Real health and all it entails — including strong immunity, vibrant energy, good sleep, a positive, happy countenance and so much more — begins in your gut. What you eat affects the health and functioning of your digestive tract. In turn, gut health affects your ability to digest and assimilate what you eat, i.e. the process of transforming food into energy, blood, hormones, tissues and muscles. You literally are what you eat. But for too many people, what you eat is “eating” you, causing all manor of distress and disease. Today, we explain how and why this is as we explore the drama that takes place inside you as you eat! The first step on the road to real health is understanding the critical role digestion plays.
People blessed with robust health typically have good digestion. In fact, it seems they can eat almost anything and still be fairly healthy. Most of the rest of us must eat with care and even then face digestive problems. And as we get older our digestion just gets worse. This was illustrated by a clever and humorous cartoon I saw recently showing the three stages of a man’s life: as a baby and child his biggest need and desire is food; at adolescence and into adulthood this morphs into food and sex; at the end of his life his biggest need is a good bowel movement. Clever and cute, but the latter is sadly all too true (and can often be true at any age).
The good news is this: most issues of the digestive tract can be greatly improved at most any point in life. This means adopting truly good dietary habits — eating to feed the nutritional needs of the body, not the pleasures of the palate alone. Perhaps before we are motivated to do this it would be helpful to understand how digestion works and how it affects health.
Let’s begin first with a definition of digestion and then look at the steps involved in the digestion process. Digestion is the mechanical and chemical breakdown of food. The goal of digestion is to reduce food to molecules so small that the nutrients can be absorbed and used by the cells. Here is how that hapens:
1. Digestion is a “north to south” process beginning in the brain as the sight and smell of food triggers the salivary glands to begin producing saliva. Saliva moistens food, aiding the teeth in the initial process of the food’s breakdown in the mouth (CHEWING WELL IS CRUCIAL and helps in the production of saliva). The saliva also aids in the swallowing process and contains the enzyme amylase which begins the chemical breakdown of carbohydrates. The endpoint of digestion ultimately needs to lead to elimination; problems at this phase lead to disease throughout the body. (So let’s note here and now: the quality of food IS important, junk in, junk out; OR as usually happens: junk in = poor elimination: junk NOT out. Junk STAYS in all too often, loading up the body with toxins and further impairing the digestive process.
2. Upon entering the stomach, gastric juice is supposed to be secreted from millions of tiny gastric glands to further digest your food. The pH of the stomach needs to be acidic to begin the breakdown of proteins, etc. The stomach is all about acid and is designed for a normal pH of 1.5 – 3.0 at rest or .8 – 1.5 during digestion. In this acidic environment the stomach churns and breaks down the food into a very acidic paste called “chyme” which then leaves the stomach and enters the small intestine for assimilation. The great irony for the many many people who suffer from acid reflux or GERD — READ THIS CAREFULLY — is that the stomach is not acidic enough to properly break down the food in the first place. When this is the case, the valve that is supposed to open into the small intestine does not open; it is only designed to open when the contents of the stomach are ACIDIC ENOUGH. So when this is not the case, the valve does not open, the contents of the stomach remain in the stomach, churning and gurgling, and the acidic contents begin to back up into the esophagus — this is when and how most people suffer from acid reflux. Had the contents of the stomach been sufficiently acidic, the duodenum — or valve into the small intestine — would have opened and allowed the contents of the stomach into the first portion of the small intestine. But because the stomach was NOT SUFFICIENTLY ACIDIC, the food stayed put and backed up, causing the discomfort. There are many reasons for insufficient stomach acid, including stress, which activates the sympathetic nervous system, thus slowing the flow of gastric juice AND gastric motility itself. When the contents of the stomach do eventually begin to enter the small intestine, they are not sufficiently acidic and the proper breakdown and assimilation of nutrients into the body simply cannot happen.
3. In the small intestine the chyme is supposed to be broken down further so that the nutrients contained can enter the bloodstream through the millions of tiny hair-like macro-villi. There are many processes, complicated in nature, which occur at this stage and are beyond the scope of this general overview. Suffice it to say the small intestine absorbs the nutrients into the blood from the broken down food, nourishing the body.
4. Finally, the leftover chyme, indigestible fibers, bile, water, and sloughed off cells, gets passed on to the large intestine, or colon. The colon is supposed to be inhabited by several pounds of bowel flora, or beneficial bacteria, whose role it is to capture any remaining nutrients that are still available, converting those nutrients into Vitamins K, B-1, B-2 and B-12 for use in the body. The flora also plays a critical role in the proper functioning of the immune system for the entire body. The good bacteria are under constant assault from bad bacteria and must maintain the upper hand or health problems arise. Poor diet and stress can throw the balance in favor of the bad bacteria. And this, in turn, is one of the many causes of constipation and other elimination issues. The end of the digestive process is the forming and expelling of feces.
Phew! Did you get all that? In a nutshell, that is how digestion is supposed to happen. For most of us, it doesn’t. And when it does not, scores of health issues arise. At this point, I am going to turn this post over to my mentor and friend, Collen Dunseth, the Director of Education for the Nutritional Therapy Association. Colleen recently spent 30 minutes on an internet broadcast called “Primal Body, Primal Mind with Nora Gedgaudas discussing how digestion goes awry and what can be done about it. I want you to encourage each and every one of you to take 30 minutes and listen to what she has to say. She is a wealth of information. She has been to digestive hell and back and speaks from knowledge and experience. She is both well informed and fascinating.
Among the things you will learn:
* What you need to know about having a healthy gut.
* That most people don’t make the connection between gut function and how they feel.
* Even with the healthiest diet in the world, you can still experience marginal health if you don’t properly digest and assimilate your food.
* There are direct relationships between your gut and your brain.
* Inflammation in your gut can negatively affect your brain.
* Stomach acid is actually GOOD for you; the problem is in producing too little.
* The health of your colon can affect every aspect of your health.
* 80 percent of your immune system lays in your gut.
Colleen Dunseth: Your Gut Health and You; CLICK HERE TO LISTEN
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