A new study has found that sodium bicarbonate – the active ingredient in the simple household and cooking product most people know as baking soda – is instrumental in aiding the function of acid-reflux treatment drugs.
The drugs affected by the discovery are known as proton pump inhibitors, a category which includes the popular brand names Prevacid, Nexium and Prilosec. To work, they must be taken orally and have to be able to get through the stomach and to the intestine without being destroyed by the potent acid in the stomach. To keep pills from dissolving prematurely and being rendered ineffective, manufacturers make them with thick coatings. But the drawback of this technique is that the pills can take between one and three hours to reach peak levels in the blood.
Jeffrey Phillips, who is the executive director of research at the University of Missouri’s Columbia Department of Surgery, decided to try a low-tech solution to the problem. He was trying to figure out how to administer the
| Home Tip |
Before taking your PPIs, try dissolving half a teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water and drinking the solution first.
Baking soda contains the buffer bicarbonate, which leads to the neutralization of acid.
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drugs to intensive care patients who are too ill to swallow whole pills. The medications could not be given intravenously; moreover, if the medication were administered through a feeding tube in powder form, doctors would be thwarted by the stomach acid’s dissolving abilities.
Knowing that baking soda has acid-neutralizing powers, Phillips administered baking soda. He then crushed proton pump inhibitor medication and put the medication through intensive care patients’ feeding tubes. His hunch was a good one; the baking soda neutralized stomach acid so that the drugs could safely pass through the stomach in powdered form.
In addition to preventing stomach acid from dissolving the medication, the baking soda enhances the effectiveness of the drugs in two other ways.
First, the administration of drugs in powder form allows quicker absorption once they get to the intestine, with peak medication levels occurring after about half an hour.
Also, after the immediate effects wear off, baking soda actually cues the stomach to produce more acid at a time. Usually, only a few cellular “acid pumps” are working at once in the stomach, but when a strong anti-acidic agent is introduced, the pumps go into hyperdrive. This might seem undesirable at first glance, but in actuality, proton pump inhibitors, which work by inhibiting the cellular pumps that produce acid, can only do their work while acid is being produced, which means that finding a way to cue the process will be instrumental in controlling it. “The more [pumps] you can turn on,” noted Phillips, “the better.”
Doctors and researchers are excited about Phillips’ discovery, and note that the drug combo will likely be the catalyst of some changes in the way proton pump inhibitors are administered, and the range of patients to whom they may be helpful.
