Is H. pylori Causing Your Heartburn? Signs, Testing & Treatment

H. pylori (Helicobacter pylori) is a spirochete — a spiral-shaped bacteria that gets into your stomach via contaminated food, beverages or saliva and literally "screws" itself into your stomach wall. Once dug in, it blocks your stomach acids, so food ferments, gas builds, and that pressure pushes back up as belching and heartburn. It's complicit in a high percentage of heartburn cases — and PPIs do nothing to kill it.

Helicobacter pylori. Heard of it?

Most people haven't.

It is a bacteria - but not just any bacteria. It's probably 1 of the top 3 most damaging bacteria that humans have to deal with here in the U.S.

How H. pylori Causes Heartburn

Now your immune system, if functioning at 100%, will attack H pylori and get rid of it. But because it's able to dig down into your stomach wall, if your immune system is compromised in any way, you won't be able to get rid of it. It digs in like an Alabama tick.

Then this happens:

While dug into your stomach, H pylori starts to block your stomach acids from being released. So the next time you eat, your food sits in your stomach….and sits….and sits….

If you can't release your stomach acids, the food in your stomach begins to ferment and rot.

Yes, rot.

And rotting food makes stinky air. That's gas being released and that's exactly what happens in your stomach. Large build-ups of gas cause belching. Sound familiar?

That belching is just the beginning. See your stomach and small intestine are teammates and your stomach's job is to release enough acids to digest a high percentage of the food you just ate, BEFORE passing it onto the small intestine where enzymes and bile finish off the job.

But if you can't make stomach acids, the stomach will just hold on to that rotting food causing more pressure to build in the stomach. Eventually that rotting food "sludge" just starts to go back the way it came - back up!

Boom. There's your heartburn.

Signs H. pylori May Be Driving Your Heartburn

Sign	What's happening in your stomach
Belching and gas after meals	Blocked acid release lets food ferment and rot; rotting food makes stinky air
Food that seems to "sit" for hours	Your stomach can't release the acids needed to break the meal down
Heartburn and pressure that builds as the day goes on	That rotting "sludge" builds pressure and goes back the way it came
Relief on antacids or PPIs — but it returns every time you stop	The medication coats or suppresses; it does nothing to kill off H pylori
A negative H. pylori breath test but symptoms that won't quit	The breath test misses infections; a negative isn't always accurate
Cramping and constipation alongside the heartburn	What we frequently see in patients who turn out positive on stool testing

Why Antacids and PPIs Never Solve It

Now the next step. You reach for some antacids like Tums, Rolaids, etc. This soothes the stomach and helps temporarily by "coating" this rotting food so less gas and pressure build.

But you may as well have slapped a band-aid on a major, bleeding wound. It's a temporary fix but not solving anything.

Enter your Doctor. After a short eval, a quick fix is levied in the form of a prescription for a stronger antacid and the most commonly prescribed medication in the United States: Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPI).

The most common PPIs are pantoprazole or omeprazole. We bet you've heard of them. In fact our guess is you or someone you care about is taking one right now.

These are medications that act by significantly decreasing your stomach acids and therefore provide more relief than just a basic antacid.

Your Doctor might also throw in an additional medication like an H2 blocker (Tagamet, Pepcid AC, Zantac) if you haven't done that already on your own.

But these do nothing to kill off H Pylori. Nothing.

Now for the real problem…..

You go back to your Doctor. You're better, as long as you take the PPI, but you've been on it for weeks, months even. You've tried stopping the meds but the heartburn comes back hard every time you do.

Am I going to have to stay on these medications forever?

Why the H. pylori Breath Test Misses Infections

Your Doctor will then refer you to a specialist, a GI Doctor, who will finally do an assessment for H pylori - known as an H Pylori breath test.

Here's the problem we see clinically: conventional breath tests can miss H. pylori strains, especially when biofilm is present. In our practice we regularly see negative breath tests in patients who turn out positive on stool DNA testing. Yet the breath test keeps being used because the insurance companies pay for it. That's it.

So your test results likely come back negative. The Doctor then sees that negative result and assumes that H pylori must not be the problem, right? You might also go through an endoscopy/colonoscopy but you can't see H Pylori on an endoscopy!

So as long as there is no major disease process seen on camera with the endoscopy, you're sent home with the same instructions your primary doctor gave you:

STAY ON YOUR PPIs.

That's it.

And our guess is you're likely in this predicament as you read this. Are we right?

The DNA Test: Finding the Perpetrator

Here's what you have to do:

You ever watch one of those detective/crime shows? There are dozens of them so we imagine you've seen at least one. What is the modern-day, universally applied technique that the main characters use at the crime scene to try and catch the perpetrator?

D. N. A. - They look for DNA evidence.

What if we become a detective and figure out if one of the perpetrators of your heartburn is H pylori, by running a DNA test?

There is such a test and it exists for just this purpose!

Our DNA testing uses PCR technology (Polymerase Chain Reaction) by assessing your stool. The Doctors at the lab use this technology to see if there is H pylori DNA in your stool and then you'll accurately know whether you have an H pylori infection or not. This is part of the Comprehensive Stool Analysis we run on our heartburn patients.

Here's what else the test looks for: if you have an H pylori infection, has it developed resistance to antibiotics and specifically, which antibiotics?

This is very important because Doctors have been treating H pylori for decades with antibiotics. H pylori is a very smart organism and some of them have developed a resistance to certain antibiotics, literally using the medication as a fuel source.

So consider this:

• You could have used antacids to treat your heartburn…
• You could have gone to the Doctor and used the prescribed PPIs….
• You could have gone to the GI Doc and actually gotten a positive H pylori test…
• And you could have taken the antibiotics the GI Doctor prescribed to treat H pylori…..
• And you could still have heartburn….because they don't know which ones to use!

You have to know which antibiotics will work for the type of H pylori infection you have - then you've solved the problem for good!

Not the whole story? See the other root causes of heartburn and our H. pylori condition page.

What Recovery Can Look Like

Read what this patient has to say:

"I started developing heartburn about 2 years ago. It started with certain types of foods so I just figured that that was the cause. Changed up my diet and it helped temporarily. Then the heartburn became consistent no matter what I ate. Went to the doctor. I was told to take omeprazole 20 mg twice a day. It helped for a bit but then the problem came back. My medication was doubled to 40 mg twice a day and I was also told to take Pepto-Bismol at the same time. This helped by dropping my 6-7 heartburn pain down to 3-4 on a 10 scale but it didn't go away. And depending on what I ate, it would jump up to a 9. Painful cramping and then constipation would ensue. I was referred to the GI doctor and an H pylori breath test was run. Results were negative. An endoscopy didn't show anything and a colonoscopy showed a couple of small hemorrhoids. The GI doctor just said I had to learn to live with it and continue to take PPI medication going forward. That's how I ended up seeing Dr. Bradshaw. After running a stool test and a saliva test, I found out that I had H pylori and that gluten/dairy sensitivities and high stress were also contributing to the problem. But once we figured this out, we got it treated with the right antibiotics and a couple of supplements and I've now been heartburn-free for 8 months! I can't thank Dr. Bradshaw enough." - Peter M, North Carolina

Don't suffer with heartburn any longer. Let's find out if you have H pylori (or anything else that can cause heartburn) and stop masking the problem - let's finally solve it!

What to Read Next