Health Minute: Digestive Problems
What is your gut trying to tell you?
Health Minute Audio Summary:
Digestion is the foundation of our lives and health. This process of breaking down our food into its constituent nutrients and getting those nutrients absorbed by the cells is critical to our health. Likewise, poor digestion, as evidenced by various digestive problems, is the root cause of many health problems. Flatulence (intestinal gas), heartburn, burping, abdominal bloating, diarrhea, constipation and various other digestive problems, are some of the most frequent complaints I hear from my clients.
You do not have to suffer from digestive problems. There are answers as we understand and cooperate with the digestive process God built into our bodies. Let’s look at how our digestion works and the causes of most digestive disturbances.
A TRIP THROUGH YOUR DIGESTIVE TRACT
The textbook explanation of the digestive process is pretty boring, so let me try to give you the highlights without putting you to sleep. Most people think of their digestive tract as their stomach, small intestine and large intestine. Actually, the beginning of your digestive tract is your mouth. Digestion begins with chewing and mixing food with saliva in the mouth. The six salivary glands produce the saliva that breaks down the starches in food, making it ready for the action of later digestive secretions.
Here we have the beginning of our digestive problems — hardly anyone adequately chews their food. This puts a greater burden on the later digestive processes, setting you up for not only indigestion, but poor assimilation. The idea of chewing food is to liquefy it, such that it can almost drain down your esophagus.
The stomach is of course the next step in digestion. Gastric juice in the stomach includes hydrochloric acid, pepsin, rennin, and lipase. Hydrochloric acid, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t really digest anything. It merely lowers the pH of the gastric juice to activate the enzyme pepsin, which breaks down protein. Rennin separates milk into liquid and solid portions, and lipase works on fat.
However, the greatest part of the digestive process takes place in the small intestine. While the stomach is a very acidic area of digestion, the small intestine is very alkaline. The predigested food from the stomach is released gradually into the small intestine where three digestive fluids act on it: pancreatic fluid, intestinal juice and bile. Various enzymes in pancreatic fluid begin the process of breaking down proteins, starches, sugars and fats. The intestinal juice is secreted by the small intestine itself and continues the digestive process with more enzymes. Bile from the liver (stored in the gall bladder) emulsifies fats.
If things go according to design, the large intestine or colon, basically removes water (and electrolyte minerals) from the digested food, forming the feces for elimination.
