When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.
—Herophilus, 300 BC
Your digestive tract is an important interface between your body and the outside world. It is a highly tuned mechanism designed to discern friend from foe—healthy food from things that might harm you. At the same time, it is responsible for directing the digestion and absorption of food and all the vital nutrients that come along with it.
When things go wrong with your digestive tract it has far-reaching impacts on your overall health. Scientists are discovering that there is a connection between digestive imbalances and obesity, diabetes, mental and behavioral disorders, heart disease, and autoimmune disorders. Maintaining a healthy gut is a strong support for your overall health and well-being.
In this chapter we’ll explore some important, simple ways you can nourish your digestive system, which can affect your overall health and well-being.
If you have one or more of the following symptoms, your digestive system could be impaired:
The word digestion literally means to break from large to small. Food must be broken into smaller pieces before we can access and absorb the nutrients it contains. This process usually begins with chewing and the secretion of enzymes from our saliva.
Within seconds of swallowing, our food ends up in our stomachs where we hopefully have gastric juices with a pH similar to battery acid. Stomach acid is amazing at breaking apart food proteins and hard-to-digest items. At the same time, acid protects us from parasites, bacterium, or viruses that may be traveling on or in our food. Stomach acid also plays a prime role in preparing minerals and vitamins for absorption, and activating enzymes that will further help us break apart our food. Another interesting effect of stomach acid is the breakdown of foods into small enough fragments that our immune systems can recognize them. If we do not break down our food, and it somehow sneaks through our intestinal wall, our immune cells may not recognize these larger food fragments and instead mistake them for foreign substances. As a result, they may launch an immune attack that leads to inflammation and possibly intestinal damage.
To get an idea of how important stomach acid is, we can look at what happens when we take it out. Acid-blocking medications such as Prilosec, Nexium, and Prevacid have been shown to shift the acid levels in the stomach from a pH similar to battery acid (1.2–1.6) to a pH of 5.0, which is the same as table vinegar! You can imagine that vinegar would be far less effective than battery acid in breaking apart foods to access nutrients and protect us from foreign invaders. Use of these medications over the long term has been associated with nutrient deficiencies such as vitamin B12, zinc, and magnesium, as well as an increased risk for hip fractures, pneumonia, and bacterial overgrowth. Research indicates that people taking acid-blocking medications have a significant increase in both food (10.5 times increase) and airborne allergies months after taking these medications.
Once food passes out of the stomach, the cells in the upper small intestine, or duodenum, “read” the food to determine what needs to happen next. Fatty acids (fats) and peptides (protein fragments) will signal the secretion of hormones that will help digest them further. One of the primary hormones used is called cholecystokinin or CCK. This literally means the bile (chole) sack (cyst) moving (kinin) hormone. As the name implies, CCK tells the gallbladder to secrete bile. Bile is like detergent. It splits apart, or emulsifies, fat globules into smaller groups of fatty acids.
Imagine for a second, a greasy dish in a sink of hot water. All the fat floats to the top of the sink. Squirt some liquid dish soap into the sink and… whoooosh! All of the fat breaks apart. Bile acts like detergent in breaking apart fats so they are ready to be absorbed into your body.
CCK also stimulates the pancreas to secrete digestive enzymes. Enzymes facilitate the breaking down of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats into smaller pieces.
If you cannot break down food properly, intestinal organisms will likely do it for you. But this can come at a price as many of the beneficial organisms thrive on properly broken down foods, while pathogenic or potentially harmful organisms thrive on undigested foods. As a result, people with CCK and pancreatic enzyme insufficiencies are susceptible to a potentially uncomfortable condition called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO.
Bacteria and other organisms in the intestinal tract play a vital role in digestive health. Studies have demonstrated that intestinal organisms can “communicate” with intestinal cells, allowing for either a calm immune system environment or a relatively volatile one. There are actual receptors, called Toll-like receptors, that stick out of the intestinal cells waiting to interact with the surrounding environment. When proteins from bacteria bind to these receptors, chemicals are released that allow for normal intestinal surface function. Inflammation is calmed down, and if an injury does occur, there is a robust repair response. On the contrary, if certain bacteria species are not present in the intestinal tract and these receptors are not bound to bacterial proteins, then the intestinal cells are more sensitive to injury and cannot repair themselves as well. Beyond this, beneficial bacteria also protect us from toxins; help to manufacture nutrients such as vitamin K, amino acids, short-chained fatty acids, and biotin; crowd out pathogenic organisms; break down antinutrients such as lectins, phytates, oxalates, and saponins; and help in the overall digestion process. As humans, our lives and our health depend upon having a healthy inner ecosystem of bacteria.
Bacteria lower inflammation in the body by keeping your gut from being leaky. When beneficial bacteria are missing, disease-causing or pathogenic bacteria can flourish. Harmful bacteria secrete chemicals that break down our intestinal barriers, causing a leaky gut. This is where gaps are formed between intestinal cells, allowing contents from the intestines to leak into our bodies. The primary content of our intestines is bacteria. So when our guts leak, bacteria, including the dangerous varieties, as well as food particles end up in our bloodstreams. When this happens, our protective immune cells launch an attack against these foreign invaders and secrete a barrage of harmful chemicals. Once these “alert and alarm” chemicals are in the bloodstream, they can affect the entire body. They can cause damage to surrounding tissue and change cellular behavior throughout your body. This includes altering your appetite, shuttling fat in your fat cells, and decreasing your cells’ ability to utilize blood sugar. These very same inflammatory chemicals lead to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and other inflammatory diseases. Isn’t it amazing how much we depend on bacteria for all aspects of our health?
Food sensitivity reactions, such as to gluten or dairy, cause irritation and inflammation in the upper intestines. This often leads to damage of intestinal tissue, a leaky gut, and a subsequent breakdown of the digestive and absorptive processes. Without proper intestinal cell function, signals for hormones like CCK to be released never occur, causing a lack of bile and pancreatic enzymes. This leads to undigested food, bacterial imbalances, and food particles too large to be absorbed. In the presence of a leaky gut, this can cause further inflammation and exposure to food particles that can cause even more food sensitivities.
During a vaginal birth, bacteria from the mother immediately begins to colonize an infant’s digestive tract, taking up to a month to become fully established. When an infant is born through a cesarean section, bacteria from sources in the operating room, such as the air, nurses, and doctors, colonize the infant’s digestive tract. As a result, cesarean-born babies are more likely to have immune imbalance disorders like asthma, eczema, and allergies. Since some women do not have a choice on how their baby decides to come into the world, we highly recommend giving c-section newborns a special infant probiotic powder right after birth.
Many toxins like mercury, PCBs, Roundup, triclosan (from hand sanitizers), and pesticides can kill beneficial bacteria that would normally keep the intestines calm. These chemicals can harm surrounding tissues in the intestines leading to more leaky gut symptoms and inflammation.
There are many medications that can cause an imbalance in your intestines that will lead to digestive upset. Three of the most common associated with intestinal disorders include acid-blocking medication, nonsteroid anti-inflammatories, and antibiotics.
Acid-Blocking Medications. Acid-blocking medications such as Prilosec, Nexium, and Zantac decrease your gastric acid significantly. Without adequate acid to burn incoming invaders, people on these medications are more susceptible to viral infections and bacterial imbalances. Acid is normally responsible for breaking down hard-to-digest food items and assists with making vitamins and minerals more absorbable. Lower acid in the stomach for long periods leads to nutrient deficiencies and undigested foods. Undigested foods can feed unfriendly bacteria leading once again to bacterial imbalances.
Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatories (NSAIDs). NSAIDs such as aspirin, ibuprofen (such as Advil and Motrin), and naproxen (such as Aleve) directly irritate the intestinal cells, while also lowering protective chemicals (prostaglandins) in the GI tract. As a result, the devastating effects these medications can have to the digestive tract are well-known and well documented. According to a study published in the Journal of Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management in 2009, “Major adverse gastrointestinal events attributed to NSAIDs are responsible for over 100,000 hospitalizations, $2 billion in health-care costs, and 17,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.”
Antibiotics. A single course of antibiotics has been proven to cause lifelong changes in a person’s bacterial colonies. A common side effect of antibiotic use indicating an immediate imbalance in the intestines is “antibiotic-associated diarrhea” (AAD). Knocking out the beneficial bacteria in the intestines can cause problems with nutrient metabolism and absorption such as with carbohydrates and short-chain fatty acids, as bacteria play a key role in these processes. When protective beneficial bacteria are killed off by antibiotics, disease-causing organisms like Clostridium difficile are more likely to flourish. Both of these problems cause flushing of the intestinal contents, leading to diarrhea.
Look at food first! There are over 22 tons of food matter that you will consume in your lifetime. You could be taking in food substances that are irritating your intestines, are hard for your digestive system to break down, or are causing bacterial imbalances. An Elimination Diet (www.WholeLifeNutrition.net) will help you determine which foods your body is considering to be friends, and which it is considering to be foes.
Water that is treated with chlorine-based chemicals and that contains harmful antibiotic residues can wreak havoc on your gut. Consider a reverse osmosis filter and possibly an additional carbon block filter to remove these contaminants.
Mercury exposure from mercury amalgams can alter your intestinal flora and general health. A trained International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT) dentist can consult you on the extremely important steps that are needed to replace your mercury fillings.
Numerous agricultural chemicals cause damage to the intestines. The only way to lower your exposure today, and 10 years from today, is to purchase organic products that have never come in contact with herbicides made with glyphosate (such as Roundup).
Processed foods often contain artificial sweeteners, flavors, and colors, along with fillers, preservatives, binders, and excipients that can irritate your intestines. Whole plant-based foods contain natural fibers that can only be broken down by bacteria in your gut. These prelife or prebiotic substances are needed before the life of bacterium can flourish in your intestines. Whole foods will also be full of protective plant chemicals (phytochemicals) that can lower inflammation and heal wounded intestinal tissues.
Choose soaps, hand sanitizers, cleaning products, toothpastes, and personal care products that are free of triclosan. As an antimicrobial, triclosan is efficient at knocking out beneficial microbes both in your intestines and in the environment. There are numerous nontoxic ingredients on the market that can replace triclosan as an antimicrobial. Once good example is the thyme oil used in the Clean Well All-Natural Hand Sanitizer.