Let me chime in here as well, because I think I am getting closer to heal my health issues and I wanna share my experience after reading tons of stuff from people and papers every day.
Let´s start with the most important thing, at least in my opinion. I am sure I might repeat myself but whatever.
Stomach acid. If you don´t have enough of that you will have leaky gut, SIBO, candida, fungal overgrowth, IBS, food sensitivities, mineral and vitamin deficencies (hair loss, hair greying, weightloss), fatigue, low energy, low libido, indigestion, bloating, constipation and and and. So I think that needs to be tackled first and it might solve all your health problems. Sources of low HCI can be a previous low animal product diet, such as vegan or vegetarian, simply because grains and plants don´t need much HCI and can also diminish HCI (grains especially). Low HCI means parasites, candida, fungus, h.pylori can thrive and they will lower your PH that is needed to digest your foods even further.
After some digging I found what i´ll describe now... How to get the mineral acid back for proper gastric secretion. You can either supplement BETAINE or you can try GLYCINE, an aminon acid and proton donor. So if Betaine HCI + Pepsin didn´t work go for Glycine. I tried several of different brands and different dosages of Betaine HCI and Pepsin but it did either nothing, or constipated. It can also damage your stomach lining and can cause more harm than good. Therefore I will try for the glycine:
Hydrochloric acid - That is a H+ (proton) and a CL- (chloride anion). Proton is the acid and chloride is the salt. You need to combine these 2 otherwise the HCL pairing won´t work and u dont have ur HCL. Therefore, if Betaine Pepsin did not work go for the LIQUID HCL drops. Dr. Clark sells them. You can find other brands. You put a couple of drops in a liquid such as water and drink that with a straw, don´t put that on your teeth as it will mess them up. You can put it directly onto food, but then it will touch the teeth, not good. I did not try the liquid HCI version yet, but it seems to be working very well for people that cannot tolerate the tablets or pepsin. I will get it soon and report back.
Another option is Sulfuric acid - can be found in some cruciferous vegetables, onions or garlic. I found that I have far better digestion when I eat raw onions, especially red. I think they have the highest sulphur content of the 3 (white, yellow, red). So bingo here. Again to be combined with chloride (salt). Red wine is someting that is the best for my digestion, I mentioned that many times. When nothing works this always works wonders. I think one of the reason is because of the sulphites added, same goes for thick balsamic vinegar, seems to increase HCI.
Then there is Phosphoric acid - Found in meats, dairy and eggs in very low concentrations, but also beans and other veggies. As a food additive it´s mainly in Cola, called additive E338. As far as I can remember, my digestion was very good when I drank coke with meals, that was before I had health issues. So when I had bad digestion today and I felt bloated I thought fuck it, so I bought diet coke, and it digested my food pretty well. Reason for that was certainly the phosphoric acid, the caffeine (which helps against parasites as well), and the carbonation. Won´t do it again though, coke is full of crap and the worst u can drink. Interesting to note though is that coke is more acidic than lemon. You can get the food grade phosphoric acid in liquid drops as well. So there is another option to digest foods again.
You need to keep in mind that you need the chloride ion to pair it with the above acids, otherwise it won´t pair and create your HCL properly. One option for that is salt or food. If Betaine and Glycine doesn´t work, increase the chloride. Glycine is just the amino acid but it can help build half of the mineral acid that one needs.
Also, vinegar (like ACV) does not contribute to stomach acid reserves because the acetic acid is broken down into hydrocarbons that don't supply the free protons.
Anyhow, after experimenting for years I am back to increasing HCl, not the other way around. If you try and kill parasites, tackle candida overgrowth, h.pylori, you could also try and increase HCI. I think once it´s back to normal things will balance out, or you at least do both, tackle the critters and supply HCI at the same time. After many years I can say that I feel best on the following "protocol".
1. Waking up on a glass of distilled water, or I just leave it out and drink later
2. I take "spice" and peel" from theinterstellarplan.com. This guy does some crazy herbal blends, for different illnesses. And that combo is best for candida and h.pylori. Out of everything I have ever tried I think this is the real deal. However, I would recommend going for the stronger ratio (200:1). Atm i got 20:1 and i think its not effective enough, so the only thing I can do atm is maintenance, but I think increasing the dosage would be the best to maybe totally kill all the bad stuff inside my stomach and elsewhere.
3. i take a spoonful of coconut oil, coconut oil is pretty effective for molds and candida
4. I trink black tea with lemon. never did that before, but I find that it sorted out all my constipation issues and I am certain that the caffeine in the black tea kills parasites. I know that cuz when I started doing this I could vomit up parasites, easily without effort. It just came naturally.
5.Then I eat something. I also eat after almost each meal thawned cranberries with a piece of 100% dark chocolate (8g carbs per 100g only, organic and consistent of cocoa mass and cocoa butter, very low in oxalates opposed to normal chocolate) and roasted pumpkin seed oil (lower in phytates and higher nutrient count than cold pressed
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46032980_Nutritional_Evaluation_and_Physiochemical_Properties_of_Processed_Pumpkin_Telfairia_occidentalis_Hook_Seed_Flour and
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6526651/). I find that the magnesium really calms me down and aids digestion a lot. Point is that when you have low HCI and you try and eat things like liver or sea food for mag and copper, you won´t be able to extract lots of it cuz your hci is not able to break it down properly. Pumpkin seed oil and dark chocolate on the other hand side are easily digestible I found. Cranberries are anti-parasitic as well, plus the most acidic berry and lowest in sugar (unless you get the shitty american GMO ones). Low acidity aids digestion as I have found too.
6. after food I chew and subsequently swallow that famous mastic gum from the greek island, one of the most effective remedies for h.pylori and "bad bacteria" that exists. i take that twice a day.
As you can see I am very deterimined to solve my health once and for all, with all that candida, h.pylori, parasites shit that comes with it. However, I think that atm all I can do is maintenance, because I am certain that I live in a moldy home and regardless what I do, I find that when I am in the fresh air everything, including digestion changes. So the only way for me to get out of this forever is to get out of that fucking place I am living at
Anyhow, once I get my liquid HCI I will update here.
Edit: One more thing I wanted to mention. That´s iron toxicity. Well mentioned in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nofRzKj0UgA and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urk-i6RmSEI Morley mentions the connection between candida and heavy metals such as iron. Candida holds on to it. the more iron u got in your body the bigger oxidative stress and health issues you can get. I´m certain that dietary iron is not so much of an issue. After all I eat meat, especially red, every day. I think it more the toxic iron from cooking pans, showers, fortified foods (that I used to eat) that causes over accumulation. So I actually did something I never did, I went for a blood donation to start getting rid of the overload. Just to be sure I can rule that iron toxicity out which might be effecting my candida/parasites and other critters. I did pretty well, no fainting and was active the whole day. Being weak after donating can be a sign of low adrenals, so I def did not have that. Anyhow, I think its good to incorporate blood donation to download toxic blood and make way for ur body to create new one. Morley mentioned also something that makes sense. Back in the days we used to bleed much more, because of field work, hunting and what not, so blood loss and recycling of blood was something natural and normal, nowadays it´s not.