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(stomach) Ulcers

ulcer

Stomach ulcers are said not to be caused by stress. Stress can play a role in the body becoming weak and unhealthy allowing bacteria to get into your body causing infection. Your body immune system weakens not getting the right nutrients from food.

My story about ulcers happened to me over 20 years ago when at the time was doing my everyday job in the business I was in at the time. I was a construction worker or to be more specific a builder. This is something I’d done at that time for about ten years.

One day I decided I wanted something different in my life. Wanted to know more about what I had always been interested in, electronics. I knew that was going to take some hard work and I had to figure out how I was going to feed my family.

Now as I think about this, it was the early 90’s and nothing online. The internet was just starting out using 3.5 and 5-inch floppy discs. What was available for me to take was a two-year Robotics course full time.

So, to cut to the chase, I spent 6 to 7 hours a day at school driving 30 miles both ways and coming home resting 15 minutes and then going to my second duty a factory, on second shift and pull 8 hours. This lead to unhealthy eating habits I did for two years solid and had some illness on the way got diagnosed with an ulcer with lots of heartburn very unpleasant. My body had an lot of stress and I was drained after going through this.

This was the reasons my stomach got ulcers, a weakened immune system, and unhealthy lifestyle. This one thing can cause stomach ulcers putting the body under to much strain and stress. How did I fix it? Let’s find out what it is to start off with.

What are Ulcers?

Peptic ulcers are open sores in the lining of your stomach or the small intestine, this may be described as Peptic ulcer disease. How this happens is the pepsin or stomach acid that aids in digestion eats away at the layer of mucus that lines the stomach and intestines. Creating lesions or open sores, there may be bleeding involved with these.

There are two types of peptic ulcers.

  1. Gastric – these are peptic ulcers that occur in the stomach. Makes you feel sick when you eat.
  2. Duodenal – these are peptic ulcers that occur in the inside upper part of the small intestine called duodenum. If you feel good when you eat and bad in one or two hours after.

Duodenal are ulcers you can get in the esophagus and mouth.

What causes Ulcers?

Doctors use to think that stress and diet caused ulcers, but after doing more studies they decided that bacteria is one of the common causes and another is over the counter medication.

  • H. pylori bacteria (Helicobacter pylori) – 90{0580942254a8404b9cbb1b1bb95a6f06e3c05404a4a3e100977df26e356e3e53} of ulcers are started by an infection caused by this bacteria. Bacteria destroys the lining of the stomach and intestine letting the acid in and causing the lesions and open sores.

Now that we know how the bacteria helps in our body getting ulcers let’s look at a medication that aids in the process of getting ulcers.

  • NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) – you’ve probably seen this before on pain relieving medicines like aspirins, ibuprofen, or naproxen. You see this drug does the same to our stomach lining as the bacteria, it over time destroys the lining. Letting the stomach acids eat away causing the ulcers.
  • Heredity – People that has peptic ulcers usually has a family history of ulcers.
  • Smoking – is more related to gastric ulcers and can make them worse.

 Ulcer Symptoms?

Here are some of the symptoms that you may get when you have an ulcer.

  • Abdominal pain – inflammation in the stomach and intestines
  • Loss of appetite – this has to do with the pain that is felt after eating in the digestion stage causing people fearing to eat.
  • Weight loss – this can be due to having to vomit from being sick at from the ulcer or not eating enough.
  • Chest pain – why chest pain if the ulcer is in the stomach, because the pain from the inflammation in the stomach spreads to the chest and upper body.
  • Gastritis – covers a lot of conditions, but basically it’s the inflammation of the stomach
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Heartburn
  • Bloating – feeling bloating even though your not gaining weight
  • Feeling hungry even after eating
  • excessive gas – belching and burping even if you having eat

These are not all of the symptoms you might have it varies from person to person.

Treatments for Ulcers

Several treatments are available and can be done is the case of peptic ulcers.

Where we avoid these things most of them will just have to be cut back on.

 

  • antacids – will help reduce your symptoms
  • cut back on or avoid coffee or carbonated drinks – drinking coffee is acidic and will bother the stomach with ulcers.
  • cut back on avoid spicy foods – usually makes you feel worse after eating
  • avoid alcohol – irritates the stomach lining at all times.
  • Eat plenty of fiber – fiber makes the digestive system work according to the way it is supposed to.
  • avoid smoking – people who smoke are twice as likely to get ulcers
  • don’t take aspirin or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs – can cause the symptoms to become worse.

If you didn’t see the treatment you were looking for, it maybe will  be added later or check one of the other links we have.

Natural Home Cures

Since we know the main cause of stomach ulcers is the bacteria (H. pylori).

We don’t want to just treat what symptoms we have even though that sounds great.

We actually want to go straight to the main cause (H. pylori) and cure it altogether.

If we treat the bacteria then we can stop the ulcers from getting worse and start the healing process, which in turn cures the ulcers.

Herbs can be used without any serious side effects.

Chamomile – has anti-bacterial properties and soothes the whole digestive system.

Comfrey – it’s properties covers the ulcers for healing purposes.

DGL Licorice – has anti-bacterial properties and helps the stomach produce mucus to coat the lining of the stomach.

Slippery Elm – is an 85{0580942254a8404b9cbb1b1bb95a6f06e3c05404a4a3e100977df26e356e3e53} mucilage and when taken in a tea or powder form coats the stomach wall with mucosa.

Yarrow – has anti-microbial properties, which will kill the bacteria.

Vitamins and minerals can be used.

A, B, C, and Z are mostly anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial and help with the strengthening of the stomach lining.

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Conclusion

In ending this article livegreaterhealth wants be sure that you get enough information to help you make a difference in any condition you have. We add more content ocassionally to our article so be sure to check back often not to miss out. Sign up to our newsletter to be sure to get our new material when it becomes available.  For more information on any topic on this website, just leave a message below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible usually the same day.

 

 

 

 

16 Comments

  1. I appreciated this well detailed article! Great information. I remember when ulcers were considered simply a sign of stress. Valium was recommended.
    Luckily people can do so much better for treatment now.

    • Thank you for the comment Dianne, I usually think that I can’t get enough information. Like there is something I’m leaving out. I’ll tell you that stress help cause my ulcer. You know what they prescribed me to, Zantac 150 and it got rid of the ulcer.

  2. Hi there Fred, same thing here, I worked in construction also, doing drywall for 40 damn years. In the first years, we were always pressured into completing a job on time no matter the conditions, and it took its toll on my stomach. And ulcers run in the family, my dad had them so bad they wanted to take out half his stomach, though this was back in the 1940’s. I did get help and change my diet which helped out a lot.
    Kim

    • Thanks Kim for the comment, drywallers always had a lot of pressure on them, like all the constructing parts did everybody always wanting it done yesterday. That’s why I say in my opinion that stress is the main cause and everything else adds to it.

  3. Hi Fred,
    This is a very informative article.
    I was under a lot of stress many years back till it caused my abdominal pain. Upon medical check, it was not stomach ulcer but diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
    I am sure your article will benefit many in search of answers for stomach ulcers.
    Thanks for sharing.
    Sharon

    • Thanks Sharon for the comment, you know stress can cause many ailments and I hope you got your IBS under control. I may be having a topic on IBS later on and I hope it will have some valuable information for you. Check back or subscribe to my email list to get updates.

  4. Hi Fred,
    What a great article! I remember how in the past ulcers were thought to be caused by stress and with all the people I knew who were diagnosed with ulcers I would have thought that was the case. Doctors are discovering more and more about how bad bacteria can affect our digestive system. I have started taking a probiotic myself and I can tell you there has been a dramatic change in my digestive health. Though I don’t have an ulcer I do have inflammation in my colon and irritable bowel syndrome. With my symptoms, I thought I did have an ulcer at one point. The information you provide is great and I can appreciate the preventive measures like the items to avoid and the natural home remedies. Thanks for this post!

    • Thanks for the comment Melissa and you welcome. I know if I needed to know what to do about an ulcer or any stomach problem, I would be looking on the website site for some tips to refresh my memory. So many things or natural products do different things for our body. Ulcers will drag you down and make you feel awful, I’ve been through it and want to help others be prepared for it.

    • Thank you for the comment. I try to write information that will be helpful to a variety of people. Many people have stomach problems and don’t know what might be the cause of it. This information is to help bring awareness to the ones that could have this type of health issue.

  5. Hi Fred,
    Yes, I can see how the combination of full-time study and full-time work could lead to unhealthy habits and bad food snacking. Sorry, you got a whole heap of digestive issues because of it.
    I agree that the H. Pylori bacteria is the main cause of these ulcers for most people. It is good to see that honey can help heal the wound naturally. I have tried slippery elm powder before – Wow! that thing tastes bad. It’s like licking a raw tree branch. Thanks for sharing.

    • Thanks, Glenys for the comment. This has been a long time ago when it happened to me I didn’t think about naturally healing my body. Now that I know I can better prepare my body for it. For the most part, now there are many herbs that would play a role in healing a ulcer.

  6. Hello Fred,

    Thank you for sharing your story about how and why you got stomach ulcers. It must be very unpleasant and painful. People in my family and also friends of mine have experienced these symptoms, therefore, I got interested in reading your article.

    What I like the most is that you do not talk about only treating the symptoms, but treating the main cause.

    I wonder, what causes the H. pylori bacteria to start the infection in the body, in the first place? Is it because the body is weakened by stress, lack of sleep and proper nutrition?

    May I also ask you how to use Comfrey and Yarrow? What is DGL Licorice and Slippery Elm and how to use those?

    Looking forward to reading your answer to my questions. I’m going to pass this knowledge on to family members and friends.

    Pernilla

    • Thank you for your comment, yes my story was more gruesome than I explained in the article. I just give a brief rundown of my story.
      From what I studied H. pylori bacteria enter our bodies when we are young don’t know how and stays erupting later in life. In my knowledge when stressful situations that arise, this makes sense to me as our life gets more stressful with the forgetting to eat right or getting the right nutrients it just all works together to cause these ulcers. As for Comfrey and Yarrow, I will add them to the article so everybody can read. Thanks for asking these question should of had them in there, that’s what rushing does for you.

      • Thanks Fred, for answering my questions. We better avoid stress as much as we can and see to it that we get the nutrients the body needs.
        I’ll check this blog later again to see the explanation then.
        Pernilla

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