It’s impossible to ignore the gnawing, aching abdominal pains that accompany a stomach ulcer. About 25 million Americans suffer from an ulcer at some point in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Contrary to popular belief, ulcers are not caused by psychological stress or the ingestion of spicy foods. Ronald Hsu, M.D., a gastroenterologist with the Sutter Roseville Medical Center, says two Australian researchers discovered in the early 1980s that a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori is the root cause of most stomach ulcers.
“Nobody believed them when this was discovered,” Dr. Hsu says. “The conventional thinking at that time was that bacteria couldn’t live in the stomach on account of the strength of gastric acid.”
Eventually, the medical community realized the two men were correct in their findings. Pathologist J. Robin Warren and physician Barry J. Marshall were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2005 for their discovery of H. pylori. Dr. Marshall famously infected himself with the bacterium in an attempt to prove its link to stomach inflammation and ulcers. It is now firmly established that the bacterium causes more than 90 percent of duodenal ulcers and up to 80 percent of gastric ulcers.