Source Naturals Betaine HCL Betaine HCL is a dietary supplement that contains stomach acid with pepsin for the best support of your digestion. Gastric acid Gastric acid is a gastric wall secretion and consists of hydrochloric acid (HCl) and partly sodium chloride and potassium chloride. Each day, a person excretes about 1.5l of acid with a pH value of between 1 and 2 (for the comparison a lemon, as the most acidic food has a pH only about 3 – lower pH is more acidic). Studies have shown that gastric acid is decreasing with age. I a large study of hospitalized elderly people, more than 80% of them had gastric acid deficiency. Gastric acid plays an important role in our body, as it is indispensable for digesting protein in food, while protecting the intestines from pathogens that generally do not survive such acidic environments. Gastric acid coagulates the proteins so that digestive enzymes can access and degrade them. The procedure is similar to pouring lemon juice into milk. Without this effect, enzymes can not perform their work in subsequent digestion processes. Pepsin Pepsin is an endopeptidase, which means that it’s an enzyme that breaks down large proteins into smaller peptides already in the stomach (after gastric acid has coagulated proteins). These peptides then enter into the small intestine where enzymes degrade them further into smaller amino acids that the body can absorb.
