Apparently you need at least some acid in the stomach to keep those bugs under control.....
Many times, heartburn and reflux are due to too little acid in the stomach. Doctors and patients are too quick to prescribe or head to the medicine cabinet when a little pickle, lemon, or vinegar would suffice.
Ping...(Thanks, neverdem!)
Interesting - a few years ago my then 11 year old daughter was suffering from the symptoms of ulcerative colitis. Her GI doctor suggested she take twice the amount of Prevacid than normal. She eventually ended up in the hospital with C diff.
This why third world menus include hot peppers.
This is bizarrely interesting.
Typically, c. difficile outbreaks are caused by the use of potent spectrum antibiotics, used more frequently these days because of resistant strains of bacteria, and also by potent chemotherapy chemicals that wipe out much of the intestinal flora.
Both of these causes can also open the door to extremely dangerous infections by drug resistant bacteria.
Background: Human intestinal flora includes some 300-1000 different types of bacteria, of which only 30-40 types take up almost all the physical space. The rest of the bacteria are mostly harmless, but some are pathogenic.
Typically, humans have some drug resistant bacteria in them, which cause no problem *unless* the “majority” bacterial cultures have been damaged. This creates the opportunity for a “space race” population explosion by the drug resistant bacteria. And while a little bit of them are not harmful, a large number of them produce so much deadly toxin as waste that they can kill.
Importantly, when outbreaks of these drug resistant bacteria happen in hospitals, considerable success in subduing them has been achieved by using tight controls over the use of antibiotics.
However, that proton pump drugs can cause an outbreak of c. difficile raises a whole bunch of questions and possibilities.
It’s really crappy to have diarrhea.