PART 3: Respectfully, your supplements are trash

How to effectively use supplements to facilitate gastric healing from the damage caused by acid reflux. A glimpse into the good, the bad, and the fad of supplements marketed for gut support.

Welcome back to The Acid Reflux Workshop, a 3-part Substack series to heal acid reflux from the root. Today is PART 3– the last part of the series, and it’s all about healing the gastric mucosa using supplements. I’m not talking about expensive refrigerated probiotics or highly specialized digestive enzymes. We’ll go over what supplements actually move the needle instead of just draining your pocket.

DISCLAIMER– the contents of this post:

• #1 Won’t work if you haven’t read and implemented PART 1 and PART 2.

• #2. Are for educational purposes only and are not to be construed as medical advice.

ICYMI. Read the workshop from to top to bottom:

Introducing… The Acid Reflux Solution Workshop

PART 1: No, you don’t have too much acid

PART 2: "Should I eat a bland diet to heal my acid reflux?"

There are two types of people: those who want to heal only “naturally” using food as medicine and going to retreats in Topanga– and those who love a pill, a powder, a little thingy to add to their morning routine with the promise of better health.

Unsurprisingly, true healing happens in the middle.

Ah! nuance!

Balance!

Experimenting!

From those who chase purity and only seek to use “natural” (as in not-processed-then-bottled) avenues to heal, to those with a massive stack of pharma-and-nutraceuticals, what’s missing in the conversation is simply understanding the mechanisms of how healing works– and we’ve been doing this! Think about it for a sec:

Inside of PART 1, we talked about lifestyle as the root cause of acid reflux. In PART 2, we discussed how certain foods are known reflux triggers. And now in PART 3, our focus is on supplementation.

The journey has intentionally been mapped this way because healing is a multi-step process.

1. Through lifestyle: we stop the issue from getting any bigger.

2. With foods: removing triggers does two things: 1) it eases a lot of the symptoms, and 2) it allows the body to rest from constantly trying to soothe inflammation.

3. Using supplements: we repair the damage that has been done. Healing agents are incredibly important in soothing and restoring the gastric and esophageal mucosa.

With acid reflux often comes inflammation of both the stomach and esophagus, gastritis, and even ulceration. As powerful as the steps in PART 1 and 2 are, they’re typically not enough to heal– you can get really good at managing, but that’s it.

Healing the gastric mucosa is also what’s going to allow for trigger foods be to added back into your diet: as you repair your gut, you can expect to be able to handle foods you were previously sensitive to: the tomatoes, the limes and lemons, coffee, and more.

Before you ask: yes, there are 100% natural foods that work well for healing the GI tract, (and we will discuss those too) but the use of therapeutic nutrients (aka, supplements) is typically more effective than using “food as medicine” alone.

In this post we’ll get into what’s in those those supplements that makes them so effective, how to take them for maximum efficacy, and how to safely implement a supplement protocol.

The MVPs of Healing Elements

1. Aloe Vera: widely known for its great anti-inflammatory effects. 1 tsp of gel after meals or take as directed on the bottle if store-bought. When buying aloe juice, make sure it’s coming from the ‘inner leaf’ and not the whole plant, as it can cause side effects.

2. Demulcent Herbs: these are your slippery elm, okra, plantain powder, and