Allergies and too little stomach acid

[mattG]

Perhaps this belongs in another thread, but it seems relevant to the overall discussion. There seems to be good evidence that a substantial amount of people have too little stomach acid, especially as they get older. The question then becomes whether this low stomach acid condition allows for more allergens being released into the blood system than does a properly functioning digestive system. There are things you can do about low stomach acid such as betaine and digestive enzymes and even probiotics. Too little stomach acid is not usually believed to be a real problem by mainstream medical opinion, so finding a doctor to test for this will be tough. Also the Heidelberg test has the reputation as the best test in determining stomac acidity and is used widely in europe. However finding it here is difficult, though there is a site which will tell you the closest practitioner using it. In the acid reflux community I have seen a lot people who claimed to have been helped by low acid therapy, but how it translated to allergens was not directly addressed.

[mattG]

Webslave- My apologies for posting this in a somewhat carless fashion, but I would appreciate if you would reconsider placing it in the diet and allergy thread. Or if that is not possible if there is a way I might tweek my post in a way it would be better suited for the diet and allergy thread.
Thanks
Matt

[webslave]

Sure, if you provide proper scientific evidence that low stomach acid is linked to allergies.

[mattG]

Here is a doctor saying there is evidence for it. I will see if I can do better



http://www.medical-library.net/Hypochlorhydria.html

[mattG]

Webslave- If you could site the type of studies which have been done on the consequences of hypochlorhydria then it would easier to see that the proposition is disproven. But as far as I know there is no such research, so I assume evidence lies in interpreting the likely outcomes in the known workings of the digestive system. Part of the digestive process is to digest food substance into molecules with antigen markers that will not be reactive towards the immune system. It would seem that any dysfunction of the digestive system would increase the possibility of the digestive system properly carying out this function. There seem to be at least a lot folks with some expertise who claim that hypochlorhydria is linked to leaky gut syndrome. Wikipedia links leaky gut to allergic responses. Are both these conditions being linked at question? Or is it that undigested protien molecules or whatever other substances leak into the bloodstream from these conditions do not cause an immune system response? Here is alink which has a decent explanation



http://www.toddcaldecott.com/leaky_gut.html

[webslave]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez

No studies I could find, maybe you can?

[mattG]

As far as I see there are no studies. I would like to know where that leaves us in this discussion please?

[webslave]

Since most men here are under 50, the putative drop in stomach acid in later life is of no relevance to us. That means this discussion is off topic.

[mattG]

Well if that had been the original reason, you could have saved me the trouble of presenting a case in which you have no interest in.

[webslave]

No, it's that combined with the minimal relevance to a mostly young population group, your case also has no science behind it. You could have saved yourself the trouble of presenting this topic if you'd done some research beforehand.