H. pylori · a cause of cancer you can clear

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Digestive
H. pylori does not live soaking in stomach acid; it burrows under the mucus layer and lives against the surface of the stomach lining, where the pH is close to neutral, one of the few mild spots in the stomach. To understand this move, you first need to know how stomach acid is made and how the mucus barrier works.

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How it survives the acid

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Stomach acid kills almost every bacterium swallowed with food. H. pylori survives not because it can withstand acid, but because it never touches the acid.

It carries an enzyme that splits urea, called urease. Urease breaks nearby urea down into ammonia and builds a local cloud of alkali. A small gate on the bacterium's surface lets only urea through, and it opens only as acid closes in. Once the mucus turns from gel to fluid, the bacterium swims under it onto the surface of the stomach-wall cells, where conditions are close to neutral.

This survival kit later became the way to find it: the common breath test measures exactly this urease activity.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.

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