CHAPTER 1
How your digestive system works. A machine with many parts.
So that you can understand what's wrong with you and how to correct your health, it's important to know your body and how your digestive system works. Once you understand the digestive system and all its parts, it will make you more conscious about what you eat, your lifestyle and your stress levels. You will get to know how these things affect the tubes in your tummy. You may start to think twice about tins and packets of processed food.
When I was 18 years old I went to live with an Indonesian family in Bali for a short time. What amazed me was they had never seen a packet or tin of processed food, not even a can of soft drink. The mother went to the market nearly every day to buy fresh food and there was no fridge or freezer for storage. There was a well in the small back yard for water and camping type stoves for cooking. Yet these people ate the finest food, not because they could but because that was all that was available. Each meal consisted of fresh vegetables, rice, fresh herbs and meat or fish.
They were poor but vital, youthful and healthy. Their digestive system was not overloaded with toxins and they didn't have problems with elimination; they had a relaxed lifestyle. Even the teenagers were healthy as there were no fast food venues; alcohol wasn't part of the culture as it was just too expensive. The only thing some of them did now and then was to buy cigarettes from street stalls but they could only afford to buy 2 at a time for a treat. It was all so different from a western teenage lifestyle.
A more luxurious life in the west has bought with it chemicals, toxins and unhealthy attitudes and it's not always easy to step away from what's around you.
If you can make a difference to your digestion at a young age or give your kids a healthy start then there's a lot less unravelling to do when you are older. However, digestive woes can be completely reversed if you're prepared to help yourself. By working your way through this book and following the advice within you will start to see big shifts and improvements in your health. The digestive system is a long complex system with many parts. If you look after your nutrition and eliminate wastes effectively you are on your way to great health. You are what you eat, assimilate and eliminate. The problem is that most of us either have inadequate nutrition to feed our cells effectively or we are not getting rid of our waste products sufficiently.
So what's underneath all that soft flesh on your tummy and how does it all work?
The digestive system is the most important system in your body as it feeds and nourishes the rest of your body and acts as a rubbish dump to carry away debris. The digestive system is also known as the gastrointestinal system. It consists of hollow tubes and supportive digestive organs that connect alongside it to help your body break down food. This includes the mouth, oesophagus which connects to the throat and the stomach, the stomach, liver, intestines, gall bladder and pancreas.
There are several words for the digestive system
Gastrointestinal and gut refer to the whole digestive tract. Intestines= large intestines= colon= bowel. Small intestines= small bowel. The stomach sits above the intestines.
The gut usually means the stomach and intestine but can refer to either.
Stools= faeces=poo!
The bowel
There are two parts to the intestines known as the colon/large intestine/bowel and small intestine or the variables above.
The small intestine joins the stomach and consists of the duodenum, jejunum and ileum. It then joins the large intestine via a valve called the ileocecal valve and can be a massive 7 metres long but half the width of the large intestine.
The large intestine/colon consists of the cecum, appendix, ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon, sigmoid colon, houston valve, rectum and anus and is 1.5 metres long. In total the intestines are the width of a tennis court and when spread out cover the size of a double tennis court!
Throughout the digestive tract is a lining called the mucosa. In the mouth, stomach and small intestine your mucosa has small glands that produce juices to help digest food. The intestines have a layer of smooth muscle that with the juices helps break down your food and move it along so it can be absorbed and excreted.
Valves
There are two important valves, the ileocecal valve which joins the small and large intestine near the cecum. The other one, the houston valve, is in the rectum above the anus. It consists of 3 large folds that support the weight of faecal matter and prevent its urging toward the anus, which would produce a strong urge to defecate. Both of these can be damaged though constipation, inflammation stress and other means.
Digestive Organs
Two really important organs for digestion are the liver and pancreas. They produce essential juices for digestion. Between meals, the gall bladder stores juices from the liver and are known as bile. When the small intestine needs these juices the gall bladder squirts bile through ducts into the small intestine. Bile is green in colour and it is what makes the final colour of your stools (poo) brown. Bile is particularly needed to break down fat and helps dissolve it; rather like using a cleaning product to get grease off your oven. After fat is dissolved it is then digested by enzymes (an enzyme is a substance that speeds up chemical reactions in the body) from the pancreas and lining of the small intestine. Of course you also need a good blood supply and healthy functioning nerves to keep your digestive system healthy.
What happens when you eat?
Firstly your saliva produces enzymes that start breaking down food in your mouth; so chewing is very important. You don't want to swallow big chunks of food as it puts a lot of strain on the stomach and makes it difficult to break down your food to a soup-like substance called chyme.
There was a case of people stranded on an island with nothing to eat but poisonous berries. They ate the berries thinking they were healthy. Only one survived and it happened that this man had savoured them for so long in his mouth with lots of chewing that the saliva actually neutralised the poison.
The stomach lining produces stomach acid called Hydrochloric acid (HCl). The stomach has a thick mucus layer to stop the acid digesting the lining of the stomach itself and HCl is powerful at breaking down food and killing unfriendly microbes like parasites; then it empties into the small intestine. As you age, HCl production declines affecting your absorption of minerals and your first line of defence against all sorts of nasty bugs. If you eat lots of sugar it stops you from producing the hormone called gastrin that helps produce HCl. With low HCl you become more susceptible to inflammation and sugars from carbohydrates can ferment into unfriendly bacteria in the large intestine. Usually, food stays in the stomach between 1 and 5 hours. Common symptoms of low HCl include: burning from putrefaction of food (people often think this is too much acid but this is rare), bloating shortly after a meal especially with protein, bad breath, weak nails, iron deficiency, parasites, yeast infections and allergies. It is important to get a correct diagnosis. If you take 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar after a meal in ¼ cup of water and you feel better you are likely to have an HCl deficiency. Bitter foods, like bitter green leafy vegetables, watercress and bitter melon help the stomach cells produce more HCL; ginger, green tea and lemon can also help.
There are a few things that affect the stomach emptying into the small intestine which includes the types of foods eaten and the amount of muscle action needed to empty the contents of the stomach into the small intestine. Fat, for example, stays in the stomach the longest (fat is a rich source of energy and is stored in different parts of the body), then protein (this is necessary for building and repairing tissues and cells) and carbohydrates (glucose is the end product of carbohydrate digestion and is stored in the liver to provide energy for the body) take the least amount of time. Other vital parts of food that are absorbed in the small intestine are minerals including calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron, zinc, selenium, manganese, chromium, phosphorus, molybdenum and micro minerals. Vitamins are also absorbed, including the water soluble vitamins all B's and C (where excess is not stored but passed out in urine) and fat soluble vitamins A,D,E and K that are stored in the liver and fat.
When you eat food it has to be changed into smaller particles so that nutrition can be absorbed and taken around your blood and into the cells of your body to give you health and vitality. Your small intestine absorbs most of your nutrition. Your small intestine contains juices which mix with bile from the gall bladder and enzymes and digestive juices from the pancreas to dissolve your food further. These particles become small enough to be absorbed through the walls of the small intestine and the nutrients are then transported around the body. A lack of digestive enzymes can cause: bloating 1-2 hours after a meal especially with carbohydrates, food particles visible in the stool, fatty stools, allergies, hair loss, gas and diarrhoea. It is important to get an accurate diagnosis. Bromelain in pineapple and papain in pawpaw provide enzymes for digestion. The mucosa of the small intestine contains many folds with finger like projections called villi which are covered with microvilli. This gives a large surface area through which nutrients can be absorbed into the bloodstream.
The part of food that is not fully digested (which includes fibre and old cells that are shed from the mucosa wall) moves as waste from the small intestine to the large intestine through the ileocecal valve and takes about 8 hours.
The large intestine (bowel, colon) is the last part of the digestive system. Waste matter passes to the beginning of the large intestine, the caecum. Water is needed to help food particles move along the intestine and stop it drying out. The appendix is near the caecum and has lymphatic cells to carry away toxins which are important for immunity. These lymphatic cells are most active when you are a child and teenager. Appendicitis is the result of a blockage that traps infectious material in the appendix.
Waste material moves up the ascending colon and the colon's function is to move waste and absorb water and any remaining absorbable nutrients which are created by the colonic bacteria - such as vitamin K and the B vitamins. Important flora helps the absorption of some nutrients and aids in keeping bad bugs away. There are over 700 different types of good flora in the large and small intestine weighing about 2 kg. Waste material that has no purpose in the body moves across the transverse colon and down the descending colon to the rectum and is evacuated as faeces via the anus. If you have a prolapsed transverse colon, going on a slant board for 20 minutes a day and consuming silica rich foods is helpful as is colonic hydrotherapy. The large intestine is over 1.5 metres long and a lot wider than the small intestine. It has muscles with folds that help it move in a wave like action called peristalsis.
The large intestine takes about 16 hours to finish the digestion of food. Lack of magnesium can cause spasms in the large intestine. Colic, diarrhoea and pain can occur from irritation of the bowel wall. Often if there is pain, it comes a few hours after eating. There is a lot more on food in chapters 11 and 12.
Foods that help the large intestine
Magnesium rich foods help with spasms and cramps, like buckwheat, brown rice, nuts and seeds.
Protein and silica rich foods help strengthen the connective tissue on the bowel wall. Eggs, fish, beans, legumes, whole grains, horsetail tea, vegetables and fruits help.
Liquorice and turmeric help with inflammation.
Fermented foods help flora.
Foods that help the stomach, small intestine and pancreas
Apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, turmeric, coriander, fennel, liquorice, cardamom and fermented foods.
Foods to avoid
Gluten, dairy, peanuts, sugar, junk food and alcohol.
Digestion controlled by hormones
There are various hormones that help control the function of the digestive system. These hormones are produced and released by the cells in the mucosa of the stomach and small intestine. They move into the blood vessels of the digestive system then travel back to the heart which pumps them back into the digestive system where they stimulate the digestive juices and cause the digestive organs to move.
There are 3 main hormones that control digestion
Gastrin causes the stomach to produce acid to dissolve food and helps cell growth in the lining of the stomach, small and large intestines.
Secretin causes the pancreas to produce a juice that contains bicarbonate and neutralises acid contents from the stomach as they go into the small intestine. Secretin also causes the stomach to produce pepsin which is an enzyme that digests protein and it stimulates the liver to produce bile.
Cholecystokinin (CCK) causes the pancreas to produce enzymes in pancreatic juice, promotes cell growth in the pancreas and stimulates the gall bladder to empty.
Other hormones
Ghrelin is produced when the stomach is empty, so it stimulates appetite.
Peptide YY is produced in the digestive tract to tell you when you are full so it inhibits appetite.
Insulin is considered a hormone and is produced by your pancreas in response to eating sugars and carbohydrates. It causes cells in the liver, skeletal muscles and fat tissue to take up glucose (sugars are broken down to this) from the blood. In the liver and skeletal muscles, glucose is stored as glycogen which can be used as an energy source when needed. Insulin is provided to remove excess glucose from the blood, which otherwise would be toxic. Eating sugar and white flour and drinking alcohol and soft drinks regularly, causes the pancreas to burn out and the control of insulin fails leading to insulin resistance and diabetes. So many people have an overworked pancreas that is exhausted beyond belief.
The liver has a major impact on your digestive function. As your body is exposed to a considerable variety of toxins, good functioning of the liver is necessary for good health. The liver is the body's main detoxifying organ. The liver neutralises toxic substances into relatively non toxic molecules that can be excreted. The water soluble molecules are excreted in urine via the kidneys and fat soluble molecules are transformed and excreted through the bile via the gall bladder and through faeces in the bowel. If you are overloaded with toxins, low in nutrients or your bowel and other organs are working inefficiently, then there may be considerable toxic stress known as free radical production and oxidation. The toxins may accumulate which may cause damage to your liver and other organs.
As mentioned before the liver and gall bladder are also vital in digestion and work together with the small intestine to digest fats.
Foods that help the liver
• Bitter green leafy vegetables including rocket, endives, kale and bitter melon.
• Dandelion root tea.
• Lemon juice.
Foods to avoid
• Excess fat
• Poor quality fats
• Sugar
• Excess salt
• Fast foods
• Refined food
• Caffeine
• Alcohol
Water is very important.
Gut-associated lymphoid tissue and immunity
About 70% of the immune system is located in the gut as this is where protection is needed most from the onslaught of daily toxins. The immune system attacks these toxins or foreign particles. Stomach acid and a healthy mucosa wall in the gut help get rid of harmful substances. Food and water are the most common sources of toxic invasion so the gut needs the most immune protection. The gut is approximately 200 times the area of the skin and is the main entry site for environmental toxins. The inflammatory response is the next line of defence. It is vital for our survival but when it becomes chronic it can lead to chronic disease like auto immune disease.
When immunity is down and inflammation is up there can be an inability to respond to parasitic invasion. When there is damage to the gut there is more strain on the liver as anything that passes through the gut wall goes straight to the liver via the portal vein. As you heal your gut taking pressure off the liver is also important.
Now this may all seem a bit complicated but it's just to show you the detail of the immunity in the bowel and impress upon you how important it is.
The digestive tract's immune system is often referred to as gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) and works to protect the body from invasion.
