Nutricost Betaine HCl + Pepsin 790mg, 240 Capsules - Gluten Free & Non-GMO

I use this to help with my digestion. It has helped tremendously as I'm trying to go all natural for my health.

Good good

This product has been effective for my husband's indigestion. The quality and price are great. We even carry it in the car so that he can take it after we eat out. He jokingly calls it his after dinner mint.

I have been ordering Betaine for a couple years now and never noticed till I almost got to the end that I was short of pills. As you can see there is powder at the bottom of the bottle and the encapsulation opened and spilled in the bottle. I'm not sure if it was one or more pills. I do enjoy this product but have been cut short of pills. I also did a video that I will add.

This product is betaine and pepsin. It is not "cut" with some stupid other mineral that dilutes the ability to d its job. Another has calcium carbonate in it, one of the most difficult minerals to digest. Believe me, I have shown patients who take calcium carbonate (recommended by ignorant medical practitioners) the calcium carbonate tablets they took yesterday or the day before in the rectal area. I take a pill out of their calcium bottle I had asked them to bring and hold it up to the x-ray. The tablets remain the SAME SIZE, meaning the calcium carbonate did not break down, did not get digested, did nothing to benefit digestion.

I had been using the Thorne brand betaine HCL with enzymes for a long time, but it's been out of stock so I tried this. This is much cheaper, it's a similar formulation and it does work very well - in fact, too well, at least for me.One of these capsules will make me very sick to my stomach unless I take it with a really large high fat, high protein meal. I've been taking HCL for ~6 years for reflux, and it works very effectively to control it but I have to have the dose just right. This is too strong for me most of the time. I sometimes take 1 capsule of the Thorne brand with a regular meal and it's perfect, but 1 capsule of this stuff will make me really sick to my stomach unless I take it with a meal that's something like half a package of bacon scrambled into 5 eggs, a bunch of cheese, etc. I do that sometimes, but I don't do it often.I would only recommend these if you have really bad reflux symptoms, or regularly eat really large meals or have severely low stomach acid. A year ago this would have worked better for me, because my reflux was worse and I had to take 3 capsules of the Thorne HCL with every meal. Now I often go without, or just take 1. But 1 of these is usually way too strong and makes me sick. If I take too much of the Thorne I will have the same symptoms so that's why I say it's a dosage or strength issue.Another weird thing about this is that every time I put it in my mouth it makes me cough. It's like I inhale a tiny bit of the HCL and it irritates my lungs. Not a lot, just a little; just one cough. But I've taken a lot of supplements over the last 40 years and never experienced anything like this. I also noticed from the moment I opened the bottle that the capsules would leave kind of a sticky grit on my fingers. Both of these things happened every time I used it from when I first opened the bottle to when I finished it.I never saw a capsule that I could tell was broken or leaking. I have had plenty of experiences over the years of a capsule doing that but I generally never noticed until the bottom of the bottle and there would just be some powder there, and often I could identify the failed capsule. So I'm not sure if one of the capsules did leak or if this is just normal for the way they encapsulate the product. It seems clear that this powder is stickier than most and gets all over stuff, in any case.Amazon no longer carries the Thorne but I can get it directly from their website so I have gone back to that and have to use this on those rare occasions when I feel ravenous and eat a giant meal.

I was unable to eat food, without reflux. I had to open capsules until I reached 5, mix it in an ounce or two of water, then drink with a straw. This completely stopped my reflux. Make sure you do not take so much that your stomach starts to burn. People with lack of acid have a high pH in the stomach. This is why you have reflux. Your stomach will will close the lower esophageal valve and digest much better if you get the pH from 0 to 3. Your stomach makes HCL so don’t be afraid of it. Many people have less acid with age and especially with large meals. Be afraid of the pharmaceutical companies. They make money for every pill you take. Prescription PPIs like Zantac, omeprazole, Prilosec or others will promote less biting in the esophagus but increase the ph causing poor nutrient absorption, bacterial fermentation of your food in your gut and bacterial infections. Stop them before you end up getting esophageal stricture, Barrette's esophagitis or Schatzki's ring, all this is from chronic reflux. And this is just the beginning of long term problems that can happen. I wished someone would have told me this 30 years ago.

I wish it took less to work for me. But I'm not blaming the product. I've taken high quality expensive ones in the past when my stomach acid was really low and I would have to take like 15 pills of meal. I take 7-8 now. So this is much more cost effective at least for me now.