The LuxMob Info Tags

This country’s credit card users are entering an era where they are facing increasingly serious debt collection issues. A debt reduction program should be considered sooner and not later. You should be asking yourself if you are using in excess of 30-50% of your available credit. You should also be aware of being in danger of missing a payment. This is a sign that you should be headed to the nearest licensed debt counseling agency. Here are some alarming situations that may affect you if you wait too long to become enrolled in a debt management program.

In the past, once credit accounts had been charged off it was still possible for debt counseling agencies to have them recalled through the original creditors’ debt management department. Now the accounts are being sold to collection agencies and are not able to be recalled because the original creditor no longer owns them. This leaves you with the option of debt settlement or bankruptcy. Both of which are devastating to your credit rating.

Let’s consider the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. This basically states your rights as a debt holder once your account is in the hands of a third party collection agency. It states guidelines for how often and when the collection agency can contact you, among other things. The original creditor, also known as a first party collector, does not have to abide by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If your account is sold to a collection agency they now own the account and have the right to call you whenever and as often as they want.

In the past, when charged off accounts were sold to collection agencies, they harassed you until you learned your rights and then ruined your credit for seven years. It has been reported that clients that have been dropped from debt management repayment programs due to the inability to pay, have experienced having the wages garnished as payment on these outstanding consumer debts. This is a new trend in debt collection and once a trend is introduced into the credit industry, it eventually becomes mainstream.

Credit accounts are being charged off earlier than ever before and creditors are becoming much tougher when it comes to debt counseling programs. Some creditors will allow you only one chance at the program. More and more finance organizations are dropping consumers from debt counseling programs if their payment is not received within 45 days.

With all that being said, if you see yourself headed for financial difficulties you better find the nearest reputable consumer credit counseling agency, quickly.

Marjorie Salada is the owner of http://www.debtmanagement1.com/debt_counseling.htm DebtManagement1.com a website that contains information on getting and staying out of debt. If you are looking for information on debt consolidation, debt settlement, debt counseling or how to manage credit card debt this site is an excellent resource.

We’re living in incredibly turbulent times.

The well spring of this uncertainty lies in one of the characteristics of the newly-arrived Information Age. Business people are being buffeted by an increasingly rapid rate of change. Consider this. In 1900, the total amount of knowledge available to mankind was doubling about every 500 years. In 1990, it was doubling about every two years.

Imagine the implications of that kind of increase in the rate of change! It means new products, new regulations, new market configurations, new customers, and new technology in almost every industry. It’s no wonder that we’re confused and uncertain about what to do.

And the growth of that knowledge continues at an expanding rate. One futurist predicts that today’s high school students will have to absorb more information in their senior year alone than their grandparents did in their entire lifetime. And Nesbitt is on record as predicting that in the year 2020, the rate of knowledge will double every 35 days!

That incredibly rapid pace of new knowledge is driving the forces of change at an unprecedented rate. And that rate of change is continuing to accelerate. The effect of that snowballing rate of change on our businesses and our jobs can be cataclysmic. It’s almost as if a malevolent spirit were stalking our economy, rendering all the wisdom of the past useless, and casting a spell of confusion and uncertainty over the land.

The indications are that this rapid state of change will not be a temporary phenomena we all must live through. Rather, it will be the permanent condition we must accept for the foreseeable future. Rapid change is not a phase we’re passing through, it’s a process we’re entering into.

That means it is likely that the conclusions, paradigms and core beliefs upon which we based our decisions just two or three years ago are likely to be obsolete today. Even more sobering, the conclusions and strategies which we develop today will be obsolete in a couple of years. We can count on this continuing obsolescence of our best ideas and strategies to be the constant state of affairs.

One of my clients recently told his employees, “The only thing you can count on is that you won’t be doing this job in three years.” His point was that the job will change in that period of time to such a degree that it’ll be a different job. The technology used will likely change, as will the customers, the systems and the focus of the job.

The insightful person will accept that rapid change is now a defining characteristic of our economy, and plan to deal with it effectively on an on-going basis. Instead of thinking we should just persevere until it’s behind us, we should prepare for rapid change to be a way of life.

What’s the best way to go forward in the light of this rapid change? What mind sets can we adopt that will equip us to survive and prosper in turbulent times? What skills do we need to survive and prosper in the information age?

I believe there is one core skill which will define the most successful individuals. It’s the ability and propensity to engage in self-directed learning. The only sustainable effective response to a rapidly changing world is cultivating the ability to positively transform ourselves and our organizations. And that’s the definition of self-directed learning.

In the face of a world that is different one week to the next, our most powerful positive response is to cultivate the ability to learn. By “learning,” I don’t mean just the acquisition of new information, although that is a necessary prerequisite. Rather, I mean the kind of “learning” that requires one to change behavior on the basis of an ever changing understanding of the world. Learning without behavior change is impotent.

The individuals who become disciplined, systematic self-directed learners will be the success stories of the information age. Likewise, those organizations that become learning organizations will have the best chance of surviving and prospering.

Read what other have said about it:

“…the key thing as we go forward is the ability to learn. You can not arrest the pace of development in the marketplace, in the world, socially and technologically. It is coming at an increasing rate. You’ve got to be able to learn and adapt…” Beale.
Because of the forces surging through our economy, it’s safe to say that tomorrow will be significantly different from today. It will be more complex and somehow significantly changed. And that will be true of all the tomorrows in the foreseeable future.

The most skilled employees, therefore, will be the ones who can continually access the changing facts and growing complexity of their jobs, and then change appropriately.

That’s “self-directed learning.”
“We understand that the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers´ ability to learn faster than their competitors.” Arie P. DeGeus.
In a world that is rapidly changing, today’s hot new product is tomorrow’s obsolete dinosaur. More important than any one product is the ability to continually create new products. Today’s strongest employee could very well be tomorrow’s employment problem. More important than any one employee is the ability to find and maintain employees who are constantly growing. Today’s closest customers could be out of business tomorrow. More important than any one customer is the ability to attract and retain customers.

All of these are applications of the ultimate competitive advantage — the ability to learn faster than your competitors.
“In fact, I would argue that the rate at which individuals and organizations learn may become the only sustainable competitive advantage.” Ray Stata.
As the economy becomes more and more global, competition will increase. Few businesses will enjoy a secure market position. The quality of competition will also improve as competitors strive to out do one another in providing customer service and value added products and services. In this new economy, those who survive and prosper will be those who know how to learn, and who do so faster and more systematically than their competitors.

And those organizations that become learning organizations will be those who fill themselves with people who regularly engage in self-directed learning.

How, then, do you instill this “self-directed learning” in your organization?

Here are three tactics to begin the process.

1. Wipe the Slate Clean.

Imagine that you have written the history of your company or your career on a blackboard. You have every decision, every strategy, every success and every failure noted in detail. The sum of this experience provides the rationale for why and how you do everything that you now do.

Now, take a wet towel, and wipe the board clean. Erase the past. As you do so, you eliminate the unspoken acceptance of the way things are, and replace it with the new understanding that things may not be the way they should be. Just because something is, doesn’t mean it should be. The reason you started doing something may no longer exist. Remember, with a world turning over more or less completely every two to three years, any decision or procedure which had its roots in a situation that three or more years old may not be justified today.

This little exercise provides a mental image for a change in thinking that needs to take place if you’re going to become a learning organization. You must begin to think about things that you do, not on the basis of the past (three or more years ago), but rather on the basis of the present and the future.

It’s a way of eliminating one of the biggest barriers to learning and changing. That barrier is the mental obstacles that we put in our own way. Here’s an example. One of my clients was frustrated with his continuing inability to motivate his sales force. He spent much of his mental energy and financial resources attempting to get his force of largely independent agents to spend more time with his product. Yet he never thought about going to market in ways other than through his traditional methods. When we broke down that barrier of relying on the past and wiped the slate clean, we discovered a marketing method which holds tremendous potential for his business. However, it took a change in thinking, a thought process that wasn’t tied to his past in order to look at the situation on the basis of the present and the future rather than the past.

That principle can be applied in every area of your business, from something so fundamental and important as your method of reaching your customers, to something as mundane as the way you answer the phone, or fill out a receiving document.

2. Give Learning a Strategic Emphasis.

Build in the need to become a learning organization in the most fundamental building blocks of your business.

Write it into your mission statement. Get the board to pass a resolution advocating it. Display your commitment to it predominantly in your personnel manual.

Talk about it at your employee meetings. Make it an agenda item in your executive meetings. Articulate it as an initiative in your strategic planning sessions. And, begin to model learning behavior yourself.

3. Make self-directed learning a part of everyone’s job description.

Begin to create learning expectations for yourself and all your employees. Talk about their need to learn and grow. Include it as an item on every job description.

Then encourage, develop and support learning opportunities throughout your organization. Here’s some things other organizations have done:
ONE: Require every employee to attend a certain number of outside seminars per year.

TWO: Create “Learning Groups” within your company. These are temporary groups of people who come together for a short period of time to learn from and with one another. One of my clients, for example, has a weekly manager’s lunch where everyone brown bags lunch and discusses one chapter of Steven Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. The principle of short term, small group meetings conducted around the free-flowing discussion of some body of content, can be used throughout your organization. We organize and train sales people and sales mangers to enter into this process, for example. People on the shop floor, service technicians, customer service reps, etc. can all enter into short term learning groups. Since they are temporary, the configuration of the groups constantly change, thus exposing everyone to diverse perspectives. The groups can be homogeneous (people from the same department or job title) or heterogeneous (people from different departments and job titles). The important thing is that your employees are expected to engage in self-directed learning, and you’re encouraging and facilitation that process.

THREE: Reward the effective application of learning. In other words, when someone finds an effective way to change things, reward them. One of my clients holds a monthly employee meeting, where the employee who has made the biggest positive change in the way things are done is rewarded with $150.00 cash bonus.
Begin to implement these strategies and you’ll take the first steps to transforming your organization into a learning organization. You’ll begin the process of mastering the ultimate skill for the information age.

Copyright 2006

About Dave Kahle, The Growth Coach®:

Dave Kahle is a consultant and trainer who helps his clients increase their sales and improve their sales productivity. Dave has trained thousands of salespeople to be more successful in the Information Age economy. He’s the author of over 500 articles and five books. His latest is 10 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople. His “Thinking About Sales” Ezine features content-filled motivating articles, practical tips for immediate improvements, useful resources and helpful tips to help increase sales. Join for NOTHING on-line at http://www.davekahle.com/mailinglist.htm.

You can reach Dave at:
The DaCo Corporation
3736 West River Drive
Comstock Park, MI 49321
Phone: 800-331-1287 / 616-451-9377
Fax: 616-451-9412
info@davekahle.com
http://www.davekahle.com

Regular readers of this newsletter and my newspaper column know
that I am a big fan of eBay’s About Me Page feature. This is a
special page you can create as part of your eBay account that is
linked from your eBay ID (with a little About Me icon).

You can use your eBay About Me Page as a sales tool. Customers
can click on your About Me icon to get to your About Me page,
which you can set up to include information about you, your
interests, and even links to your website.

It’s a great way to get personal with your customers and drive
traffic to your website or other online businesses.

eBay does not approve of blatant advertising on your About Me
page, but you can include links to products and services that
you think will be of interest to the eBay community at large. If
these links just happen to be affiliate links to products that
pay you a commission, more the better. :o)

Your About Me page can be as simple or as detailed as you like.

Here’s my eBay About Me page (if the link wraps in your email
program cut and paste it in a browser address window:

HREF=http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=dr
opshipwholesale rel="nofollow">http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPag
e&userid=dropshipwholesale*net

Here’s how to create your own eBay About Me page.

1. Register for an eBay account. If you’re already an eBay
member you can skip this step. If you don’t have a fr** eBay
account click the signup link below to register now.

– HREF=http://www.qksrv.net/click-825228-5902069 rel="nofollow">http://www.qksrv.n
et/click-825228-5902069

2. Once you are registered, log into your eBay account by
clicking the “My eBay” link at the top of any eBay page. Enter
your eBay user name and password.

3. Once you’re logged in, click the “Personal Information” link
under “My Account” in the left hand menu.

4. At the Personal Information page click to create your About
Me page. Or you can go directly to the Create An About Me Page
link shown below:

– HREF=http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws2/eBayISAPI.dll?AboutMeLogin rel="nofollow">http://c
gi3.ebay.com/ws2/eBayISAPI.dll?AboutMeLogin

5. Once you’re at the About Me creation page simply follow the
directions. You can use the About Me wizard to create the page
or paste in custom HTML as I have done with my About Me page.

Once you have your About Me page set up, you should include a
link to your About Me page in every auction and sale you do.

It’s free advertising, so use it!

If you know what you’re doing, you can quickly find what you’re looking for on eBay. Here are a few golden rules.

Be specific: If you’re searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you’ll get further searching for ‘harry potter rowling philosopher’s stone first edition’ than you will searching for ‘harry potter’. You’ll get fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant.

Spell wrongly: It’s a sad fact that many of the sellers on eBay just can’t spell. Whatever you’re looking for, try thinking of a few common misspellings – the chances are that fewer people will find these items, and so they will be cheaper.

Get a thesaurus: You should try to search for all the different words that someone might use to describe your item, for example searching for both ‘TV’ and ‘television’, or for ‘phone’, ‘mobile’ and ‘cellphone’. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and search by things like brand and model.

Use the categories: Whenever you search, you’ll notice a list of categories at the side of your search results. If you just searched for the name of a CD because you want to buy that CD, you should click the ‘CDs’ category to just look at results in that category. Why bother looking through a load of results that you don’t care about?

Don’t be afraid to browse: Once you’ve found the category that items you like seem to be in, why not click ‘Browse’ and take a look through the whole category? You might be surprised by what you find.

Few people realise just how powerful eBay’s search engine is – a few symbols here and there and it’ll work wonders for you.

Wildcard searches: You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want to say ‘anything can go here’. For example, if you wanted to search for a 1950s car, you could search for ‘car 195*’. 195* will show results from any year in the 1950s.

In this order: If you put words in quotes (”") then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words between the quote marks. For example, searching for “Lord of the Rings” won’t give you any results that say, for example “Lord Robert Rings”.

Exclude words: Put a minus, and then put any words in brackets that you don’t want to appear in your search results. For example: “Pulp Fiction” –(poster,photo) will find items related to Pulp Fiction but not posters or photos.

Either/or: If you want to search for lots of words at once, just put them in brackets: the TV example from earlier could become ‘(TV,television)’, which would find items with either word.

So once you’ve found your bargain item, bid for it and won it, what if it all goes wrong? Don’t worry – eBay has a thorough dispute resolution procedure, and we’ll cover it in some depth in the next article, so you’ll be prepared if the worst happens.

John is an Ebay Powerseller. He’s published a blog listing his best resources and articles. His blog can be found at www.auctionblogonline.com.

We have all been educated to acquire things. We have been taught how to get an education, get a job, buy a house. There are lots of courses to teach us whatever it is that we need to know. But what education do we receive about dealing with loss? Where can we go to learn to deal with the conflicting feelings caused by significant emotional loss? Loss is so much more predictable and inevitable than gain, and yet we are woefully unprepared to deal with it.

Whether you suffer from the death of a loved one, the death of a not-so-loved one, divorce, breakup, being fired from your job, sexual or spouse abuse, emotional trauma, loss of trust or any other significant loss, the grief you feel can be paralyzing. Some people suffer from losses that happened 20 years ago, and some suffer from the losses we all sustained on 9/11. We are all grievers.

Grief is the conflicting mass of human emotion that we experience following any change in a familiar pattern of behavior. Grief just doesn’t “take time,” there are small and steady steps necessary to “say goodbye” and go on living.

When you can say good-bye to your loss and are able to move on to life, end your isolation from those you love, and
regain joy and passion and celebration, then you have healed.

When you heal, you will…

* Be able to mention important life-losses without tears or fears.

* No longer need to talk about the past with anger.

* Say goodbye to loved ones, and to less-than-loved ones.

* Let go of those images which cause you to doubt yourself and your ability.

* Project a positive self-image to yourself and to the world.

* Raise your kids with love and confidence.

* Learn how to forgive those who have hurt you in the past.

* Freely embrace those who love you.

And then your losses will be your life-teachers forever.
And then you will journey from mourning to morning…

Dr. Mel Glazer is a Grief Recovery Specialist working in private practice with grievers all across America. You can visit his website at http://www.yourgriefmatters.com. Dr. Glazer has served as a Rabbi, Author, and Speaker for over thirty years, and he is recognized as a pioneer in the art of using our life-losses to help us learn life-lessons. Some examples of loss include:
the death of a loved one, or a less-than-loved-one; divorce; serious physical, mental or emotional illness; financial distress; the end of a serious relationship; when a child leaves home for college; and even the death of a pet. Each loss creates a grief reaction, and we must be able to complete our relationship with our loss before we can move past it. He is widely published, and his upcoming book, And God Created Hope: How Our Favorite Bible Stories Lead Us From Mourning To Morning (2006), follows in the footsteps of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. He lives in Stroudsburg PA, where he is the Rabbi of Temple Israel of the Poconos.

Managing time is saving money. When we have control of our time,
it makes our load easier, and our lives stronger. When we are
achieving a financial limit, we need to understand the value of
a dollar. If you are saving money to achieve a goal, it is
always smart to store your funds in accounts that include
interest on the dollar.

Some banks offer more interest rates than others do, so it pays
to shop around. If you are investing in short-term goals and
saving money for the occasion, you might want to open a
different account. For example, if you intend to take a Holiday
Vacation, you will save funds, but keep it separate from your
business account. If you have a Mortgage Loan, you might want to
review your terms & agreements, since some loans offer vacation
packages. In addition, you might want to note that money market
accounts and saving accounts are great for short-term goals,
such as vacations.

By saving your money in accounts that include interest, it
allows you to accumulate addition savings, and your ‘principal
is secure.’ If you are opening, accounts to save money for long
or short-term goals, be sure the accounts do not have hidden
fees, charges, or ‘penalties for early’ withdrawals. Saving
money is managing time, so if you are paying fees and charges,
or penalties you are spending money and burning time.

No matter what you goals are, it takes money to obtain them.
There are no exceptions to the rule. If you are saving for
retirement, or to send your kid to college, it is wise to set a
goal in the short-term range for one goal and a long-term for
the other goal. For example if you are saving funds for college
tuitions, you want to set a five-year term agreement with
yourself, unless your child is going to college next year.

If you are saving for retirement this is a long-term agreement
that you want to invest wisely. Remember times are constantly
changing and prices are soaring, so calculate the increases in
your time management scheme for the best turn around. This will
help you save money and time. Be sure you know what you are
getting into to reduce your risks if this is your lifestyle. If
you investments are an opportunity to achieve long-term goals,
then be sure that you realize that no investment is sound proof.
Make sure you keep savings in an account that are not used for
your investments, since you will need a backup plan when all
else fails. Likewise, if you are investing your money in lottery
tickets, you are wasting time.

Unless you are lucky, most people only win a few dollars, so do
not include this in your time management scheme, because it will
only bring you down once you realize you are wasting time and
money. Time management is the process of making wise decisions
to achieve goals and flexibility as well as saving money. When
you create a good time management scheme, you are well on your
way to success.

It’s no doubt that a dozen eggs were an unusual gift. But for my friend Carol, “hmmm, eggs,” quickly became “Mmmm, eggs.” Here’s the story.

Maria, a friend and fellow osteopath, lives on a farm where she, her husband and two children raise chickens, and to be complete, ducks and geese. She always comes bearing eggs, which I share with friends—green eggs, blue eggs, brown eggs, white eggs and sometimes big fat duck eggs. The color depends on which breed laid the egg. But the real treat comes when you crack it. The white is thick and buoyant; the yolk glowing orange. And the taste? Well as my friend Carol put it, “I’ve never savored an egg before!”

Maria and her family raise their chickens on pasture. That’s a fancy way of saying they roam outside all day long eating all the grass, worms and bugs they please. Maria’s land was ridden with ticks until they got the chickens, Mother Nature’s pest control. Their diet is supplemented with cracked corn and vitamin pellets. The pasture gives the yolk the bright orange color and superior nutrition. The more pasture the hens eat, the brighter orange the yolk. The color changes with the seasons as the availability of fresh grass and bugs changes. Pasture-raised eggs have four times more of the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, thus the bright orange color, four times more omega-3 fatty acids, twice the vitamin E and half the cholesterol.

If you, like Carol, have bought grocery store eggs all of your life, then you never have tasted a fresh egg. The fresher the egg, the more the white stands up. According to Hormel Foods’ website, the sell by date on a carton of eggs can be no more than 30 days after the eggs were packed. Yet an egg can be packed up to 30 days from the time it was laid. Storage conditions make a big difference. If a freshly laid egg is left at room temperature for a full day, it will not be as fresh as a week old egg refrigerated between 33° and 40°F.

There is a reason I did not use the term “free-range” when I described how Maria raises her hens. With “natural” and “organic” having such market appeal, producers are stretching the truth. According to one farmer, “free-range means the chickens have access to the outside. It can also mean that a door is merely left open on a large confinement house to a dirt yard.” Buyer beware.

So short of a friend like Maria, how do you get fresh pasture-raised eggs? Check the Kansas City Food Circle Directory of Local Organic and Natural Food producers at www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/KC2005.PDF. There are just too many farmers offering free-range eggs to list. You’ll find them at farmer’s markets during the summer. Many deliver to the city during the winter months or you can drive to their farm.

Bethany Klug, DO specializes in holistic medicine at the Kansas City Holistic Centre, http://www.kcholistic.com/ She is a member of the Lieurance Group, a freelance writers cooperative http://www.lieurancegroup.blogspot.com/ and authors the monthly column “The Doctor Cooks” for the Kansas City Wellness Magazine.

Dog’s come in all shapes and sizes – out of all the dogs you’ve ever met you’ve probably been more attracted to some breeds than others. Perhaps you had a dog when you were growing up and want the same breed for your children. But more needs to be determined than breed or size when choosing a family dog.

How do you choose? What do you need to know? Here are some questions you must ask when choosing a dog for family life:

How old are your children?

If your family is still young, especially if you still have preschoolers, it is prudent to consider whether your family should have a dog right now. Are you planning (or expecting) other children? Dogs require a fair amount of attention and if you have small children not only will you have less time to train or play with a dog, but you may have more difficulty trusting your dog or your children without your constant attention.

If you are still certain that you want a dog and you have the time, consider the training and age of the dog. Perhaps a well trained, older dog would be more suitable.

How much do you know about dogs?

Think taking care of a dog is a no-brainer? Well, if you have children you don’t have the luxury of allowing your dog to train itself or wander the countryside. You must read or ask someone knowledgeable about the needs and training a dog requires.

If you’re not up to the task you’ll have to locate a trainer that will work with your dog as well as train you and your family how to deal with the dog. Many bad habits that dogs pick up come from lack of consistent training rather than the dog being troublesome.

Are you ready for the financial obligation?

To have a healthy dog you must plan for the costs of vet bills, vaccinations, flea and worm medication, grooming and training. Do you travel? Either you will need to arrange for care or pay for a dog sitter or kennel when you’re away. Thinking of buying a large breed? Find out the food costs in advance – if your budget is already tight you may be shocked at the cost of food for large dogs.

Do YOU want a dog?

If your children are young then hopefully you recognize that you or your partner must be willing to handle the burden of day-to-day care such as feeding, walking, training and cleaning. But what if your children are older and capable of more responsibility? You still need to factor in that the dog may live 10-15 years or more (depending on breed). Who will take responsibility for the dog when the children go to college or get married?

Owning a dog has wonderful benefits that you and your children will enjoy. Research continues to show that individuals benefit emotional and physically from owning a pet. But there is more to owning a dog than selecting the prettiest or most popular breed.

Taking the time to do some research on owning dogs and choosing the right one for your children will help you make the best decision for your family’s enjoyment.

About The Author

Shannon Emmanuel is a freelance writer and the author of ‘How to Choose the Best Dog or Puppy for Your Childre’. Find out more at www.best-dog-breed-for-children.com.

This article is free to reprint in full, without change and including author’s credit and link.

Gastroesophageal Reflux Disorder (GERD) is classified as a Functional GI Disorder, in which stomach acid (HCL) backs up (refluxes) into the esophagus. This is due to an imbalance in the neuroendocrine system, which causes both a loss of contractile ability in the esophagus and its openings in the stomach and diaphragm, as well as an overproduction of HCL (hyperchlorhydria) and unbalanced secretions of the hormone serotonin. This imbalance leads to irritation of the esophageal tissue and a decrease in motility and tone of the entire esophagus and its opening in the diaphragm.

The cause for this unbalanced neuroendecrine system could well be lesions in the spinal disks. Studies have shown intervertebral disk lesions to negatively affect the nervous system¹. In the early 1980s, using specially designed BEV and CCT tests, Dr. Brice Vickery found that 100% of his GERD patients also had dorsal disk lesions, very often with no back pain symptoms. Instead, their symptoms included stomach and esophageal inflammation along with weakness in both the esophageal/stomach valve and the diaphragm and its opening for the esophagus. This weakness can lead to the stomach pushing up through the diaphragm in the condition known as hiatal hernia. The nervous system is closely linked to the endocrine system, and so this system that secretes chemicals such as HCL or serotonin could also be affected by any changes that occur due to disk lesions.

It is common knowledge that amino acid deficiency does affect the body’s ability to make protein. If even one essential amino acid is missing from the diet, the body can not make allt he proteins it needs on a daily basis. It could well follow that one cause of GERDs is a general deficiency in amino acids (the building blocks of protein), resulting in a deficiency in the spinal disks, the neuroendocrine system and even the make up of the proteins involved in the production of stomach acid and serotonin. It is interesting to note that Dr. Vickery also found once he cured his GERDs patients of protein deficiency, their symptoms disappeared.

Systemic protein is made up of essential (EAA) and non essential amino acids. EAAs can only be obtained if dietary protein is fully digested . Dr. Vickery also found that 9 out of 10 of his patients did not fully digest their food. A lack of essential amino acids leads to an insufficiency in about 3000 enzymes, which cannot be synthesized without these amino acids . Enzymes play a big part in the secretion of HCL and serotonin. Hypochlorhydria (too little stomach acid) and hyperclorhydria could both be caused by the inability to digest and transform dietary protein into systemic proteins.

The essential amino acids must be present in the body or malfunctions will occur in the system². If we cannot digest our food into these essential amino acids, then we cannot make systemic proteins. GERD could be just another symptom in a large list of protein deficiency caused diseases and infections.

If people, because of diet, aging, environmental factors and stress are unable to produce sufficient enzymes to digest their food properly, then regular maintenance processes such as upkeep and repair of the spinal disk material will be compromised due to a lack of the systemic protein needed to keep the disks strong and flexible. As lesions begin to appear, the nervous system becomes affected and then the neuroendocrine system. Stomach motility and secretions could very well be affected.

Two focal points of GERD research in medical science are HCL production by the stomach cells and the effects of serotonin on GERD symptoms. Let’s take a look at these chemicals and the proteins that are involved in their production HCL secretion in the stomach is dependent on an active transport system that is made up of proteins. A large portion of those proteins are essential amino acids:

HCL
The stomach lining contains certain cells called parietal cells, which are specifically oriented with one surface facing blood in capillaries and the other facing the stomach cavity, where the active transport of HCL into the stomach occurs. These cells are sealed together with tight junction proteins that create an impermeable gasket between the blood and the stomach. Carbon dioxide diffuses freely into the cell where it joins with water. The enzyme carbonic anhydrase,(a systemic protein), catalyzes the reaction between these two elements, yielding hydrogen. Chloride ions enter the cell in a process of ion exchange and on the stomach side of the cell another large protein, H+/K+ Atpase, starts the active transport “pump” for HCL production. Free energy (ATP) hydrolyzed by H+/K+ Atpase pumps out hydrogen (H+) and takes up potassium (K+). K+ flows into the stomach by diffusion through a K+ channel protein while chloride (CL-) flows into the stomach through a Cl- channel protein. This mixture creates a Ph of about .08 in the stomach, which is optimal for food digestion. How much of each protein is EAAs ?:
Tight junction protein - 299 total AA 151 EAA ( 18% of the EAA being valine)
Carbonic Anhydrase - 260 total AA 106 EAA (17 % of the EAA being leucine)
K+ channel protein - 392 total AA 192 EAA ( 16% of the EAA being leucine)
H+/K+ Atpase - 1034 total AA 500 EAA ( 10% of the EAA being leucine)³

Why is there an overproduction of acid in the GERD patient? If the proper essential amino acids must be present for the proper function of proteins, what happens if EAAs are missing? Perhaps then the protein mechanism that makes the HCL for our stomach malfunctions. How do we get these EAAS? By digesting our food fully.

Serotonin
Science is also looking into the role that the hormone seratonin (5HT) plays in GERD because serotonin mediates the chemical transfer of information between the brain and gut. It does this via the central nervous system. If the nervous system has been compromised due to breakdown of the spinal disks, then messages given to the secretory system will also be compromised. If the system does not have adequate amounts of amino acids available to build secretory proteins, it will be doubly compromised . Some studies show that regulating serotonin through the use of drugs such as SSRIs helps calm some of the symptoms of GERD. Let’s take a look at the biosynthesis of serotonin

The essential amino acid tryptophan is the necessary precursor to serotonin and is found in foods like turkey, milk, eggs and bananas. Meat also contains tryptophan but it not the best source because it also contains significant amounts of the five other amino acids that compete with tryptophan for receptor access. Research has found the biggest rise in serotonin levels to occur after high carbohydrate meals when the release of insulin encourages certain essential amino acids to leave the blood stream and enter the organ tissues, leaving tryptophan free use albumin transportation to the brain without competition. Once tryptophan is absorbed into the blood stream, the blood protein albumin carries it to the cell where the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase catalyzes the reaction, which creates 5HTP. Then the enzyme dopa decarboxolase catalyzes the change, which produces the hormone 5HT, or serotonin. Let’s take a look at the proteins involved in this transformation⁴:
First the amino acid typtophan must be broken out of the food and absorbed
Production of the blood protein albumin requires seven of the eleven EAAS.
Trytophan Hydroxylase - 74 AA 41 EAA (16% of the EAA being lysine)
Dopa Decarboxolase - 480 AA 237 EAA ( 9% of the EAA being leucine)
Serotonin - 428 AA 236 EAA (85 of the EAA being leucine)

If we cannot fully digest the turkey or eggs we have eaten we will not get adequate amounts of tryptophan..Incomplete digestion will lead to inadequate amounts of albumin and catalytic enzymes, not to mention the final product serotonin. If our neuroendocrine system is not working properly because of degraded spinal disks, the expression of these enzymes and proteins will be out of balance as well. In some advanced cases of GERD the system is so unbalanced that the esophageal tissue is damaged resulting in the condition known as esophagitis, these patients are thought to have low albumin levels⁵)

10%- 20% of GERD patients have the precancerous condition known as Barrett’s Esophagus. In this condition the tissue of the esophagus undergoes a change and though there may be no symptoms, it can result in a deadly form of cancer. These patients show a decrease in the enzyme glutathione transferase⁶. This enzyme detoxifies carcinogens, drugs, environmental toxins, and oxidative stress through conjugation with the protein glutathione.

Glutathione Transferase - 218 AA 129 EAA (23% of EAA being leucine)

The essential amino acid cysteine is the limiting amino acid in the synthesis of glutathione. (This means that all the other amino acids in glutathione are limited in their efficiency without adequate levels of cysteine⁷.)

Each systemic protein broken down in this article ranges from 40%-55% EAAs. The only place we can get these AAs from is the complete digestion of our food. Without them we will become protein deficient. For instance, studies show that depriving mice of cysteine in their diets leads to lower levels of glutathione in their systems and a decreased ability to handle oxidative stress⁸. The body has a number of proteins and enzymes that are designed to help clear the toxic burden of oxidative stress from the body. If the body cannot make a sufficient number of these proteins to handle the stress load, the system will begin to experience the effects of this malfunction.

If we cannot make the proteins we need for our stomach to work properly we will begin to experience the effects of a malfunctioning system.

Studies show that a protein deficient system leads to malfunctions of the system and illness. The beginning of this breakdown may begin in the dorsal spinal disks, affecting the nervous system and, in the GERDs patient, the nueroendocrine system of the stomach..If we are not digesting our dietary protein properly we are becoming increasingly protein deficient and protein deficiency leads to systemic malfunction.

For more information on essential amino acids and protein deficiencies visit http://www.supernutrient.com

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