Doctor's Best Betaine HCI Pepsin & Gentian Bitters, Digestive Enzymes for Protein Breakdown & Absorption, Non-GMO, Gluten Free, 120 Caps, Original Version

Lately I’ve been having gut issues including acid reflux, bloating, indigestion etc. When I eat certain meals I notice I get full really fast then the other symptoms follow. After doing some research I decided to buy this. I took it with my first bite of breakfast and feel fine! But do your research and only take this with meals where there is PROTEIN as this will help break them down properly. Also make sure to get some l glutamine, aloe Vera gel, and zinc carnosine to help attack your gut issues at the source and heal them. These won’t heal your gut but they are a good supplement to take while you are in the process of healing and make digesting food so much easier.

Help so much with heartburn. If you know you were gonna eat or drink acidic things take these before and you’ll have no problem. There is no taste. Small and easy to swallow.

Great! Helps so much with digestion and not being bloated and full for no reason. Feel so much better now! Thanks to Dr. Berg's videos I found out about betaine hcl and this one is very good. Take with a full glass of water to avoid burning sensation & mostly with protein meals.

I’ve been using Doctor’s Best Betaine HCI Pepsin & Gentian Bitters for a short period, and while it’s too early to see significant results, my initial impressions are positive. Effectiveness: Early signs suggest that it may be helping with my digestion, particularly with protein breakdown and absorption. I’ve noticed a slight improvement in how I feel after meals, but it’s too soon to confirm any major benefits. Usage: The capsules are easy to take, and the recommended dosage is straightforward. Incorporating them into my daily routine has been hassle-free. Ingredients: The combination of Betaine HCI, Pepsin, and Gentian Bitters is promising. Knowing that it’s designed to support digestive health gives me confidence in its potential effectiveness. Quality: The product is non-GMO and gluten-free, which is important to me. The quality seems good, and the ingredients are well-chosen for their intended purpose. Value: With 120 capsules in the bottle, it offers a decent value for the price. It’s affordable, and if the long-term benefits prove true, it will be well worth the investment. Conclusion: While it’s too early to make a definitive judgment, Doctor’s Best Betaine HCI Pepsin & Gentian Bitters shows promise as a digestive aid. I’ll continue using it and monitor for further improvements.

It may be too early to leave such a glowing review, but I'll update it if it turns out to be a false alarm. For over a decade, since about 2009, I've had almost constant loose stools and diarrhea. Not off and on, but every day. Pardon the TMI, but it became a daily ritual, to use the bathroom multiple times for number two. I almost forgot what a firm stool felt like. Well the first day of taking these pills, that's no more. I used the bathroom once, and it was solid! *Strike up Handel's Halleluiah Chorus!* It has been months since that happened. I honestly don't even remember the last time! It's not an exaggeration to say I've tried just about everything else for the past decade. I've tried psyllium husk fiber, which is the only thing that helped other than this, though the stool still wasn't totally firm. I've tried Benefiber. I tried probiotics of various sorts, kefir, yogurt, s. bolardii, l. reuteri, etc. etc. I tried IBS supplements. I tried Propolis. I went to a gastroenterologist who ran stool tests on me, did a colonoscopy, and prodded around with no success. I've had GERD, which I've taken pills to suppress my stomach acid, and all the while the problem just became worse. In my research I've learned that my symptoms, common symptoms of what doctors pass off as IBS because they don't know the root cause of them, can be caused by low stomach acid. Oddly enough, even the acid reflux apparently may be caused by it. When I read this, I came across something called the "baking soda test." Baking soda is a strong base, so when you put it in a strong acid, like stomach acid, it produces gas, enough to make you give off a strong belch. So you mix half a teaspoon of baking soda in about four ounces of water and swallow it. You time three minutes. If you don't belch, you aren't giving off the expected gas that one would expect if your stomach acid is strong enough. *This test should be run in the morning when you get up, before you've had food.* I took this test a couple mornings in a row and had very little gas. Didn't belch at all the second time I tried it, and the first time I did a slight bit immediately, probably because I swallowed some air. This convinced me to go ahead and try these pills. And boy am I glad I did. This may be a game changer if they continue to work like they did today. These pills are working in a way I haven't seen anything else work, and my first trip to the potty since I started taking them was a FIRM success. If you have symptoms of IBS, loose stools, diarrhea, frequent trips to the bathroom, etc., you owe it to yourself to give these a try.

For years, I lived on the world’s most boring menu: freshly cooked meat (frozen immediately, because histamine intolerance is extra like that), rice, broccoli, yams, apples, blueberries, turmeric, butter, oregano, and salt. That’s it. No snacks. No desserts. No joy. Even with this microscopic menu, I woke up most mornings flirting with anaphylaxis. Add in chronic SIBO, a two-year run with mastitis in both breasts (despite never having kids), and vitamin deficiencies that refused to budge, and I was basically one weird symptom away from being a side plot on Grey’s Anatomy. Then came the glamorous stool test. While collecting samples (truly living the dream), I noticed something weird—many of the pills I’d been taking were coming out completely intact. I took this poop mystery to several doctors, and one of them—a naturopath—finally said, “Well, if all your pills are showing up in your stool, it probably means you have almost no stomach acid.” Okay, pause. No stomach acid? That sounded bad so I went down a rabbit hole tried Doctor’s Best HCl Betaine, and I’m not kidding—within two days, everything changed: I could eat food again. Real food. Fake food. All the food. None of the near-death drama. The chronic mastitis? Gone. (Apparently, there’s something called the “gut-breast axis,” but don’t ask me to explain it.) The SIBO that had been making me miserable for years? Not anymore. And the vitamin deficiencies that kept popping up on blood tests? They finally started improving. I thought fixing my stomach acid would just help my digestion, but it turns out, low stomach acid doesn’t just mess with your stomach—it messes with everything. Without enough stomach acid, you can’t break down proteins, absorb nutrients like B12, magnesium, and iron, or keep your gut bacteria in check. And it doesn’t stop there. Like I said, it's a whole rabbit hole. Naturally, I started obsessively Googling. That’s when I stumbled on a medical book from the 1800s, which said that if you went to a doctor back then with symptoms like IBS, bloating, diarrhea, or food intolerances (all things I'd had for YEARS), the first thing they’d assume was wrong was that you didn’t have enough stomach acid! Um, what? Their solution? Lemon juice, apple cider vinegar—basic stuff to kick-start acid production. Simple, effective, and very unmodern. Today? Doctors will slap you with antacids faster than you can say “gut-brain axis,” making the problem worse for so many people. It wasn’t until much later—after Doctor’s Best gave me my food back and my vitamin levels normalized—that I learned how stomach acid is connected to GERD (which I’ve never had) and a bunch of other issues I did have. After that, I talked to a GI specialist who knew the term for “low stomach acid” (hypochlorhydria) but had no idea how to treat it. Her solution for GERD? Surgery to tighten the esophageal valve—a valve that literally depends on stomach acid to close. Make it make sense. Here’s why Doctor’s Best is now my ride-or-die: It Works: Thanks to the added bitters, I get results with a smaller dose than other brands I’ve tried (and trust me, I’ve tried a lot). Gelatin Capsules: When I take cellulose capsule HCl supplements, they don't work.. unless I open them bc my body doesn't make enough acid to open cellulose. These are the ONLY HCl betaine in gelatin that I've ever seen. Affordable: It’s more effective than pricier options, so my wallet is as happy as my stomach (and my milk-ducts). Here’s how I used it: Start with one capsule per meal. Add one capsule at each meal until you feel a slight burning sensation. (If that happens, I ate more food, drank some milk, and you was fine.) Back off by one capsule, and that’s your sweet spot. Some people can taper off once their stomach acid normalizes, but I haven’t been able to do that yet... Between my underlying conditions (Lyme, mold toxicity, and MCAS) I might never be a free-spirit eater again. And because Amazon doesn’t love sweeping medical claims: I’m not a doctor, and I can’t guarantee this will work for everyone. Health is deeply personal and nuanced. But if you’re like I was—desperate, exhausted, and stuck on a bland, depressing diet—this might be worth looking into. For me, this has been one of the three most important supplements I've found (and I've tried hundreds) -the others are benfothiamine and molybdenum.

I’ve been using this product for over a year and absolutely love it. Whenever I am bloated or I know I am going to consume something that my stomach won’t like, I take this and it works quick. Zero aftertaste in your mouth and love the quality of the product, especially at the low price point.

Not quite sure this is for me. I have my gallbladder out 30 years ago and so I heard this might be good to help that first meal bathroom rush, absolute opposite and I’m on Day probably four or five I go all the time now so it may work for other others definitely not for me.