For drug makers, it must have been a “you got your peanut butter in my chocolate” moment — but instead of “two great tastes that taste great together,” you’re about to get two bad meds that are even worse together.

The “peanut butter” in this case is the daily aspirin millions of heart patients are told to take — and taken by millions of others in the mistaken belief it can prevent those heart problems from happening in the first place.

The “chocolate” is omeprazole, aka Prilosec — part of a badly overused class of heartburn meds called proton pump inhibitors.

Now, I don’t have a problem with someone eating a little fresh-ground peanut butter, or even an occasional snack of dark chocolate.

But I have a big problem with people taking daily aspirin or proton pump inhibitors on a long-term basis — because both of these drugs come with huge health risks and minimal… to no… benefits.

Daily aspirin use isn’t nearly as beneficial as years and years of relentless marketing would have you believe. What’s more, it comes with a host of serious side effects such as bleeding problems, including ulcers, and even bleeding in the brain.

One of the milder but more immediate side effects, however, is heartburn — and that’s why the new peanut butter cup of pills mixes 325 mg of aspirin with the PPI omeprazole.

It’s supposed to prevent that heartburn and make it easier for people to take the daily aspirin. And to that extent, you could say it “works” — because PPIs are great at hiding the symptoms of heartburn and other stomach acid problems.

But PPIs also bring stomach acid to dangerously low levels.

In fact, the levels are so low that when you stop taking the drugs, the stomach tries to overcompensate and produces more acid than ever. Most people think it’s their acid problem coming back with a vengeance.

In reality, this “acid rebound,” as it’s called, is caused by the drug itself — and a reason many people can’t stop taking a PPI once they start.

PPIs can also block the absorption of key nutrients, leaving you seriously deficient in calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin C, and other essentials and putting you at risk for everything from bone breaks to death.

Pain, heartburn, and even cardiovascular health all have better and more natural answers. Work with your doctor to find them.

Your stomach is your best friend — yet millions of people treat it like their worst enemy.

They fill their guts with lousy food, and then at the first sign of heartburn or acid reflux, they carpet-bomb their bellies with dangerous drugs that not only won’t solve the problem… they can actually make it worse in the long run (while putting the rest of your body at risk to boot).

That’s no way to treat a friend!

Now, a leading consumer group is calling on the FDA to put black-box warnings on proton pump inhibitors such as Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid because of all those risks — including the notorious “rebound” acid problems.

Public Citizen says people who take these meds often end up in a cycle of dependency: When they try to stop, that rebound kicks in — leaving them more miserable than ever. Eventually, what started as a short-term remedy becomes a lifelong addiction.

And even if the drugs manage to keep the reflux at bay for a little while, they’re slowly and silently doing far more damage in your gut than the drug industry will ever admit.

PPIs can destroy the delicate balance of stomach acid and gut bacteria, block the absorption of key vitamins and nutrients, and set you on a collision course for problems far worse than acid reflux.

Long-term use of these meds has been linked to severe and potentially deadly conditions such as magnesium deficiencies, heart problems, bone breaks, and infection.

PPIs can actually increase the risk of ulcers in hard-to-treat regions of the small intestine when taken with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

Despite all those risks, these are some of the nation’s best-selling meds. And the worst part? Most of the people who take them don’t even have the stomach conditions they’re prescribed for.

One recent study found that up to 70 percent of all PPI prescriptions are completely unnecessary. That number might sound high, but I’d say it’s more like 100 percent, because the fact is, you don’t need to turn to risky drugs to get your stomach under control.

Alternative medicine pioneer Dr. Jonathan Wright literally wrote the book on this. It’s called “Why Stomach Acid Is Good for You,” and the dozens of five-star reviews on Amazon.com should tell you everything you need to know about his advice.

Despite what you’ve heard, most people don’t have too much stomach acid — they have too little!

For more information, visit Dr. Wright’s website — and start treating your stomach like a friend again.

If you’re taking medication to relieve acid reflux, you might be getting something a whole lot worse in the bargain.

The FDA is forcing makers of metoclopramide, which is widely known as Reglan, to include a black box warning with the drug because it has been linked to muscle spasms. Not sometimes or rarely, but a shockingly high percentage of the time.

The study showed that the longer you take the drug, the higher your risk of developing these symptoms. And based on information gathered by the FDA, 20 percent of the patients on Reglan who develop this side effect take it for at least three months. Other recent studies suggest that metoclopramide is the leading cause of pharmaceutical-related movement disorders.

And that’s not even the worst news of all. No, the worst news is that once you get dyskinesia, it’s an unwanted gift that keeps on giving. Even if you stop taking the drug, the spasms will usually stay with you. Those spasms include uncontrollable movements of the limbs, face, and tongue. 

If you’re one of the 2 million Americans taking any form of this medication, talk to your doctor as soon as you can to find out if you can do without it. Stomach acid conditions are often overmedicated to begin with – in part because people want quick relief from something that can be incredibly uncomfortable.

Many times, that leads to medications that relieve symptoms without touching the underlying cause.

But as it turns out, a high percentage of stomach acid conditions aren’t caused by too much acid, but too little. An overproduction of stomach acid is actually quite unusual. So these drugs that keep your stomach from producing a healthy amount of acid are actually hurting you.

If you’d like to stop taking all those medications and live better and healthier at the same time, there’s a book I’d like to recommend that many of my friends have found life-changing. It’s called, Why Stomach Acid Is Good for You by Dr. Jonathan Wright and Dr. Lane Lenerd.

You may be used to thinking of stomach acid as your natural enemy, but once you read this book you’ll realize how important it is not just to your digestion, but overall health. And then instead of trying to neutralize or eliminate those acids, you’ll learn how to keep them functioning properly and in synch with the rest of your body.

Not only is it a great book, but it’s cheaper than a box of many popular heartburn medications. And once you read it, you might be able to do away with those drugs for good.

I’m going to show you an approach that I have used to help countless patients ease the pain and reverse the damage of arthritis.