Perforations are perfectly fine if we’re talking about pasta strainers or something of the like. But when we’re talking about your insides you certainly don’t want to have any openings in organ aside from the way in and the way out. Your stomach is one of the more important ones, and the digestive enzymes that work in there do wonders with digesting food. But they’re plenty acidic, and if all that acidity isn’t kept in check by the stomach lining, then the whole arrangement can go bad in a hurry. This leads to asking what is peptic ulcer disease, and that’s what we’re going to look at with this entry.  

We mentioned the stomach lining there, and when yours is intact and doing its job you probably never even think about the somewhat caustic nature of how digestion works. The exception to that will be if you have gastrointestinal esophageal reflux disease, or GERD as it is more commonly shortened too. In those instances, you’ll know what it feels like to have stomach acid escape the stomach. But the discomfort of that is only temporary. If we’re talking about what is peptic ulcer, the problem is a lot more constant.

Peptic ulcers are open sores that develop on the inside lining of your stomach, or the upper portion of the small intestine. The first of those two types is a gastric ulcer, and the second one is a duodenal ulcer when stomach acid has eaten a hole through the tissue in the intestine. That may sound harsh, but that’s the workings of how an ulcer develops.

Burning stomach pain is the primary symptom, and some people may find they eat fatty foods at their own peril because those foods make the ulcer symptoms worse. But what about the causes of peptic ulcers?

Curtail Anti-Inflammatory Med Use

There’s definitely a negative feedback loop with swelling and pain, and the need to put a stop to that loop is the reason that so many people will use NSAID meds for inflammation and pain. But continuing with our talk here about what is peptic ulcer we can say that overuse of NSAID medications is the leading cause of peptic ulcers. Vitamin deficiencies and undiagnosed food allergies can be causes too, and semi relatedly people experiencing ulcers may want to know if ulcers can cause diarrhea too.

The last mention around what is peptic ulcer and the causes of them is to say that if you get an H.pylori bacterium infection. These bacteria themselves aren’t inherently bad, and it’s fairly common to have them living in the mucus layer of your stomach anyways. But for some people, they multiply excessively and cause the stomach lining to become inflamed and start the process that may result in a stomach ulcer.

Using other medications can cause stomach ulcers too and Fosamax and Actonel are two of the most notable ones.