Hello my friend and welcome to this 7-day video challenge where we'll answer whether or not you need to think about tackling your stomach acid… even if you don't experience digestive symptoms.

So today, on Day 1, we're going to look at all of the most common reasons that modern humans often possess insufficient stomach acid levels.

So as we covered in the free introductory Gut Primer series, which I highly suggest checking out if you haven't already, stomach acid is referred to as Hydrochloric acid, and is commonly abbreviated to “HCl”.

HCl serves 3 important roles int he body, it breaks down our food into a safe form, it acts as an acid barrier to reduce the burden on our immune system, and it works to signal other digestive processes to begin and to end.

As you may remember from high school chemistry, a pH or power of hydrogen is a metric that describes the level of acidity of a substance.

The pH scale runs from 0 to 14, where 0 is the most acidic, 14 is the most basic, and 7 is neutral.

Water, for example, has a pH of 7.

Now, here's what you need to remember: in order for the 3 roles that stomach acid performs for the body to be successfully carried out, literature has shown that the pH needs to be between 1.5 -3.0 - very acidic! Otherwise, health consequences ensue.

So what we mean when we say stomach acid is "low" or "weak" is that the pH is too high, or a number above 3.

Got it? Any pH number above 3 signifies weak stomach acid.

So now, let's get to the meat of this sandwich: the vast majority of Americans, or those who lives a western lifestyle, suffer from suboptimal stomach acid levels, or a high pH in their stomachs.

So let's talk about some of the reasons for this, and in tomorrows video we'll explain more about how we can draw these conclusions.

The first factor for low stomach acid is age, as we age, our secretion levels of all kinds tend to drop off.

Next is stress. Modern humans are the first in history to be subjected to chronic levels of stress as opposed to acute but brief stressors that we would experience throughout our evolutionary history. Stress - whether emotional or physical - can inhibit all secretion production due to the reallocation of precious resources into the body's physical stress response and away from digestion.

Excessive carbohydrates in the diet - as is common in western diets - have been shown to suppress stomach acid. There are a few different explanations for this.

1. One is that carbs actually require less acid to breakdown, so when you eat a lot of them your body doesn't secrete much because it simply is not needed. But, when you decide to eat something with fat or protein in it, the body is suddenly burdened to create more gastric acid, and often falls short - yet we really need the nutrient-dense pay off of protein and fat rich foods.

2. The second explanation is that eating lots of carbohydrates essentially translates to eating nutrient poor foods which begets deficiencies - and this may impair your body's natural ability to make stomach acid.

   We'll talk about this a lot more in a later video.

3. The third explanation is that carbohydrates can feed pathogenic interference.

H. Pylori, a common and well-researched opportunistic species colonizes the Pyloric Sphincter, which is the entryway into the intestines from the stomach, and this species actually works to atrophy or weaken the cells that produce HCl in the stomach in order to make the environment more hospitable for themselves.

Other causes of insufficient stomach acid include the overconsumption of alcohol, allergies that allocate resources to immune responses, or any other factor than increases resource-intensive inflammation in the body.

But, by far, the single biggest driver of low stomach acid is our modern toxin exposure!

We are exposed to an unprecedented level of toxins in modernity. The EPA tracks over 86,000 toxic chemicals actively circulating in our environment in its database. This constant, chronic exposure from our air, water, food, and environment suppresses stomach acid. We'll get into the mechanics of this a little later, but for now all you need to know is that toxins are a major problem in the context of stomach acid.

So, now that we know the most common reasons why stomach acid might be low... what do you think? Are you someone who may be subject to one or more of these factors?

If you're a person living in today's world, the answer is probably "yes". And we'll see tomorrow that, statistically, most of us are probably dealing with this problem.

You may find that this idea - that many people don't have enough stomach acid - is a difficult one for you to swallow. This is likely because of how conventional medicine has encouraged you to think about acid. We typically only hear about stomach acid in the narrative of conditions like acid reflux and GERD.

So tomorrow we'll go ahead and debunk the most common stomach acid myths. Looking forward to it!