Solve inflammation by healing digestion

How digestion is supposed to work

Chew; digestion begins in the mouth telling the rest of your organs what to expect. Swallow; your stomach breaks your chewed food into even smaller molecules. It unravels complicated molecules like proteins and starches and when it reaches a pH of 2.0 (battery acid) the food moves into your small intestine. 

Digest & absorb; your small intestine absorbs nutrients while your large intestine is chiefly involved in maintaining water balance. Both receive waste filtered out by your liver and anything toxic you put in your mouth like pesticides, preservatives, many food additives… 

And Barrier; the entire length of your gut has to also remain a barrier to keep unwanted things out—to keep that toxic waste from going back in plus any unwanted bacteria, yeast, parasites that might have snuck through…

Why Healing Your Intestines Is The Next Most Important Step

Your small intestine, folded and folded compactly into your abdomen is amazing. If you took your small intestines out of you and unwound them, they’d be the length of a tennis court—about 25 feet.

If you cut a cross-section of your intestines, inside the skin is folded forming finger-like projections—these are called villi. If I ironed this flat, the surface area would be the length AND the width of the tennis court. That’s a lot of surface area!

If I took a microscope to the tips of these villi, you’d see cells that also have their own finger-like tips to make even more surface area.

That’s a lot of surface area!

Under these cells are series of blood and lymph capillaries where your immune system waits, just in case.

Only properly digested nutrients from your food are absorbed into you—incompletely digested food, unwanted bacteria, yeast, parasites, toxic chemicals, etc., are blocked so they can be eliminated as waste.

1. ABSORPTION IS CONTROLLED: 

Only nutrients that are fully and correctly digested are invited to enter the intestinal cells (through special “doors” similarly to the sugar we addressed last week). Nutrients feed intestinal cells. The rest are moved through each cell to the other side where they are released into the tiny capillaries and lymph vessels just beneath your intestines that start distributing nutritional genuine building blocks through your body.

2. GUT INTEGRITY KEEPS THE BAD THINGS OUT:

Notice how tightly connected these cells are along their length. “Tight junctions” staple each cell together and literally keep a tight join between one cell to the next so nothing can pass in between—nutrients must be properly broken down and then “invited” to move into intestinal cells—only when they are properly broken down.

3. GUT HEALTH INVOLVES UNDERSTANDING THE BACTERIA, YEAST, AND VIRUSES THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO LIVE IN YOU AND CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR HEALTH

living along with your own intestinal cells are:

·         some 10 trillion bacteria and other organisms that you depend on.

·         there are five key bacterial families and at least 5,600 different strains.

·         they contribute some 3 million genes, some of which are vital to your health and survival.

Here’s a few things helpful “critters” do for us:

1.       digest our food: the bacteria in your gut make enzymes to help digest most of the food you eat. In fact, if you don’t have certain bacteria—you won’t produce or absorb certain B vitamins and vitamin K or extract and absorb trace minerals like magnesium. YOU chew the food, they digest it and give the nutrients back to you in exchange for a warm moist home.

2.       protect against invaders: more powerful than antibiotics, your healthy population of gut bacteria are very territorial. Something else tries to live in you—they attack.

3.       break down toxic chemicals and food by-products: drugs, chemicals, and many other cancer-causing compounds are broken down. People with a healthy gut ecosystem have less cancer.

4.       activate important hormones: Most of the thyroid hormone released by your thyroid gland is in inactive form. Your gut bacteria can convert inactive T4 made by your thyroid gland into the active form of thyroid hormone, T3. Personally, before I jumped to taking thyroid medications, I’d sure try to heal my liver and digestive tract.

How do we destroy gut health, and how to restore it,

We need helpful, probiotic, bacteria and yeast for a lot of vital functions! We should pay attention and exclude:

·    High starch and sugary foods encourage unwanted bacteria, yeast, and parasites and starve the strains we want. The typical convenience food diet shifts our microbiome.

·    Antibiotics kill both helpful and harmful bacteria. Anti-depressants, antacids, and most medications alter the mix of bacteria and slow our digestive process…

·    We have too few natural births and not long enough breast-feeding. In the womb, we have a sterile gut. As the baby passes through the vaginal canal, he/she gets colonic bacteria from mom. We get additional strains through breast milk. Children born C-Section (and especially if not breast fed) have the skin microbiome in their gut rather than the intestinal microbiome. They are different. These children also tend to have more allergies. 

Without helpful bacteria to process the food we eat, our intestinal lining starves to death.

1.       It becomes inflamed. It breaks down. The cells lose their shape and the tight junctions pop.

2.      Parasites, yeast, and other unwanted pathogens find a happy home, steal your food and supply you with a steady dose of waste products.

3.      Improperly digested food, good bacteria, bad… can now move through the digestive lining. It’s lost its barrier function.

4.      80 percent of your immune system sits in the cells, lymph, and blood just beyond your gut cells.

What do you think happens when an incompletely digested apple, or even a beneficial bacteria… slide between the barrier in your gut cells? Your immune system is sitting right there; how does it react? 

leaky gut

... leaky gut

Healing a compromised gut involves really wanting to do so and being really strict. You absolutely must remove inflammatory foods for as long as it takes to heal your digestive tract.

Vital steps:

FEED the bacteria you want; encourage them to grow: Prebiotics feed beneficial bacteria. You haven’t lost them all and if you feed them they’ll come back.

    • Probiotics are the helpful bacteria themselves.
    • Prebiotics are foods that support helpful bacteria, helpful yeast, helpful viruses (yes, there are all of these)
      • veggies help (cooked might be easier for some—all are good) eat the rainbow of veggies!
      • add soluble fibers. These absorb water like chia seeds or flax. Wheat germ, oatmeal… is a hard fiber, does not absorb water, and irritates the gut. Add soaked chia seeds or flax seeds to baking, smoothies…
      • drink green tea – clinically, green tea restores gut bacteria
      • raw garlic – must be raw! Consider blending into salad dressings, dips… – also improves gut bacteria balance
    • FEED your poor gut cells:
    • Bone broth is rich in proteins used by the cells of your gut lining
    • Healthy fats sooth and feed the intestinal lining [we’ll talk about healthy fats next week]
    • Ginger tea can improve muscle tone and help stomach digestion

Let's fix this: Your food and mood log

You want to know if you can eat a food or whether it is causing unwanted symptoms.

The only way to know is your Food & Mood log.

Meet your detective: If a food or scent or chemical causes you immediate headaches, rashes, bloating… it’s easy to assign the source.

What if it causes excruciating back pain two days, or weeks, after eating it? Not so easy.

That is why it is so vital to track everything that goes in your mouth on your Food & Mood Journal. 

I’m here to interpret; please scan and send to marie@synergynutrition.info

Pat self on back for all changes you have made, so far!

See you in the next section 🙂 and… XOXO

Probiotic Foods?