minerals require proper stomach acid in order to be properly absorbed, including: calcium, iron, vitamin B12, and folic acid. Vitamin B12 in particular requires sufficient stomach acid for proper utilization. And out that acid, severe B12 deficiency can result. (Note: ionic delivery systems can bypass this problem.) And low acidity and the presence of undigested food, harmful bacteria are more likely to colonize the stomach and interfere and digestion. Normal levels of stomach acid help to keep the digestive system free of harmful bacteria and parasites. 

It's worth noting that symptoms of low acidity include: Is it just me, or doesn't this list sound very similar to the symptoms associated and too much stomach acid? In fact, up to 95% of people who think they are suffering from too much stomach acid are actually suffering from the exact opposite condition. The use of antacids and purple pills then become exactly the wrong treatment to use since they exacerbate the underlying condition while temporarily masking the symptoms. Supplementing and digestive enzymes to reduce the need for stomach acid -- giving the body a chance to rest and recover its ability to produce sufficient stomach acid. Mix one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and water and a little honey and drink this and each meal. You may gradually increase the vinegar up to 3-4 tablespoons in water if needed. Supplementing and beanie hydrochloride (HCL) tablets can also help, but anything beyond minimal doses as found in most health food store supplements should only be administered under the supervision of a health practitioner to avoid damage to the stomach lining. Stomach acid and proteolysis enzymes as I mentioned at the top of the newsletter, we received a number of questions on stomach acid in the last 30 days. Most of them had nothing to do and high or low stomach acid, but rather and the effect of stomach acid on supplements. In fact, the bulk of the questions we received were concerned and how stomach acid affects proteolysis enzymes, and they all pretty much ran along the following lines.