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GUT REACTION
By Bonnie Jenkins, Advanced Natural Medicine Bulletin
In college, I had a friend named Pete who suffered from an ulcer. Whenever we would go out to eat, poor Pete got ribbed because, unlike most college students who load up sodas and burgers, he would head straight for the milk. Back in those days, doctors believed that the only way to manage an ulcer was with a steady diet of dairy. But now, doctors have an arsenal of prescription drugs to treat the 20 million Americans who will develop an ulcer sometime in their lives. But are pharmaceuticals the answer? Before you reach for the Tums, let’s look at what’s really going on down there.
Ulcers develop when an imbalance occurs between the digestive juices and the body’s defense mechanisms, allowing acid and enzymes like pepsin to attack the stomach lining itself. In severe cases, the lining is eroded to the point of becoming perforated – in other words, a hole is formed in the stomach wall, enabling partially digested food and bacteria to spill into the sterile abdominal cavity. That can lead to hemorrhaging from the erosion of a major blood vessel or to obstruction of the gastrointestinal tract. Ulcers that form where the stomach and the small intestine meet can swell and scar, forming an obstruction which blocks the intestinal opening.
Got the bug?
One of the most common causes of ulcers is a bacterium known as Helicobacter pylori. Because of its corkscrew shape, H. pylori can penetrate the stomach’s protective mucus coating and attach itself to the stomach lining. Although most bacteria can’t survive the stomach’s harsh acidic environment, scientists believe that H. pylori thrives by producing urease, an enzyme that neutralizes acid. They also know that H. pylori creates toxins that promote inflammation and damage to the stomach lining. But that doesn’t explain why, even though more than half of all adults carry the H. pylori bacteria by the time they are sixty, only one in six develops an ulcer. But a brand new study in the journal Science thinks it may have found the answer. It seems that there’s more than one type of H. pylori bacteria – some benign, some not. In the study, the researchers from Stanford University found that one particular form of the bug disrupts the junctions between the cells that make up the protective stomach lining. Disrupting these junctions may prevent the body from repairing damage in the stomach when it occurs, allowing a relatively minor problem to eventually turn into an ulcer.
Regardless of how H. pylori works, because it’s a bacteria, most doctors rely on antibiotics and antacids as a first line of defense. Yet a recent study of 276 duodenal ulcer patients by the Glostrup University Hospital in Denmark found that a quarter of the patients didn’t respond to the drug therapy. Another study by Spanish researchers also found that antibiotics often fail to eradicate H. pylori, leading some doctors to speculate that the bacteria may only account for half of all ulcers.
The NSAID connection
If you are in the 50 percent who don’t harbor H.pylori, you may have unwittingly set yourself up for an ulcer anyway. I’d always heard jokes about how stress can lead to an ulcer and wondered if it was true. To get the answer, I called John Foster, MD, of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He said that, while stress could make an ulcer worse, it usually wasn’t the primary cause. Instead, Dr. Foster pointed to the second leading cause of ulcers – aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). NSAIDs reduce pain and inflammation by blocking cyclooxygenase, an enzyme involved in the production of prostaglandins (hormone-like substances that modulate the biochemical activity of some tissues). Although these drugs might provide temporary relief from arthritis or a headache, Dr. Foster said that long-term use of NSAIDs, even the buffered varieties, can throw the stomach’s defense system out of whack, making it vulnerable to the harmful effects of acid and pepsin. Worse yet, a study of 132 patients with bleeding ulcers by the Division of Gastroenterology at the University Hospital in Nottingham, England, found that NSAID users infected with H. pylori nearly doubled their risk of developing a bleeding ulcer compared with those not infected with the bacteria.
Dr. Foster also noted that bad habits can bring on or exacerbate an ulcer. “Caffeine stimulates gastric acid secretions,” he says. “Coffee, tea and caffeinated soft drinks can increase susceptibility to the H. pylori bacteria.” Alcohol is something else you may want to steer clear of if you have an ulcer since, even in moderate amounts, it intensifies the risk of bleeding. And, as if cigarettes didn’t have enough going against them, several studies have linked smoking with slower healing and more frequent relapses. What’s more, a study by the University of Hong Kong, China, found that exposure to cigarette smoke reduced the amount of gastric mucus – so if you’ve got an ulcer, it’s probably good to avoid secondhand smoke.
Natural neutralizers
Short of resorting to conventional medicine's “A” team – antacids and antibiotics – there are steps you can take to ease the pain and perhaps even heal an ulcer. Long before Zantac and Pepcid burst onto the scene, herbalists relied on plants to treat ulcers. The most well known anti-ulcer herb is licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) – and with good reason. Studies show that licorice is as effective as many pharmaceuticals for treating peptic ulcers because it not only relieves pain, it promotes healing and guards against recurrence. But, since ordinary licorice root can raise blood pressure if used on a long-term basis, Dr. Foster recommends using a safe and effective form of the herb known as deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL).
To soothe inflamed stomach tissue, Dr. Foster also recommends drinking 3 or 4 cups of chamomile (Matricaria recutita) tea a day. “Chamomile is a calming stomach tonic that bathes inflamed tissue,” he says. Studies have shown that chamomile exerts anti-inflammatory, antipeptic and antispasmodic activity on the stomach and duodenum.
If you’re battling H. pylori and you either can’t or don’t want to take antibiotics, try cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum). While it may sound strange, a recent study by Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, found that cinnamon, combined with other antimicrobials, may help eradicate the bug. An earlier study found that cinnamon alone completely inhibited the bacteria.
Another herb that may help stop H. pylori in its tracks is mastic gum (Pistacia lentiscus). A resin derived from a relative of the pistachio tree, mastic gum has been used to cure gastric aliments for more than 3,000 years. Today, researchers are rediscovering its curative powers. A study of mastic gum by researchers at England’s Nottingham University found that doses as low as 1,000 mg. a day can cure peptic ulcers in just two weeks. Apparently the gum causes structural changes within the bacterium's cell structure, causing it to weaken and die. What’s more, the study found that mastic protects cells and inhibits acid secretions.
One Last Thing . . .
Cabbage juice has gained an almost legendary reputation among ulcer sufferers. In fact, many herbalists suggest drinking two full glasses of fresh cabbage juice a day to soothe an ulcer. The reason it works is because cabbage is naturally high in the amino acid glutamine. Two studies by the Dunn Clinical Nutrition Center in Cambridge, England, have found that glutamine is essential to supporting a healthy mucus layer in the stomach and intestines. While drinking a daily dose of cabbage juice doesn’t sound very appealing to me, Dr. Foster says that you can get the same affect by taking 500 mg. of supplemental L-glutamine a day.
This just in . . .
A few weeks ago, I told you how anti-cholesterol statin drugs can deplete the body of CoQ10 and cause rhabdomyolysis, a potentially fatal condition. Well, statin drugs are also used to treat intermittent claudication (IC), leg pain caused by narrowed arteries. But a new study has found that policosanol, a substance derived from sugar cane wax, is more effective than the statin drug Mevacor in treating IC. In the study, 28 adults with moderate to severe IC, were randomly assigned to receive either 10 mg. of policosanol a day or 20 mg. of Mevacor a day. Pain-free walking distance and cholesterol levels were measured at the beginning, middle and end of the trial. After 20 weeks, those taking policosanol had a 34 percent increase in pain-free walking distance, while no change was observed in those taking Mevacor. And, while both groups had significant reductions in total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol, those taking policosanol had a 32 percent increase in HDL (good) cholesterol. From all the reports I’ve seen, policosanol has a terrific safety record. It’s too bad statins can’t make the same claim.
***
References:
Castano G, et al. “Effects of policosanol and lovastatin in patients with intermittent claudication: a double-blind comparative pilot study.” Angiology. 2003; 54:25-38.
James LA, et al. ``Gluamine metabolism in the gastrointestinal tract of the rat assess by the relative activities of glutaminase (EC 3.5.1.2) and glutamine synthetase (EC 6.3.1.2).” British Journal of Nutrition. 1998; 79:365-372.
Nir Y, et al. ``Controlled trial of the effect of cinnamon extract on Helicobacter pylori.” Helicobacter. 2000; 5:94-97.
Thirlwell D, et al. ``Mastic Gum Kills Helicobacter pylori.” New England Journal of Medicine.1998; 339:1946. |
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