A lot of people are taking apple cider vinegar to help with weight loss and insulin resistance but is it okay to take it if you have things like heartburn or GERD? Today I want to make sure we get that totally cleared up. Coming right up. Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg. I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything. GERD is an acronym 

for Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease and if you look it up you'll probably see something like the following. 1. It's when acid enters the esophagus. So the esophagus is your food pipe it's where the food comes down when you swallow into the stomach and if acid is in the stomach and it flows back into the esophagus then that can cause heartburn. That is correct. Second thing you'll probably hear is that the LES or the lower esophageal sphincter, which is this little muscle right here, if it's 

not closing then that allows the back flow of this acid. And that is also correct. The third thing you probably hear is that it's because there is too much acid in the stomach and that is just not correct because most people don't have enough acid. There is something called hypochlorhydria, which simply means - Not enough of hydrochloric acid and that is extremely common. Your stomach is supposed to contain or produce something called hydrochloric acid which puts its pH at a very low level. So 

if the pH is between 1 and 3, which it's supposed to be in the stomach, that puts it right down here at the bottom of the scale. It's right above battery acid and this is because the acid is there to help you digest protein. It's there to kill pathogens. A lot of pathogens will enter through your digestive tract and if you have a high enough level of acid that will kill them off. It's also there to help you absorb minerals and some vitamins like B-12 that can only be absorbed appropriately in 

an acidic environment so if you don't make enough acid then this stuff isn't going to work. Now if you have a normal amount of stomach acid this is what's supposed to happen. Your pH stays between 1 and 3. And this low pH; it signals to the body to close this lower esophageal sphincter to prevent the back flow. Then you're going to digest protein in a timely fashion. You're going to have mucus to protect the stomach. The stomach produces mucus that acts like a barrier against the acid and then 

if everything is working, the food, the protein is going to move on through to the small intestine after about two to four hours and in the ideal scenario everything works. But here's what happens when you have hypochlorhydria - when you don't have enough. Now your pH is going to be much higher, somewhere between four and six and now this is not going to provide the proper signals to close that lower esophageal sphincter so it might remain partially open. You're also going to have a slow and 

incomplete digestion. It's not going to happen in a timely fashion. The food is going to be in the stomach much much longer and this is going to allow the stomach content to reflux - gastroesophageal reflux disease - and this is going to severely irritate the esophagus because the stomach has this mucus on the lining but the esophagus doesn't have any of that. So that's why the esophagus gets very very irritated when it gets acid and now you experience the symptoms of heartburn or GERD. Now if 

this goes on for some time you can develop something called Barrett's esophagus. So they send down a little scope and take pictures and now they see that these cells lining the esophagus don't look like normal healthy esophageal cells anymore. They're starting to change and at first when they change it's called metaplasia - changing growth. And if this goes on for a really long time then they change into something bad called dysplasia which can eventually lead to cancer. What are the symptoms 

of hypochlorhydria, of not having enough acid. Well interestingly the first one is heartburn. The sensation of too much acid is because you don't have enough. Another thing that can happen quite a bit is that you just don't have any appetite for meat. Your body is very intelligent so if you can't produce enough stomach acid to break down meat, your body is going to tell you don't eat it because it's going to cause problems if you can't break it down. Gas and bloating irritable bowel syndrome 

again if you can't digest the food properly in the early stages it's going to cause problems down the road. Thin hair and nails these are all made from proteins so if you're not breaking down food and utilizing protein then you can't make the tissues that you want. Leaky gut is very very common and as a result you often have food sensitivities and you can also start developing autoimmunity. In women it's very common to have hair loss associated with it and in general you're going to find 

multiple nutritional deficiencies because if you can't break down food then you can't absorb all your proteins, your amino acids, iron, minerals vitamins etc. On top of the symptoms there are some conditions associated with this and lupus systemic lupus erythematosus which is an autoimmune condition can happen. Thyroid issues most of which are autoimmune as Hashimoto's. Psoriasis which is not just a skin condition it's an arthritis it's an inflammatory arthritis it's also an autoimmune 

condition. You can have lots of allergies asthma eczema gastritis osteoporosis because bones are mostly protein. And you can also have pernicious anemia because you need that stomach acid to absorb B-12 and make blood cells so what causes hypochlorhydria why doesn't the body make this well hypothyroid when the thyroid slows down everything slows down including the production of hydrochloric acid you can also have a stomach bug called h pylori helicobacter pylori which is a nasty bug that gives 

you ulcers but also convert some of your acid into base so it basically wrecks your stomach acid you could also have taken too many antacids and this is what we're going to see in every store there's just yards and yards of antacids because people have so much of these problems and then they think that oh if I just take an antacid I solve the problem. No you calm down the symptom temporarily but by taking that antacid you're setting yourself up for all of the problems all the conditions that we 

talked about on the previous slide. Stress is one of the most common cause stress causes everything have you noticed well it's because with stress your body shifts you have your fight flight system and your feed breed system your digestive system so when you're in a fight flight mode whether you're running from a lion or you're just worrying about the bills or the last rude person that you should have told off in a certain way. Either way it's stress whether it's real or imagined danger and 

your body is focusing all its resources on the outside and when it does that it turns off everything to do with digestion and that's why stress is associated with all digestive issues there is also a strong association between increasing age and a lowered production of hydrochloric acid and that's just because most people as they age they degenerate it doesn't mean that age has to cause that if you stay healthy if you maintain your body remember use it or lose it then you can still reach a 

quite advanced age and not be degenerated unfortunately once you have one or more of these they tend to feed each other in a vicious cycle and that's what makes this problem kind of tough to get out of sometimes so now that you're starting to understand more about how the stomach and the digestive system works you can see how apple cider vinegar could actually be beneficial that its pH is 2.5 so it's right in that range of what the stomach needs to be when you're digesting protein and even 

though it seems counterintuitive to some people that it feels like you have too much acid why would you add more it actually works if you understand what we just talked about so apple cider vinegar adds natural acid to the system and it helps improve the signaling to close that lower esophageal sphincter to prevent the backflow and it helps your digestion overall now what about taking apple cider vinegar if you already have GERD or heartburn well it is quite safe and most people are going to 

find that it improves the GERD it's going to go away or it's going to diminish significantly 90 - 95 percent of people in my office that we put on either apple cider vinegar or a digestive supplement called betaine hydrochloride which is basically just stomach acid in a pill. The vast majority get better now if you already have some irritation if you have an ulcer or you have gastritis if it's just really raw and irritated then you may notice that it feels a little worse if you take that apple 

cider vinegar or the betaine hydrochloride and that just means you're not quite ready for it yet so you need to start with some soothing digestive enzymes you need to take some digestive aids that do not have the acid component in it and then later when your digestion improves then you could try again. Always remember that you don't want to treat the symptom you want to address the root cause you want to heal the body you want to reduce the stress you're going to give your body the proper 

nutrients. Now I understand if you have an extreme case of heartburn that you probably want to take some antacids you might want to take some Tums but realize that it's not a solution it will cover up the symptoms but if you keep using it it will set you up for that vicious cycle and make it harder and harder for your body to function so always address the root cause..