Friendly Flora Prevent Intestinal Damage Caused by Antacids & Pain Killers

Antacid medication (proton pump inhibitors) and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly prescribed medications to suppress the symptoms of indigestion or pain, and are often prescribed together. A new study shows that the combination induces bacterial imbalance in the small intestine that will cause small intestine injury. This is a classic example of the problem of Western medicine’s temporary solutions, especially when used long term. Thankfully, it appears friendly flora (acidophilus) can prevent the damage.

Your entire digestive tract, from beginning to end, is supposed to be a fine-tuned production line that carefully digests and absorbs the food you eat. Any time you have a digestive symptom of any kind, you want to fix it—not suppress the symptom with a drug. By masking a problem, another problem is likely to emerge, which is now proven to be the case with the overly-utilized proton pump inhibitor medications. Quite frankly, inducing small intestine bacterial imbalance and digestive lining injury with a drug is not only a problem to the health of your digestive tract, but it also sets the stage for far more dangerous diseases of aging. This is not a trivial issue.

While researchers showed that friendly flora was able to prevent the damage, this animal study is of short duration. That means that if you have to use these medications for some reason for a short term period of time or occasional use, you should take acidophilus with them and it may reduce their adverse side effects. There is no guarantee such a solution would work over the long haul, as your digestive tract can only be “punched in the nose” so often before it breaks.

If you are stuck in the predicament of using both of these types of drugs you should monitor your blood at least every six months to check for flagrant damage. Your hemoglobin, red blood cell count, and hematocrit should be in the middle of the normal range. If they are tending to be low in the normal range or out of range on the low side then there exists a major problem. Hematocrit is a score representing pressurization of your circulatory system, similar to the idea of an inflated balloon. If your small intestine becomes too injured then your hematocrit score will drop, like someone letting air out of your balloon. Your body will tend to increase your blood pressure in an attempt to compensate, setting into motion all sorts of problems. Monitoring these scores can help you tell if you have really crossed the line, but good scores do not mean that intestinal damage is not occurring.

Dealing with pain and/or indigestion is sometimes difficult to improve, especially if structural damage has occurred from an accident or injury. Nevertheless, you have many natural options that can help reduce pain and improve digestion, helping you to need less dangerous medication. Using drugs on a long-term basis for symptom management is a road full of potholes.