I Thought My Heartburn Was Genetic. A Trip to India Proved Me Wrong.
For years, my family lived on Gaviscon and Rennies. It took a conversation with a Finnish engineer in India to realise we were treating the symptom, not the cause.
If you’ve ever felt that nasty burning in your chest after a cup of tea or a spicy meal, you know the drill. You reach for the indigestion tablets. You prop yourself up with pillows. You avoid coffee.
That was my life. Actually, that was my whole family's life.
I remember complaining to my mum as a child about my tummy burning. Her advice? "Take these drops." She told me it was just our family "curse"—her mother had it, she had it, and now I had it. We were told to just "get on with it."
Fast forward 20 years, and I’m having the same conversation with my own daughter.
She was complaining of burning, and I found myself reaching for the medicine cabinet. But this time, the GP’s advice was different. Instead of adding acid (like my mum did), they gave her pills to suppress it.
If the "cures" are total opposites, maybe we are completely misunderstanding the illness.
The India Connection
The answer didn't come from a consultant. It came from a soil engineer.
In 2017, I was in India working on a project to help restore depleted farming soil. The land was dead—overused, pumped full of chemicals, and unable to grow healthy crops.
We were trying to figure out how to import healthy bacteria to fix the soil, which was a logistical nightmare. That’s when Erkki, our Finnish lead engineer, laughed at us.
"We don’t need to import bacteria," he said. "We need to use the local biology. The soil is sick because it’s missing the basic elements of life—humic and fulvic acids."
Then he looked at me and said something I’ll never forget:
"You humans are just like these plants. You’re sick because you’re living like 'potted plants'—disconnected from the soil. You sterilise your food, you kill the bacteria, and you wonder why your digestion shuts down."
The "Traffic Jam" Theory
It hit me like a lightning bolt.
We usually think Acid Reflux is caused by the stomach making too much acid. But biologically, that’s rare.
The real problem is often a traffic jam in the small intestine.
Your intestine is 8 metres long. It’s home to trillions of bacteria that are supposed to break down your food. But if your microbiome is weak (because, like the Indian soil, it lacks fulvic acid and proper minerals), the bacteria go on strike.
Food doesn't get digested fast enough.
It sits there and ferments (creates gas).
Pressure builds up.
The pressure pushes stomach acid BACK UP into your throat.
We were trying to put out the fire (the heartburn) when we should have been clearing the traffic jam (the digestion).
Fixing the Soil... Inside Us
We never finished that biogas plant in India, but I came back to Europe with a new mission. I realised that if I wanted to fix my reflux—and my daughter’s—I didn't need medicine. I needed to fix my internal soil.
We started developing a way to source those missing soil elements—Fulvic Acid, Humic Acid, and Polyphenols—from clean, natural sources like Pine Bark and Birch Chaga.
We called it "The Black Stuff."
