A client of mine has had bad reactions to HCl supplementation. The largest dose to date has been 400 mg at a time. She suffered bad headaches from the pure 400 mg supplement and noticed a feeling of heat in her head, as well as tiredness after taking 200 mg of NOW Super Enzymes throughout a trial week. While she welcomes sleeping longer and more deeply during this time, she woke up feeling fatigued and noticed an overall decline in energy. Could this have really been a reaction to the HCl?

Dr. Amy Nett: Good question. I don’t know. It’s not a reaction that I’ve seen to taking HCl. Taking HCl presumably would’ve changed how she was digesting and absorbing her food, presumably improve digestion, and absorption. So I don’t know how to explain why HCl would increase feelings of fatigue and an overall decline in energy. It’s not a reaction that I’m familiar with in regards to HCl, but at the same time I’m always reluctant to discount a patient’s experience. Because if that’s what she experienced when taking HCl, then that was her experience to it.

Of course, you have to make sure that there weren’t any other changes during that week, and you might want to repeat that if you feel like she needs HCl. Repeat it during another week because it’s also hard. Was she PMS that week? Was she catching a cold that week? So sometimes I feel like you have to do a second trial with a medication or supplement if someone reports a bad reaction. I normally ask people to try it at least one more time to see if it was a compounding variable or truly an adverse reaction to that.