If you mix starches and proteins at the same meal, your stomach may not produce enough acid to digest your foods.

Is there enough protein in your stomach to digest your food? Or are excess carbohydrates containing high amounts of starches or sugars inhibiting the production of hydrochloric acid in your stomach needed for digestion? Are you mixing starches and proteins at the same meal, such as steak, hot dogs, or burgers with potato salad and bread which could inhibit the production of enough hydrochloric acid to digest your food properly? For further information, there is an excellent book on nutrition which is highly recommended on this topic, Primal Body, Primal Mind, Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life, by Nora T. Gedgaudas, CNS, CNT.

Brittle nails can be a first sign of not having enough stomach acid to digest food properly. One Sacramento retiree, in her seventies, has acid reflux and brittle nails. She recently added canned salmon and eggs to her diet which had been vegan for the past 20 years. The problem of the acid reflux burning her esophagus and stomach each time she lies down at bedtime is not enough acid in her stomach to properly digest food. This, in turn has created a situation of insomnia.

Yet she found when she eats a quarter teaspoon of yellow mustard before bedtime just before brushing her teeth, the acid reflux is not as severe. She's also helped herself by taking a quarter teaspoon of green papaya powder in water before bedtime. She also takes a probiotic, such as coconut milk kefir. But is this enough to help restore her stomach's ability to produce enough hydrochloric acid to digest food?

Here are some of the reasons why many people, especially older adults, may not have enough hydrochloric stomach acid. First, you need to have the presence of proteins in your stomach before hydrochloric acid can be produced in the amounts necessary for proper digestion. A totally vegan or vegetarian diet if containing too many starches and sugars, even fruit sugars, can be a common cause of hydrochloric acid insufficiency, which in turn may cause brittle nails and possibly hair loss.

A low-functioning thyroid, also known as thyroid hypofunction, possibly caused by low acid levels in the stomach (hydrochloric acid insufficiency) in turn may suppress the production of a hormone called gastrin which you need to signal your body to produce hydrochloric acid to digest food. In addition, deficiencies of vitamin B1, zinc, and vitamin C also are necessary in order for hydrochloric acid to be produced in your stomach.

For example, if you eat too much food at one meal or even if you eat starches with protein such as potatoes and meat or fish and bread, hydrochloric acid production may be inhibited. In other cases, you may not be absorbing vitamin B1, zinc. or vitamin C from foods or even from your supplements. If your supplements are in tablet form, they may not dissolve. That's why nurses sometimes call undigested vitamins "bedpan bullets." The entire pill is excreted without being dissolved, let alone absorbed so your body would be able to produce enough hydrochloric acid in the first place to keep food from rotting instead of being digested.

On one hand, you have those touting vegan and vegetarian diets saying the plant and fruit-based foods are needed to switch off cancer cells from reproducing. For example, the anthocynanins in black foods such as black beans, black rice, black quinoa and other dark-colored foods that help to prevent tumor cells from growing blood vessels and reproducing. And on the other hand you have nutritionists insisting people need enough fat and protein to create the hydrochloric acid to digest foods and possibly prevent acid reflux from happening due to the stomach not producing enough acid for proper digestion.

Another problem is drinking too much alcohol, even stress from work or relationships can cause acid reflux as well as anxiety around eating. That's one reason why some people prefer to eat alone because eating with another person present causes stress enough to bring about acid reflux or other digestive issues. The way to solve this type of problem is to find a way for older people who have lost the ability of their stomach to produce enough hydrochloric acid to digest food properly. The common belief is that the older you are, the less your stomach is able to produce enough hydrochloric acid, and the first symptoms usually are brittle nails, hair loss, or acid reflux.

Sometimes, women lose the hair of the outer corners of their eyebrows, but this problem also can be attributed to low thyroid. And in some cases, thyroid issues, can in turn develop due to not have enough hydrochloric acid to digest food. But if you take supplements of hydrochloric acid, you could burn out your esophagus. The stomach has to be coaxed to develop enough digestive enzymes on its own, through changes in diet. If some people don't eat certain proteins and fats long enough, the stomach stops making the proper amount of acid to digest food in the normal way that doesn't create acid reflux when you lie down at bedtime.

Another issue with older adults is that their teeth are too weak to properly chew the food or the teeth are missing. The way to solve that problem is to use a blender to chew the food until they can find a way to replace their teeth or focus on soft foods. If food isn't chewed enough, the stomach requires a lot more hydrochloric acid, which it may not be able to produce. So the food sits in the stomach, rots, and turns to acid reflux issues. The chewing helps to break down the protein in your food.

In digestion, a pH value of about 0.8, which is high acid is needed to signal your stomach's pyloric valve to finish digestion your food. When food is digested, it empties into your duodenum. But if you don't have enough hydrochloric acid, the gastric emptying is stopped, perhaps for the rest of the day. The food rots, and acid reflux happens. One result is you are not absorbing the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals needed for your body that's in the food you just ate. The undigested food is toxic to your body.

The big issue with some nutritionists is whether the human body needs meat and fish or not for optimum health. You certainly don't want animal protein full of mercury, harmful E-coli, and other toxins. On the other hand, you need to decide whether the human body thrives on fats and proteins or whether cancer and tumor cells are switched off from reproducing by creating new blood vessels by a diet high in plants. There's a common adage among some nutritionists that red meats switch on cancer cells and plant foods switch off cancer cells. On the other hand, ancestral foods focused on animal proteins and fats along with some seasonal greens and berries or similar wild vegetables.

What's best for your body? The answer is what type of diet allows you as you age to produce enough hydrochloric acid to digest your food properly so the fermenting food in your stomach doesn't cause other degenerative and inflammatory-related diseases? Remember that the stomach is there to produce acid.

There's also a hormone called cholecystokinin, which finds the fats, stimulates your gallbladder to produce enough bile to emulsify the fats. Now you have another controversy, whether your blood type, body shape, finger prints, and other genetic manifestations of body proportions such as limbs, waist size, and torso length, which controls whether or not your body contains an enzyme that takes cholesterol from meat fats out of your bloodstream and puts it where it belongs.

Digestion is complicated. But the key point is when you start having acid reflux, brittle nails, hair loss, and possibly low thyroid function problems, it may possibly be related to whether your stomach is producing enough hydrochloric acid to properly digest your food. Don't let food rot in your stomach and form toxins and inflammation throughout your body, for example, in your joints.