Happy Healthy Gut (3 page)

The craziest thing about our bodies is the ability we have to adapt. We are constantly changing within our environment, and our bodies do their best to adapt comfortably for us. When we push too much for too long, however, we are given signs to slow down or stop, though in our crazy, busy western world, we rarely listen. We are just not as in tune with ourselves as we should be, and we’re paying for it by not taking a minute every now and then to listen to our bodies respond to us, whether to protest or to approve our actions.

We need to start honoring our bodies, listening to its protests, and adjusting our actions accordingly. I know it’s hard. It took me a very long time to get to the point where I decided to listen (especially where cheese is concerned), but I’m so thankful I got here. I want you to get here, too. When you do, maybe you could congratulate yourself by springing for something shiny . . .

Question:
Do you really listen to your body, or do you tune it out because you’re just tired of hearing it complain? By finding a new entry point to solving your digestive issue, such as adopting a healthy platform for building better digestion, perhaps you can get it to stop screaming, and just calmly tell you what’s wrong. Then, take the opportunity to fix the actual problem, not just deal with isolated symptoms.

A
lthough most people don’t consciously think about digestion on a regular basis (unless you have a digestive disorder, and therefore are aware of it constantly), this process affects our entire body every minute of every day. If anything interrupts this very intricate process, it can become disastrous for us on an immediate level (like food poisoning), or on a slower, more gradual, but potentially more serious level (like chronic disease). When I first began researching the digestive process and what it entailed, I was very surprised by my lack of even rudimentary knowledge on the subject. This incredibly important, key aspect to everyday living was so much more complex than I had originally thought. So, in an effort to pass on some basic digestion education, this chapter is dedicated to helping you understand your digestive system, and why the food we eat can affect so much of our internal, delicate balance.

Most people assume (like I did) that digestion begins in the stomach, but it actually commences the second food or drink enters your mouth, or even before that, if you get a good enough whiff of something tasty. The saliva that is produced when you smell good food or begin to eat is designed to produce two essential enzymes, used for breaking down carbohydrates (amylase), and fat (lipase).
These enzymes need to be thoroughly mixed with food in order to be effective, so that means you have to chew your food really well. Just by chewing better, you can help your body digest more easily.

When you swallow, the food travels down your esophagus. The esophageal sphincter is like a trap door that opens to allow food into your stomach, and then closes to prevent food from going back up. Those who have trouble with GERD (chronic acid reflux) often have problems with this muscle opening too easily and allowing food back up into the throat. Babies may also have a little trouble with this in the first few months, which is why it seems that they love to spit their food up.

Once your food has reached your stomach (which is probably higher up than you think), it is combined with hydrochloric acid and pepsinogen, which help to break down the proteins in your food into amino acids, and also help with the absorption of certain minerals. While all this is happening, your stomach is producing mucous (yeah, I said mucous) to help coat its lining, which prevents it from being eaten raw by the highly concentrated hydrochloric acid, which can lead to ulcers. This acid is extremely important to the digestive process, because while it’s helping to break down proteins, it’s also killing harmful bacteria that may have entered your body via the food that you just swallowed. An example of one such bacterium that everyone has heard of is
E. coli.

Too little acid can result in an overgrowth of dangerous bacteria, which can flourish in the gut. Small children and elderly people are often at greater risk of more serious complications due to food-borne disease, because they don’t produce as much of this substance as older children and adults do.

Once the food in your stomach has been properly broken down and ready for transport, it’s released from the stomach into the small intestine through another trap door. A series of contractions and relaxations is what pushes the food throughout the length of your small intestine, which is approximately twenty-three feet long. While
your food is making its way through your small intestine, nutrients are being absorbed.

There are three main parts to the small intestine, each with its own important function. They are called the duodenum, jejunum and ileum.
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(Whoever came up with these names clearly thought it would be funny to hear people say them.) The villi in the duodenum produce different enzymes to help break down sugar. Bile, which is made in the liver but stored in the gallbladder, is added to the liquefied food and helps to break down fats. Other enzymes created in the pancreas help break down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats even further. During the last ten feet of the small intestine (the ileum), proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals are absorbed as much as possible.

From the small intestine, a valve (another trap door!) opens up and allows the food to filter into the large intestine, or colon, and then closes. It also makes sure that the (now) fecal matter cannot flow backwards, back into the small intestine. IBS-like symptoms can occur if this valve malfunctions and allows the backwards flow of fecal matter, or if the mucosal layer has been damaged and permits the intestinal wall to become permeable. (This is commonly called “leaky gut syndrome.”)
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Once our food is in the large intestine, water and more minerals are absorbed and the fecal matter gains bulk. There should be a large amount of “friendly” bacteria in the colon, which aids in the digestion of soluble fiber and produces various vitamins. The fecal matter hangs out in the rectum, and then we eliminate it through the . . . you know. Have I painted a pretty picture?

Ideally, your food should spend less than one day in your digestive tract. When the millions of bacteria that make up a portion of your stool are not removed through quick elimination, they create a lot of gas caused by the overabundance of growth in the short term, and can contribute to other health problems in the long term. Regular elimination is vital, and should not be under-estimated or under-appreciated.
In the western world, we seem to have this bad habit of sitting on the toilet for a long time during defecation. (Thank God I have children. Otherwise I would never be able to write words like this without turning bright red and emitting strange sounds of nervous laughter.) This situation creates a stressed bowel, and the emergence of new BFFs (best friends forever) called hemorrhoids.

These friends suck. It is
not
a reciprocal relationship.

Elimination should take us no longer than a couple of minutes, and ideally, less than one. You should not be straining. If you are, then you need to rethink your current diet, while you sip warm water with lemon and a pinch of cayenne pepper, in an effort to stimulate your bowels.

Our digestive system serves one major purpose—to absorb the nutrients in the food we eat, in order to keep us alive and not dying of malnutrition. Without food, there would be no need for digestion. The two (food and digestion) go hand-in-hand. So, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that what we eat directly affects our digestive systems, and therefore us in our entirety?

We also all know that there are many things that are bad for us to try and ingest, like poisonous plants, mouldy nuts and wormy
apples. So, we leave those items alone and instead eat things that we presume our bodies can handle—things that we have been taught by our country’s leading nutritionists to eat in order to stay healthy. But what if some of those things were actually really hurting us? We know that it can be lethal to eat a peanut if you have a peanut allergy, but what about food allergies or sensitivities that don’t create such an extreme reaction? A fabulous example of this is lactose intolerance. There are millions of people out there who possess this intolerance and don’t even know it. They think they have a digestive issue, such as IBS, or perhaps they think that they are just naturally extremely gassy. By eliminating dairy, they would eliminate their symptoms.

Another example is celiac disease, the inability to process gluten products properly. Products containing gluten (and there are a lot of them) can cause major discomfort for people with this intolerance, but again, it is often misdiagnosed or completely overlooked. Gluten goes in, inflammation occurs, digestion is incomplete, and pain is the result. By eliminating wheat, and other gluten products, symptoms subside.

What about meat? When I take a bite of steak, a reaction occurs, and my digestive system stops cold. Nobody talks about a “meat allergy,” or “meat intolerance,” but that’s exactly what I would describe this as. Animal products go in, my gut screams with a sudden inflammatory reaction, I bloat, I feel pain, and I skip a week’s worth of bowel movements. So, in a reasonable response to this cycle, I finally just stopped eating meat. Voila! No pain.

Eliminating heavy meats can also work wonders for digestive disorder sufferers because many of us produce much less stomach acid than we should, particularly as we get older.
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With not as much acid to help break down the hard-to-digest animal tissue, the meal just sits in your stomach for longer, waiting until it can be pushed on to the next stage of digestion. You know if you have low stomach acidity if your stool contains undigested food. If you
are regularly noticing this, then take it as a sign to start aiding your digestive tract. It is obviously not doing the job it could or should be doing.

Question:
Do you eliminate foods from your diet that you know bother your stomach? If not, why? Have you forgotten what it’s like to consistently feel good, or are you taking a purposeful, defiant stance against this force that you feel you have no control over? You do have control. You also have willpower. You and your body are not separate entities. Help it, and you will be helped in return.

“In 2004, there were more than 236,000 deaths in the United States with a digestive disease as the underlying cause.”
¹¹

—The Burden of Digestive Diseases in the United States

“T
o go or not to go?” is not the question. It’s “can I go, or am I constipated?” Or, “I don’t want to go, please make it stop!” Let’s examine and define some of the more common digestive diseases that plague us here in the United States and Canada. I specify these two countries, because our ailments, although they sometimes overlap, are different from those in other areas of the world, particularly developing countries. In many developing countries, digestive problems are generally caused by such things as parasitic disease, tuberculosis, contaminated water, and malnutrition.
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In North America, we suffer from what Dr. T. Colin Campbell, PhD and co-author of
The China Study
, calls “diseases of affluence,”
¹³
which are brought on usually by poor dietary choices, caused in most
part by the high level of miscommunication and terrible nutrition education that we who live in North America are privy to.

Lucky us!

Although many of these diseases include diabetes, cancers, hypertension, obesity and coronary heart disease, I personally believe that digestive diseases could be added to this list of diseases of affluence as well. A somewhat comprehensive list of digestive diseases that are common in our region of the world include, in alphabetical order, “Barrett’s esophagus, celiac disease, colon cancer, constipation, Crohn’s disease, diarrhea, diverticular disease, dyspepsia, esophogeal cancer, GERD, gastric ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, lactose intolerance, pancreatitis, peptic ulcer, and ulcerative colitis.”
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(Whew!) I bet if you thought hard for a few minutes, you could identify quite a few people in your life that have been diagnosed with these diseases and disorders. It’s just that widespread.

The following is a list and explanation of six common digestive afflictions, most of which have presented themselves in my own family. Maybe you will identify with one or more of them, or have already been diagnosed as having one. Please keep in mind that this is how prevalent digestive disease is. I personally have nine family members (out of twenty-two) who have been formally diagnosed with one or more of these diseases.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a bowel disorder that is usually characterized by chronic abdominal pain, bloating, gas, and generally inconsistent bowel habits. Unfortunately for sufferers, IBS has no single, concrete cause, but we do have some pretty good clues into what might ignite this intestinal fight. Some ideas include brain-to-gut signal problems, GI motor issues, intestinal hypersensitivity, mental health problems (this one I’m not so thrilled with), bacterial
infections and/or overgrowth, chemical imbalances, food sensitivity, and genetic predisposition.
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