Determining the Amount of Hydrochloric Acid You Need

Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is present in the human stomach to assist protein digestion, mineral absorption, in killing unwanted bacteria, and more. As humans age, secretion of hydrochloric acid naturally decreases. 

Some signs of low HCl include: muscle cramps, weak nails, indigestion, candida overgrowth, dry skin, chronic fatigue, and more.

I have found in my practice that many people can greatly benefit from supplementing with HCl. 

Here is an easy way to determine how much your body needs:

1) Buy an HCl supplement in TABLET form.

2) Take one tablet on an empty stomach. 

3) Wait 5-15 minutes. If you don't feel burning in your stomach, take another tablet.

4) Repeat step 3 until you feel a burning sensation in your stomach. 

5) Your perfect dose is the # of tablets taken that caused a burning sensation minus 1.

Example: if you took 5 tablets and then felt the burning sensation, your perfect dose is 4 tablets. I recommend you recheck your dosage every few months or so.

IMPORTANT: AFTER DOING THE DOSAGE TEST ABOVE, EAT A MEAL.

Please note: this information is for educational purposes only and not meant to diagnosis, prescribe, or treat any disease. If you have a health concern, contact your doctor.

Yoga and Swimming are Good Spinal Exercises

To enjoy good health, your brain must communicate well with your body. To achieve that, it's important to maintain spinal strength, flexibility, and balance.

Two exercises that are great to reach those goals are Yoga and Swimming. Both are rhythmic and symmetrical, encourage chest expansion and deep breathing, and implement several spinal ranges of motion. 

I know it's hard get to a pool with busy schedules and probably even harder to find a heated pool in cold weather, but especially if you have disc problems or other degenerative issues that would benefit from non-weight-bearing exercise, the effort would be worth it.

Yoga can be done at home or in a studio/gym setting. Some of my favorite Yoga DVDs are from Yoga Zone. They have several to choose from and even have some for back pain and other issues. Usually there are two 20 minute sessions on each DVD, which is easy for even the busiest people to fit into their schedule.

Wet Socks Therapy for Fever

Fever is a good thing; it mobilizes white blood cells to fight whatever bug is causing you distress. However, if children are sick and mom, dad, and baby need sleep - and can't sleep because baby is cranky - it's nice to have a natural way to lower the fever and make everyone more comfortable.

Here's the method:

Slice organic lemons round-wise.
Soak the child's feet in as hot of water as they can handle for 5 minutes or so.
Wet wool socks (100% cotton is second best) in cold water. Put a few lemon slices in the bottom of the socks. Put the wet/damp socks on baby's feet. Cover the child with blankets to keep their body warm - keep feet out of the blankets. Keep the socks on for 6-8 hours or so.

This technique helps draw the fever out of the body. If you have Young Living Lemon and Peppermint oils, you can also add one drop each to the bottom of the child's feet.

Your Baby's First Chiropractic Adjustment

Most people would find the title of this article a bit strange because their orientation to going to a chiropractor is for back or neck pain.

As someone who was frequently ill as a child, it would have been nice if my parents knew about the benefits of chiropractic care for children while I was still a baby. It wasn't until I was 16 years old that I got my first adjustment and by then, I had suffered quite a bit. I grew up with asthma, food, animal, and environmental allergies, migraine headaches, and a chronic skin rash. After a few weeks of chiropractic care, my health started to turn around.

After being in the fetal position for so long, newborn spines and limbs can have a bit of a challenge adapting to more elongated positions causing muscle spasms in the neck or back areas. Their heads can also become misshapen during the birth process leading to nursing and focusing issues.

If the mom had drugs during pregnancy or delivery, there are certain subluxation (spinal misalignments that interfere with brain-body communication) patterns that are common. These can lead to reflux, colic, and other digestive system problems.

Babies respond very well to skilled chiropractic adjustments and usually become calm, centered, and relaxed almost immediately. It's important to go to a chiropractor who is experienced in certain infant-adjusting techniques. Usually a friend or midwife is a good referral source.

Make your own Raw Milk Kefir

Making kefir with fresh raw milk is much superior to buying kefir made from pasteurized, homogenized milk. Here's how:

1) Get some kefir grains from a good source. I often have them to share, so just contact me.
2) When you get them, they will be covered with raw milk.
3) When you receive your first batch, strain the kefir grain/milk mixture through a STAINLESS STEEL strainer into a GLASS bowl. The kefir grains will remain in the strainer and the kefir will drain into the bowl. Throw this first batch of kefir away. You are now ready to start your own personal batch.
4) Using a plastic spoon or rubber spatula  (no metal), scoop the kefir grains into a glass jar with a lid. I just use an old pickle jar.
5) Cover the kefir grains with raw milk. How much milk depends upon the amount of kefir grains you have and how fast you want the milk to ferment into kefir. If I sent you your starter batch, you would have received about 2 tbsp. of grains. Pour about 3/4 cup of fresh, raw milk over the grains. (As your grains multiply, you can increase the amount of milk, yielding more kefir per batch).
6) Put the lid on the jar and store the kefir grains in a warm place where they will not be disturbed. In my home, the temperature ranges from about 68-75 degrees. This is warm enough for kefir to ferment in about a day to a day and a half. You will get to know when it is thick enough for you. At that point, put it in the refrigerator for a day or so. The longer it ferments, the thicker it becomes and will start to separate into curds and whey. You can simple stir to blend again, or pour of the whey to use for fermented veggies, etc.
7) Now strain the kefir grain milk mixture as in step three. This time, you keep the kefir to consume! Now, start the whole process over; grains in a glass jar, cover with milk, etc.

You can drink the kefir plain (tastes similar to plain yogurt), mix with fruit or juice or NingXia Red, or mix in a smoothie. Yum!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via phone or text 661-309-2259 or at drdeb4u@yahoo.com

HOW TO PREVENT GALL BLADDER STONES/SURGERY

Your gallbladder is a small sack that stores bile until needed. Bile is made in the liver and is used during digestion to emulsify fat. When you eat a meal that contains fat (like butter, dairy, meats, oils, etc), the gallbladder squeezes the proper amount of bile into the beginning part of the small intestines. The bile is mixed with the food so the fat can be broken up into smaller and smaller particles so that lipase (digestive enzyme that specifically breaks down fats) can digest the fat and the body can then absorb it.

Bile is an extraordinary liquid in that it has a very wide range of pH: from about 4-9. It works best at 7.6, but can have a broader range for your survival. Your body needs to maintain a slightly alkaline pH to stay healthy and alive. pH stands for “potential of hydrogen” and is a measurement of how acid or alkaline something is. The pH scale runs from 0-14, with 7 being neutral. Stomach acid is very low on the pH scale– about 1-4.5, whereas ammonia is very high – bout 11.

The best way to maintain your body’s slightly alkaline balance is be eating lots of fruits and vegetables; especially deeply colored ones. Deeply colored plants, especially vegetables are full of minerals that you need to give you mineral reserves for your natural buffering system. The problem is that in our standard American dietary habits, we don’t consume nearly as many veggies and fruits that our bodies need for normal health. Our mineral reserves become depleted.

The good news is that your body is designed with many back-up systems so that if you don’t eat properly, you can still survive for a certain amount of time. While you should be getting your alkalizing minerals from the foods you eat, your body can access your bile to get the alkalizing effect it needs to neutralize the acidifying residue left behind from meats, grains, soda, candy, chips, coffee, and all the other goodies ingested. When you eat improperly for too long, the bile gets out of its normal pH balance and stones form. If your habits are not corrected, the stones continue to form, eventually leading to an inflamed gallbladder which you then blame for “attacking” you.

The way to prevent gallstones and possible gallbladder removal is by eating the food that God provided for you. The diet best suited for humans should contain around 60-70% fruits and vegetables. More vegetables are better, and ½ of what you consume should be raw and/or fermented. This will ensure you are getting the minerals you need to provide your body with the material need to keep you healthy for many years to come.

If you have already had your gallbladder removed, your liver still produces bile and there will just be a steady drip into your intestines. You should not eat too many fatty foods at any given meal. Trial and error will let you know how much fat at once is too much for you. Taking digestive enzymes that include lipases is a good idea. They will ease the digestive burden on your pancreas and help you digest the fats easier since you might not have sufficient amounts of bile to emulsify your whole meal. Continuing a high fruit and veggie diet will help prevent your body from becoming too acid and going to the other back-up systems: your kidneys, bones, and muscles. But, that’s another post.

HOW TO EAT PROPERLY

Funny title, huh? And yet, many Americans have major digestion problems that can be improved by these simple steps:

1)      Start with fresh, highly nutritious food whenever possible.

2)      Before eating, take a few minutes to relax and quiet your body and mind. For many, this might include saying grace, or simply have an attitude of gratitude for the meal.

Allowing yourself to calm down before eating is important because it puts your body in the most receptive mode to digest and absorb the nutrients in the food.

There are two main parts of a special part of your nerve system called the Autonomic Nervous System. (Some people refer to it as the “Automatic” Nervous System (ANS) because it works without us having to think about it.) The first part of the ANS is the Sympathetic part SNS). This part prepares you to respond to an emergency.  If you know your child is playing in the front yard and you hear screeching tires, the SNS tells your stress glands to secrete certain hormones that dilate your pupils, deepen your breathing, raise your blood pressure, and shunt blood to your muscles (and AWAY) from your digestive organs. This is called the Fight or Flight response. It prepares you to run and deal with that emergency.

The second part of the ANS is called the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Its job is to help you “Rest and Digest” and heal. It helps decrease your blood pressure, calm your heart, and shunt blood away from your muscles and TO your digestive and other organs.

In our fast-paced lives, it seems that we go from one emergency to the next, with little time in between to get back into a restful, healing mode. Even when we go to bed, we are often thinking about our list of things to do tomorrow, etc., and never really get fully into full activation of the PNS. Praying over our food or simply taking some deep breaths before eating helps ensure the best environment to receive good nutrition.

3)      Eat some raw food with each meal. This gives us the vital enzymes we need to digest our food.

4)      Take a digestive enzyme supplement right before eating. So much of our food is over processed and void of sufficient nutrient content. A digestive aid will give us the enzymes we need to break down and absorb all the nutrition in our food.

5)      Don’t eat a huge meal right before going to bed. “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, and dinner like a pauper” has a lot of wisdom to it!

6)      Look at your plate; at least 50% of each meal should be fruits or vegetables – some of them raw.

7)      Take a gentle stroll after eating. It doesn’t have to be long, just a few minutes. And, this is not an aerobic exercise walk; just a stroll to help the food settle.

If you start to apply these simple tips, I know you will see some improvement in your digestion, energy, and overall wellbeing!