Is your digestive system functioning properly? Would you know?

It is amazing to me that each day very little time is spent thinking about what we eat. Assuming we have access to food, we often think about what to eat from the perspectives of taste, weight loss, or ingredient avoidance but we don't really think about what food combinations will give us the best fuel and extend health. So if we spend very little time considering our bodily needs at that moment and long term we spend even less time thinking about what happens in our body once the food is eaten. Here are a couple reasons we should think about what happens in that black hole between our rib cage and our anus.

1. Majority of how well nourished we are has to do with what happens between our mouth and our anus. It's not all what we buy or order.
2. Your digestive system is one of the most important immunological functions
3. The largest single complaint that brings people to the Emergency Room is digestive problems.

How many of us have heard about a friend or family member who has been diagnosed with an illness such as Cancer, Diabetes, heart disease, etc. and we think “Wow I can't believe that has happened to her! She only ate organic, vegetarian, and always exercised. I guess it doesn't matter what we eat so I'll have the beer, nachos, and what's for dessert?” What we eat matters but there are two other steps in nutrition that are also very important and those are absorption and assimilation. Here is a quick run down of what happens when you eat.

• You smell, see, anticipate food and your body starts to secrete digestive enzymes in the mouth and stomach
• You chew – your teeth and salivary amylase (spit) start to break down food into manageable pieces
• Bolus (food mixed with Saliva) moves down the esophagus to the stomach
• The stomach secretes Hydrochloric acid to lower the pH so pepsin is activated. These acids breakdown the peptide bonds of the food and kill bacteria
• Food mixed with gastric juices (this mixture is called Chyme) moves into the duodenum (the upper part of the small intestine). In the duodenum the stomach acid is neutralized and secretions from the liver and pancreas break down the chyme even further into the tiniest particles.
• Food then moves to the jejenum (the second 3^rd of the small intestine) and food now in the form of maltose, sucrose, lactose, and glucose is being absorbed through the epithelial cells lined with micro villi.
• Food is absorbed into the portal vein and sent to the liver for direction and further purification (some long chain fatty acids can not cross the brush barrier into the portal vein and are transported via the lymph system to the liver)
• At this point any waste from all this break down is directed to the large intestine. The large intestine takes one more crack at digestion but mainly wages a war against the bacteria in the food waste. The large intestine also removes the water from the waste and absorbs this water back into your blood stream That's right, water in you body is water that has gone through the digestive system into the colon and is now being reabsorbed back into the blood. Now you're starting to see that it might be important to eat as cleanly as possible.
• The final step is assimilation - Assimilation is the process by which nutrients are passed through the membranes which surround each living cell For this process to take place, cells, especially their membranes — must be healthy.

Setting aside the hormonal components of nutrition and just looking at the digestive system it's no wonder we visit ER's most with digestive complaints. So much can go wrong, excess hydrochloric acid backing up into the esophagus (indigestion), too much bacteria in the stomach (salmonella), ulcers of the duodenum if the acid is not neutralized properly, tares in the intestinal wall from anti-inflammatories, alcohol, or allergy causing foods, over taxed livers from too many toxins in the food, colon's without the right bacteria to kill the bad bacteria before being reabsorbed, or cells with hardened membranes caused by low-fat diets (more later on this topic).

What can be done to promote better digestion?

1. Eat organic clean food
2. Eat a balanced diet with fiber from fruits and veggies to keep things moving
3. Eat Greek Yogurt or take pro-biotic supplements for the colon
4. Take a Glutamine supplement to repair tears in the small intestine
5. Take vitamin C to help you immune system
6. Consider doing a cleanse or taking an anti-fungal to get rid of yeast in your body
7. Eat slowly and never eat when you are stressed or angry.