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(Standard type – upper abdominal pain, heartburn, sometimes accompanied by acid regurgitation)

For many people this condition has become an accepted evil and part of their lives. It is most frequently caused by treacherous food mixtures and it responds with astonishing rapidity to compatibly combined ones. I have rescued many people from afternoon indigestion pains resulting from lunchtime sandwiches of bread and cheese, or bread and meat. They all marvelled at the ensuing peace and tranquillity in their interiors!

Dr Cleave argues that the main cause of indigestion is the refining of carbohydrate foods which strips them of proteins so that there results an outpouring of gastric secretion but not enough protein to neutralize it.^* This argument, however, is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the fact that, in spite of eating refined carbohydrate foods (white bread and sugar) during the whole of my first year of compatible eating, I nevertheless lost indigestion of 15 years’ duration during the very first week.

In her excellent book Gut Reaction (Vermilion 1998), Gudrun Jonssen gives a very clear account of the digestive process and stresses the importance of maintaining the acid – alkaline balance. She advocates Food Combining as the most effective way of improving digestion.

Dr Hay, too, was convinced that in many, perhaps most cases of indigestion, refined carbohydrates were the cause, but for a different reason. Dr Lionel Picton was likewise convinced. In the aforementioned paper he states that his evidence for this conviction was ‘mainly clinical’, having found that a reduced intake of refined starchy food relieved his patients’ symptoms. For ‘the incipient dyspeptic’ Dr Picton recommended ‘a dietary in which more greens and grilled meat should replace some of the bad foods of modern times, and moreover a diet in which starchy foods should be separated as far as possible from meat, and taken at separate meals’ – a ‘dietary’ totally in accord with Dr Hay’s precepts.

Naturopath Harry Benjamin is another who believes that combinations of starch and protein foods can cause digestive trouble. In Your Diet in Health and Disease (Thorsons, 1974) he recommends cutting out bread and potatoes with meat.

Dr Hay warned that taking antacids, the patent ‘cure’ for indigestion, is not the answer; they can compound the trouble, leading to more serious conditions. There have been medical warnings that antacids can use up certain vitamins in the body that are vital for its proper functioning. Moreover, experiments at Cornell University in the United States revealed that giving carbonate of soda and milk caused a form of kidney stones in laboratory animals. At the University of Vienna, a more recent controlled study of 300 people led by Professor Erika Jensen-Jarolim concluded that people who took medicines to combat indigestion and heartburn, particularly those bought without prescription, were more likely to develop allergies to food. Antacids are merely a crutch which deals with the symptom instead of the cause. The best treatment for indigestion is compatible eating.