You need stomach acid for one simple reason - to help your body digest and break down the food you eat each day. It's part of the bigger process of digestion but without it you wouldn't be able to absorb the nutrients you need from the food you eat every day. The acid that's in your stomach is hydrochloric acid which is a very potent acid and it's miracle of nature that your body can even contain this type of acid nevermind actually use it in a useful way.

Stomach acid is also known as gastric acid and helps your body to digest food by breaking down the chemical bonds of the food and forcing the food to disintegrate. Next enzymes start to work on the broken down food. What's an enzyme? It's a type of molecule that helps speed up checmical reactions in your body. This is really useful for when your body is trying to digest food - enzymes make the whole thing happen faster.

Gastric acid also has the extra benefit of helping to kill off any harmful bacteria or organisms which you may have swallowed from tainted food or water. Hydrochloric acid is acidic enough to corrode most metals so your stomach is a very hostile environment for anything. In a lab this acid is always labeled with a yellow warning sign, and in order to safely store this dangerous solution, the stomach has a very strong and reinforced wall of muscle just to shield the rest of the body from being harmed by this powerful acid.

The proteins from the food are then broken down even further into amino acids. What's left of the food is then absorbed through the small and large intestine; these will extract all the nutrients they can find or need from the food. The rest is then passed from the body as waste later on.

Heartburn is when this stomach acid gets out of the stomach and works its way back up the throat. When it does this it causes a burning sensation in the chest and throat so we call it heartburn. It also tends to leave a nasty vomit-like taste in the back of the throat. These are the first warning signs of an attack of acid reflux.

The esophagus is like a pipe or tube running from the mouth to the stomach and at each end of this tube is a small muscular flap that acts as a valve. In order to prevent the gastric acid entering into the esophagus, the valve located directly above the stomach is kept closed and only opens when food is about to enter into the stomach. Heartburn results when this valve doesn't do its job properly and allows acid to leak back out of the stomach and into your throat.

Stomach acid is something your body needs to complete the basic function of eating. Without it our bodies couldn't function properly. The bad news is that sometimes this acid can and does cause you pain but it's a necessary evil of the human body.