Your stomach lining has a huge responsibility. It protects your stomach from the acid that digests food. Gastritis inflames the stomach lining, causing dull or burning pain, indigestion, bloating, nausea, and sometimes bloody vomit. It can erode this protective lining and cause chronic issues.

Unfortunately, many things in our normal lives can cause gastritis and its unpleasant indigestion symptoms. Even worse, it can also disrupt the intricate communication system between the gut and brain.

The complex connection between the gut and brain via the vagus nerve, known as the gut-brain axis, impacts our brain functions, moods, and behaviors. Researchers say a healthy gut biome – the trillions of microorganisms in our gut – is crucial for this communication system to work right. So much so, they’re now calling it the gut-brain-microbiome axis.

Issues anywhere along this three-way communication system can lead to conditions including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), anxiety, depression, memory issues, obesity, and autism. The gut microbiome is so important to our overall health that over 330 studies and 51,500 articles focus on it.

It this article, we’ll look at how gastritis can disrupt and impair the gut-brain-microbiome communication. Then, we’ll explore ways we can heal the gut and improve our mental and overall health.

Symptoms and Causes of Poor Gut Health

Drinking alcohol, smoking, taking anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs) or steroids, viral and bacterial infections, and stress from illnesses or injuries can all cause gastritis. The bacteria H. pylori are also common culprits of gastritis and peptic ulcers.

Digestive disorders like Crohn’s disease, reflux, and autoimmune disorders that cause immune cells to mistakenly attack the stomach lining can cause gastritis too. Stress and eating spicy foods tend to worsen symptoms. Plus, as we get older, our risk of gastritis increases because the stomach lining gets thinner.

Sometimes gastritis is non-erosive. Yet, it often eats away at the stomach lining. While we can heal from acute gastritis in a couple of days to two weeks, it can become chronic and severely damage your stomach lining if untreated.

Signs of gastritis include a gnawing or burning pain in your abdomen, feeling extremely full after eating, or nauseousness. You may have frequent belching or hiccups or lose your appetite. In extreme cases, you might notice blood in your vomit or stool, signs the stomach lining is bleeding.

Heal the Gut and Improve Gut-Brain Communication

To heal gastritis, your doctor may suggest diet and lifestyle changes, and test you for an H. pylori infection. Changes that can help include quitting smoking, cutting caffeine, avoiding alcohol, limiting sugar, eating smaller meals, and avoiding fatty, fried, acidic, or spicy foods. Eating more prebiotic and probiotic foods can also help heal your gut. You may also benefit from counseling or other psycological treatment, which is proven to help heal the gut-brain axis.

Health care professionals may also suggest taking zinc-L-carnosine (ZnC), a chelated compound of zinc and L-carnosine. Zinc is an essential mineral found in cells throughout the body. It helps your body fight bacteria and viruses and heal wounds. L-carnosine is a protein building block our body makes that’s found in primarily in our muscles, heart, and brain. Made of two amino acids, it gives us energy, help our bodies heal wounds, protects our brain cells, and helps prevent damage from too much sugar in the body.

Both substances are physiologically important, yet combined they form a molecule that’s clinically proven to relieve indigestion symptoms and protect the stomach lining. PepZinGI™ has unique anti-ulcer properties with both cytoprotective and tissue repairing actions in acute and chronic ulcers. It appears to adhere to wound sites of the stomach and exert tissue-supportive effects, including:

• Modulating the growth of  Pylori
• Fortifying the stomach and intestinal lining by stimulating mucus secretion
• Protecting the integrity of stomach cells through antioxidant properties
• Reduces stomach inflammation by inhibiting cytokine expression
• Enhancing the benefits of antibiotic therapy for H. Pylori

Extensive pharmacological studies show that PepZinGI™ can also help people with mouth sores, taste disorders, liver disease, and oral mucositis related to chemotherapy and radiation. It's healing actions help ensure healthy communication in the gut-brain-microbiome axis which researchers continue to show is pivotal to our overall health.