Welcome to the Dr. Berg's Healthy Keto and Interminate Fasting Podcast, where Dr.

Berg takes you on the journey for the truth about getting healthy and losing healthy weight.

There's a very ignored but vital function of your stomach that I want to talk about today.

Normally people know the stomach helps you digest protein, like meats and things like that,

and then it's supposed to turn it into amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein,

so then your body can then use that to make body tissue. Another function of the stomach is to

help you absorb minerals like iron, calcium, and zinc, and B12. Another function of the stomach

is to stimulate the pancreas to release enzymes to help you digest food. And another function is

to stimulate the bile production, and also your gallbladder to help release the bile to help you

start breaking down fats to then extract the fat-civil vitamins from the food that you eat. But another

very important function of the stomach is to kill pathogens. Now what's the pathogen? A pathogen is

not a friendly bacteria, so your stomach is designed to kill pathogens and to prevent foodborne

illnesses. And so your stomach has a huge function of immune defense. So what's an

stomach that helps you defend against these pathogens? Number one, it's the hydrochloric acid

in both quantity and pH. If you lose the acidity of your stomach acids, okay, so the pH normally

should be between one and three, and let's say it goes up higher to four of five or six or even seven,

you're not going to have that immune protection, because it's the concentration of acid that kills

these microbes, as well as the stimulation of certain enzymes that actually dissolve these microbes.

But you have other things in your stomach too that can help you, like lactofurin, which is very,

very high in colostrum, which is a milk to help a baby develop their immune system. But lactofurin

also is antibacterial and anti-fungal. In a stomach you also have other antibacterial peptides,

which are proteins, which help defend against microbes. And so if you have low stomach acids,

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