Digestion - The Highway to Health

Listen to my podcast about digestion on the Health & Nutrition Experts blog.

Many people report minor digestive complaints, such as gas, bloating, occasional constipation or loose stools, a little heartburn or indigestion. Some people have more serious digestive problems, such as chronic diarrhea, frequent constipation, frequent heartburn, bloating, foul gas and abdominal or rectal pain.

There are also some people who report no digestive complaints. "I have a cast iron stomach." "I can eat anything." The lack of any digestive symptoms can hide chronic, low grade inflammation and malabsorption problems that can eventually lead to more serious health problems. These "silent" digestive issues are very common. In fact, digestive system symptoms can be only the tip of the iceberg of more serious health issues.

The underlying cause of chronic diseases and disorders is primarily inflammation. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and less fatal disabilities like arthritis, gastritis, irritable bowel, ulcerative colitis all have their roots in inflammation.

For most of us, this inflammation begins silently in our digestive tracts. It is important to realize the vast surface area of our digestive tract. Our small intestine, where most nutrient absorption takes place, is at least the size of a doubles tennis court, and perhaps several times larger than that, with all the folds, villi-finger like projections, and the micro-villi which are so tiny they can only be observed by an electron microscope. This is where our body meets the outside world, through everything we put in our mouths. All the non-foods, toxins and chemicals we ingest, plus foods that we have an allergy or intolerance to, cause some degree of inflammation. So even a few square yards of that tennis court sized area of our gut equals a lot of inflammation which can cause malabsorption and can effect our immune system, leading to a wide range of symptoms.

What I most want you to learn from this talk is that any of you with a health issue apart from the obvious digestive problems listed above, should be concerned about your digestive system. So if you are concerned about heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, arthritis, chronic pain, depression, anxiety or sleep problems, the path to your improvement and recovery is through your digestive tract. That's right, even though you may not have any digestive symptoms, the path to recovery is through your gut.

Most diseases and disorders are the result of years of degeneration, malabsorption and immune system breakdown before there are any symptoms. Look at how many cases of heart attacks, strokes and cancer occur with no prior warning. Many of these diseases were years in the making with absolutely no early warning signals.

Most people with colon cancer, a disease of the digestive tract, report no history of digestive problems prior to their diagnosis.

An important fact to know is that two thirds to three fourths of our immune system is in the lining of our digestive tract. Immune system cells called enterocytes regulate immune activity in the gut.

Here is another fact - most of the foods that humans eat today, we were never designed to eat.

The human genome, our DNA, our anatomy and our physiology and our nutritional needs are virtually unchanged in the last 40,000 years. We have been farming and eating grains only the last 5,000 to 10,000 years. Looking at this in another way, if you compressed all of human history into one year, we've only been growing and eating grains and legumes for the past day. Our digestive systems are not adapted to the grains, beans and sugars that comprise a major portion of most of our diets. We are not adapted to many of the foods that make up most people's diets.

Other new additions to the human diet are vegetable seed oils, such as corn oil, canola, soy and cottonseed oils. These refined oils have only been in our diet for the past 50-60 years. They have pro-inflammatory effects. These include the manmade trans fats, called hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Margarine is the best known form, but trans fats are common in the baking industry.

The industrialization of our food supply has also negatively impacted our health. Huge factory farms; feedlot beef and dairy operations, and the advent of packaged and processed foods have lowered the nutritional content of our foods and added thousands of agricultural and food processing chemicals.

The first line of defense to those denatured, chemically contaminated foods is our digestive tract. Eating foods that we are not designed for, plus the many food additives and contaminants that permeate our diet and agriculture, result in most of our causes of illness.

The damage to our digestive tract and our immune system from this unnatural diet leads to most of our chronic and life threatening illnesses, despite the absence of digestive system symptoms.

Let me repeat; the damage we cause to our digestive/immune systems that cause the diseases that kill us, are mostly silent, until it is too late.

So, if there are any health concerns that you have, even if it feels like your digestion is perfect, lets take a closer look at your diet, which is the major effect on your immune system, and whether or not you are susceptible to the diseases of civilization.

Our digestive tract, from the mouth to the anus, is populated with trillions of microorganisms. In a healthy body, eighty five percent of these organisms are beneficial, fifteen percent are potentially problematic, if they are not controlled by the effects of the beneficals. However, for many of us, as the result of antibiotic use, toxins in our diet, excess sugars, other drugs, pesticides and herbicides in our food, the balance is shifted, and our beneficial microorganisms are depleted.

What do these beneficial microbes do? They help digest our food; suppress pathogens, make vitamins, produce immune building substance, detoxify our bodies and have significant, even profound benefits to our health that we are still discovering. In a healthy gut, there are more organisms than cells in our body. They weigh about three pounds. Fifty percent of every bowel movement is comprised of bacteria, living and dead. One course of antibiotics kills half of our beneficial bacteria. Without supplementation, it takes 5 years for normal levels of these organisms to be replenished. Many health professionals now feel that a daily supplement of probiotics is as essential as our other daily supplement requirements, such as a multi vitamin, multi mineral, fish oil and vitamin D.

By taking steps to promote the health of our digestive system we can prevent many of the modern diseases of civilization.

First, eat real food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, read labels, if there are more than 5 ingredients or if you can't pronounce the words on an ingredient list, don't eat it.

To make further improvements, buy locally grown organic vegetables and fruits. Patronize your local farmer's markets. Study after study shows that organic produce is higher in nutrients and lower in toxins than conventionally farmed foods.

Eat wild caught fish and grass fed meats. They are cleaner and more nutritious. Avoid farm raised fish and feedlot beef and dairy products. Remember, we are not only what we eat, we are what our food eats.

The next step to digestive health is to reduce carbohydrate intake from sugars and grains. The starches in grains rapidly turn to sugar in the digestive tract. Simple sugars and sugars made from starches can cause abnormal fermentation, creating inflammatory and toxic by products and cause overgrowths of unfriendly yeasts and other microorganisms. Cereal grains, especially wheat, also contain anti-nutrients, such as phytates that prevent mineral absorption, and enzyme inhibiters that decrease the secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach and digestive enzymes in the pancreas.

Wheat, spelt, kamut, barley and rye have gluten as a significant protein. Many people are sensitive to gluten, which can cause not only digestive system damage but many other immune system and neurological problems. Dangerous Grains, a book by Dr. James Braley, lists hundred of health conditions caused by gluten.

Another food best avoided is soy. Chemically processed soy protein is found in many food items, including so called health foods. Ninety percent of our soybean crop is from genetically modified organisms, which have never had any safety studies performed. Soybeans also contain many anti-nutrients and allergenic factors. Restrict your soy use to only organic fermented products such as miso, tempeh and tamari.

For digestive health, Dr. Joe Brasco, a gastro-enterologist from Chicago, recommends avoiding the "sensitive 7," which are wheat and the other gluten bearing grains, (spelt, kamut, barley, rye and oats), corn, soy, peanuts, sugar, pasteurized dairy products and egg whites. Of course, there are many other foods that people can react to, but these are some of the most common ones.

Fermented foods are very beneficial for digestive health. Sauerkraut, kim chee, miso, yogurt and kefir are what are called lacto-ferments, using lactobacillus bacteria which predigest the sugars and proteins and are a food source of beneficial bacteria. For yogurt and kefir, either making your own or buying plain, unflavored selections is the best choice, as nearly all flavored yogurts and kefirs are high in sugar, which negates most of their health benefits.

Taking a daily probiotic supplement is another good way to maintain and enhance our own gut bacteria. A supplement label should list at least one billion organisms per capsule.

In our stomach, strong acids are there to both help digest protein and minerals but also to kill potential pathogens in our food. Drugs that suppress stomach acid for heartburn or reflux, weaken our ability to control these incoming pathogens and to digest our food. Causes of reflux are improper diet and a structural problem where a small portion of the stomach is pulled up into the area of the esophagus, exposing its' sensitive tissues to stomach acid. This can be corrected with manual therapy and diet modification.

A more common stomach problem is low stomach acid, called hypochlorhydria. This causes a wide range of conditions, from peeling fingernails to leg cramps, yeast overgrowths and poor mineral, protein and B vitamin absorption. Drinking some apple cider vinegar in water with meals or taking HCL supplements and a B-complex help to correct this condition. Herbs like peppermint, caraway, fennel, thyme, rosemary and ginger are also helpful digestive aids.

It is also important to consider the effects of stress. Whether it is from physical causes, such as pain, or psychological or emotional causes, stress reduces the secretion of our digestive fluids, and affects the movements of our digestive organs.

Enjoying a leisurely meal with family or friends enhances our digestion. Eating standing up or on the go, or eating too much especially before bedtime, impairs digestion.

So our digestive/immune system is something that we have a great deal of control over, depending on what we put in our mouths, and the circumstances under which we eat.

The key to preventing illness and restoring health is our digestive system, and how we care for it. So make healthy food choices, bless your food, share it with friends and family, eat your food with pleasure and gratitude.