Is life eating at you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm making pancakes for my guys for supper.  I've been sick all day and have very little energy so I'm making pancakes for supper.  That's not such a bad supper, is it?

 

Now, this is what I'M having for supper: burnt toast and milk.  Due to all of the stress in my life here lately, the ulcer in my stomach has reappeared.  I learned decades ago how to heal an ulcer quickly so I'll share in case life has been eating at you too!

 

1.  Take out a frying pan.

2.  Add to the pan up to a tablespoon of butter

3.  Put the pan on the stove

4.  Turn on the stove and the exhaust fan.

5.  Burn the toast on one side

6.  Flip the bread over

7.  Burn the toast on the other side and I do mean black!

8.  Get out a cereal bowl

9.  Put the burnt toast in the bowl

10.  Cover the toast with milk--raw is best

11.  Let the milk soak into the burnt toast.

12.  Eat this happily knowing that the fire in your gut is soon going out!

13.  Repeat as needed--up to 4 times a day if it's very painful

 

Now I realize that this has close to ZERO appeal but, when your gut is burning in the middle of the night, you'll try anything once.  After it worked for me the first time, about 25 years ago, I've used it every time since.  THIS REALLY WORKS!!

 

Still, if you don't want to give it a try, I understand.  So I went in search of an article with more ideas for healing ulcers naturally.  I liked this particular article as it shows the pitfalls of using drugs to try to heal your ulcer including resultant food poisoning.  That surely is an improvement to having an ulcer!

 

In conclusion, if you have an ulcer, you have my sympathies.  My ulcers have always erupted from prolonged periods of stress.  Finding ways to relax are paramount in my mind then!  Prayer is a super method for relaxing internal tensions--so is gardening.  I urge you all to find your joy and partake in it often and regularly.  Surely preventing an ulcer is the very best way to go!!

 

Have a great week!!

Dawn 

Your Stomach Pain May Be Due To An Ulcer (here’s how to detect and treat it)   hare                                  

 Peptic ulcers are an extremely common health problem, affecting as many as 50% of Americans. Other terms used for this condition are gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or Acid reflux disease. A popular symptom of acid reflux or an ulcer is "heartburn", the burning sensation behind your breastbone that sometimes travels up your throat. In some cases, this pain is severe enough to be mistaken for a heart attack.

Along with discomfort and pain in the abdomen, a stomach ulcer can cause nausea, vomiting, heartburn, poor appetite, and weight loss. Stomach ulcers can even lead to a hole in the stomach, which causes an extremely painful stabbing pain in the stomach and requires immediate surgery. A very small fraction of ulcers might signal cancer.

What Causes Ulcers

Acid reflux and ulcers are thought to be caused by excessive amounts of acid in the stomach, which is why acid-blocking drugs are typically recommended and prescribed. However, this is a serious medical misconception that adversely affects hundreds of millions of people, as the problem usually results from having too little acid in your stomach. However, ulcers can have several different causes, so traditional treatments depend on the root of the cause. Stomach ulcers are often treated with antibiotics for an infection or medications to reduce, block, or neutralize stomach acid.

After food passes through your esophagus into your stomach, a muscular valve called the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) closes, preventing food or acid to move back up.

Acid reflux occurs when the LES relaxes inappropriately, allowing acid from your stomach to flow (reflux) backward into your esophagus. But it's important to understand that acid reflux is not a disease caused by excessive acid production in your stomach; rather it's a symptom more commonly related to:

• Hiatal hernia
• Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection (H. pylori bacteria is thought to affect more than half of the world's population, and has been identified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization)

While these two conditions are unrelated, many who have a hiatal hernia also have H. pylori, which cause a chronic low-level inflammation of your stomach lining that can result in an ulcer and associated symptoms. If you have a hiatal hernia, physical therapy on the area may work and many chiropractors are skilled in this adjustment.

Stomach ulcers are open sores in the lining of the stomach. Because of the amount of acid present in the stomach, ulcers there are often extremely painful. Certain prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications can also cause stomach ulcers. Typically the use of painkillers, such as aspirin, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory pills, such as ibuprofen or naproxen. Other common culprits include anxiety medications and antidepressants, antibiotics, blood pressure medications, nitroglycerin, and osteoporosis drugs.

If your heartburn is caused by a medication you're taking, the answer is to address what, when, and how you're taking that drug. Please do not make the mistake of simply adding yet another drug to counteract this side effect. Some helpful tips for how to address drug-induced ulcers/heartburn are:

• Avoid taking more than the recommended or prescribed dose
• Some medications are best taken on an empty stomach, while others are less likely to cause side effects when taken with a meal. Check the label for instructions, or ask your doctor or pharmacist for advise on when and how to take your medication
• Ask your doctor or pharmacist to review ALL the medications and supplements you're taking to see if one or more of them cause heartburn.
• Avoid laying down right after taking your medication

Changing the dose or switching to another medication may be advisable to ease your discomfort. You can also drink some ginger tea.

Why Medication Isn't Always A Good Idea

One of the most commonly prescribed drugs for heartburn and acid reflux are proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), which are very effective at blocking acid production in your stomach. While that may sound like an appropriate remedy, in most cases it's actually the worst approach possible, as the problem is typically related to your stomach producing too little stomach acid.

Medication like Nexium, Prilosec, and Prevacid are made to treat a very limited range of severe problems, and according to Mitchell Katz, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, they are only warranted for the treatment of:

• Bleeding ulcers
• Zollinger-Ellison syndrome (a rare condition that causes your stomach to produce excess acid)
• Severe acid reflux, where an endoscopy has confirmed that your esophagus is damaged

Katz states that, "about 60 to 70% of people taking these drugs only have mild heartburn and shouldn't be on them." Part of the problem with PPIs is that when you suppress the acid in your stomach, you decrease your body's ability to kill the helicobacter bacteria. So if your heartburn is caused by an H. pylori infection, it makes the condition worse. Also, reducing stomach acid diminishes the primary defense mechanism for food-borne infections, increasing the risk of food poisoning. PPI drugs can also cause potentially serious side effects, including pneumonia, bone loss, hip fractures, and infection by harmful intestinal bacteria.

You can also develop both a tolerance and dependence on PPI drugs, so you should not stop taking them cold turkey. You must wean yourself off of them gradually or else you might experience a severe rebound of your symptoms. In some cases, the problem may end up being worse than before you started taking the medication.

There are over 16,000 articles in the medical literature showing that suppressing stomach acid does not address the problem, and that it only temporarily treats the symptoms.

There are also natural home remedies you can use to help ease the symptoms of a stomach ulcer and help it heal.

Easy Natural Ulcer Remedies That Are Extremely

 

Ulcers can flare up and become a chronic problem, that lead to a number of serious complications including bleeding, so it is important to treat them promptly. Instead of pursuing the most common conventional treatment, which only leads to further problems, following all-natural ulcer remedies is best and easiest.

The answer to this problem is to restore your natural gastric balance and function. Eat a lot of vegetables and other high-quality, ideally organic foods. Also, eliminate food triggers from your diet. Common culprits here include caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine products. Eating large amounts of processed foods and sugars is a surefire way to exacerbate ulcers, by further upsetting the bacterial balance in your stomach and intestine.

Consume Probiotics Daily

Make sure you're getting enough beneficial bacteria from your meals. This will help balance your gut flora, and eliminate H. pylori bacteria without resorting to antibiotics. It will also aid in proper digestion and assimilation of your food. Ideally, you should get your probiotics from fermented foods, but if you aren't eating fermented foods, you need to supplement with a probiotic on a regular basis. Ideally, you'll want to include a variety of cultured foods and beverages in your diet, as each food will inoculate your gut with a variety of different microorganisms. Fermented foods you can easily add to your diet are:

• Fermented vegetables like sauerkraut
• Chutneys
• Cultured dairy, such as Greek yogurt, kefir, and sour cream
• Miso
• Buttermilk
• Tempeh
• Pickled Veggies

Eat Your Cabbage

To get more beneficial bacteria in your body, and keep the disease-causing bacteria in check that can lead to ulcers. One of the best ways to fortify the "GOOD" bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract is by regularly including cultured and lactic acid–fermented foods in your diet, that I talked about above.

But when it comes to ulcer treatment in particular, one lactic acid food stands out above the rest: cabbage juice. Decades before antibiotics, cabbage juice was successfully used to prevent or heal peptic and duodenal ulcers. In one study, it was shown that cabbage juice alone had a cure rate of over 92% in the treatment of these ulcers. This compared to about a 32% cure rate in those using a placebo or other treatment.

The dosage in the study consisted of only 50 mL of raw cabbage juice derived from a quart of freshly pressed cabbage. Based on numerous studies and early clinical work, researchers have begun to refer to this unknown ulcer-healing factor in cabbage as vitamin U.

Although in the above studies the cabbage juice wasn’t fermented, keep in mind that vegetables that grow close to the soil are naturally rich in beneficial lactic acid bacteria. That's why "starter cultures" aren't needed to ferment these vegetables, only salt and water.

Cabbage is also a reliable source of vitamin C, which has been found to be lower in the gastric juice of ulcer patients. So if you have ulcers, cabbage juice is a safe, effective, and inexpensive remedy. If you "culture" it or give it a chance to ferment, you'll experience even more benefits.

Garlic

I've often written about the miraculous powers of garlic and I highly recommend its use in cooking for good reason. Research on its preventive and therapeutic benefits continues to grow. It now appears that garlic keeps levels of the Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacterium in check, that can contribute to the development of stomach ulcers. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle discovered that garlic exhibits specific antimicrobial activity against H. pylori without entirely eliminating the strain, that can cause other digestive issues.

Pure Raw Honey

Honey possesses a number of powers and has been shown to be an effective ulcer treatment for two reasons. First, glucose oxidase, an enzyme in honey, produces hydrogen peroxide, that kills harmful bacteria that contribute to the development of ulcers. Antibacterial substances in honey add to honey’s effectiveness in eliminating bacteria.

Certain varieties of honey, however, can be more effective than others at healing ulcers. I have reports from Saudi Arabia, where local honey was used to cure ulcers, and from doctors in Egypt and Russia who have had positive results using their local honeys.

However, the key to successful ulcer treatment appears to hinge on it being natural, raw, unprocessed honey. Two tablespoons a day should do the trick, and when the problem has eased, 1 tablespoon daily should be enough.

Coconut

All forms of Coconut are very helpful for people suffering from stomach ulcers, because of the antibacterial qualities kills the bacteria that causes the ulcers. Coconut milk and coconut water actually have anti-ulcer properties, so drinking a few cups of fresh coconut milk or coconut water daily is very helpful. Also, eating the meat of the tender coconut for at least one week to get positive results. You can even take one tablespoon of coconut oil in the morning and another at night for one week. As coconut oil is mainly composed of medium-chain fatty acids, it is also easily digested.

Bananas

Compounds in dried, unripe bananas increase mucus in the digestive tract, that provides a strong protective coating to help prevent and heal ulcers. Unripe bananas also promote cell growth in the intestinal tract. And bananas contain water-soluble polysaccharides, the same compounds found in the anti-ulcer prescription drug Carafate.