Betaine

[KDarby]

Does anyone take betaine and also digestive enzymes? How do you suggest I take these together?

[HockeyMom]

I take them with meals. When I was healing up I took a lot of Betaine with each meal..now I’m down to one capsule of Betaine HCl and 1 digestive enzyme capsule at the beginning of each meal.

[KDarby]

How long did you do this for? I have seen good results while taking the enzymes and betaine although sometimes I have diarrhea sporadically.

[Erica P-G]

I took BetaineHCL for a while with almost every meal, then I found I only needed it for heavier meals. I still take it from time to time trying to understand if it truly is the acid not breaking things down in my stomach or what. I did not need enzymes because I tried that too and when I had bathroom trips my Bum felt a burning sensation, that told me too much enzymes, so that wasn't my problem.

I'm sure taking them together wouldn't pose a problem since you need both to break down food. Have you noticed if it could be one or the other for you? Perhaps only try the BetaineHCL and see if that works, unless you do not have a gallbladder then perhaps you are producing too much enzyme and it is giving you WD so Cholestyramine would be your helper in that regard. (Not having a gallbladder doesn't always mean you shouldn't try Cholestyramine....it helped me for a while and I have my gallbladder )

[KDarby]

Thanks for your reply! I do still have my gallbladder. I added the enzymes after I kept finding undigested food in my stool. I did not notice a difference taking just the enzymes but bought betaine and starting taking that and it made a huge difference. But then realized that it only works really for proteins and not so much for starches (I was seeing green beans which is a starch) so decided on taking them together. For the most part they do work. Although I still have a lot of bloating. I’ve added in some probiotics one strand specifically, bacillus coagulans. I have seen improvement since then albeit I have had my ups and downs. It hasn’t been a whole month yet with these new implementations so I’m hopeful it will even out. Cholestryamine didn’t work well for me. The powder was hard to navigate around with work and school and the pills didn’t work either. But could be worth a second try. But not sure how it would work if I’m not producing enough acid to begin with to digest my food.