Well, I know I've had low stomach acid for years because I was using Prevacid and other PPIs. This has caused all of my problems. Anyone who is taking that poison should stop ASAP.

But after quitting PPIs my heartburn increased, of course, and I started looking into things I can do naturally for that. I found that the cause of heartburn is almost never high stomach acid, as the millions of TV commercials would have you believe. It's actually, quite often, low stomach acid. So I picked up a Betaine HCl supplement with Pepsin.

You start by taking 1 Betaine HCl capsule before dinner. If you don't have any discomfort, you take 2 the next night, 3 the next night and so on. I found that I can take 9 or 10 capsules without any discomfort, implying that I'm very low on stomach acid. I take several pills with dinner and less with other meals, depending what and how much I'm eating. It has very nearly eliminated my heartburn. In the last 2 weeks I've only needed to take one antacid tablet, which is a huge improvement over what I was going through before taking the supplement.

I'm convinced now that the whole source of my problem has been low stomach acid, which caused poor assimilation of protein and essential minerals and a host of other problems. Low stomach acid cripples the rest of your digestion. The last 3 days were my best of 2007 both physically and mentally, so I'm on the right track.

IMO, everyone at this site should do their best to analyze their digestion from start to finish. People spend a lot of time and money around here trying to starve their Candida but, IMHO, that's the wrong way to look at it. If your digestion and intestinal environment were correct, you would not have Candida overgrowth in the first place. So, as always, it's best to fix the source of the problem.