Why Digestion is Queen
“You are what you eat!” How many times have you heard that saying? While there is some truth to this, more recently, people in the health sphere have started saying, “you are what you digest” or “you are what you absorb”. But aren’t they all the same thing?
Not quite. You see, just because you eat something doesn’t mean it’s being digested, absorbed, and used by the body properly. While I have no intention of getting super scientific on you in this article, I do want to educate you on the basics of what digestion is, and why it is EVERYTHING to your health.
What is Digestion?
The NTA (Nutritional Therapy Association) defines digestion as “the mechanical and chemical breakdown of food” and says that its goal is to “reduce food to molecules so small that the nutrients can be absorbed and used by the cells”. The digestive process is pretty complicated and consists of six steps: ingestion, secretion, propulsion, digestion, absorption, and defecation. The main 3 organs that are involved are the stomach, pancreas, and gallbladder. Another thing the NTA teaches is that digestion is a “north to south process”, meaning it starts at the northern most part of your body, and ends at the, um, south end.
The Digestive Process
BRAIN: If you’re like me, you may have thought that digestion starts in the stomach. But it actually begins in the brain, because your state of mind affects your body’s ability to digest food. You must be in a parasympathetic state (think opposite of fight or flight; rest and digest) before you start eating. The body will shut down digestion if you’re under stress because it thinks it’s doing something like fighting off a bear, even if what you’re stressed about is the wifi not working at Starbucks. (If you haven’t read the blog on stress yet, go ahead and do that now.) So if you like to eat breakfast in the car during rush hour while you’re late to work, just know that your body is in no way ready to take that food and do anything useful with it. Your brain also does this cool thing where is starts making saliva as soon as you see or smell food. Which takes us to number 2.
MOUTH: Inside the mouth a few things happen… er… are supposed to happen. The mechanical breakdown of food means chewing THOROUGHLY. This is a vital component of digestion that cannot be overlooked. Not only do your teeth help you break down the food into smaller pieces, but the saliva that we talked about before also helps to start breaking down carbohydrates right then and there. This may sound overkill, but most experts suggest that you chew each bite 20-30 times before swallowing!
STOMACH: The food you just chewed 25 times then travels down the esophagus and into the stomach. Here is where the “gastric juice” comes in. Doesn’t that sound delicious? Definitely not, but it is extremely important and this is where a lot digestive issues occur. Pepsinogen and Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) start breaking down proteins here. But many people have low stomach acid, which can lead to indigestion, heartburn, inflammation, and so on.
SMALL INTESTINE: Here’s the money maker. If you’ve read any of my other “educational blogs”, you’ve heard me talk about the importance of the gut. And the small intestine is what I’m referring to. This is where most of our immune system is, and where a lot of cool crap happens. After the stomach, food travels to the small intestine, which secretes the hormones secretin and CCK, which tell the pancreas and gallbladder to do their jobs (which I’ll get to in a minute). After those two organs have made their contribution and the food is ready to leave the small intestine, the majority of digestion should be done. But the coolest part of what happens in here is that these little guys called villi and microvilli absorb the nutrients that were broken down, and send them into the bloodstream to be used by the body. I won’t get into the dysfunction that can happen here, because that’s its own long blog post. Two words: leaky gut.
PANCREAS: Like I said before, secretin tells the pancreas to do its job, which is to release sodium bicarbonate to raise the pH (which was super low in the stomach). Once the pH reaches neutral, it releases pancreatic juice which consists of enzymes that help complete the chemical breakdown of the food.
GALLBLADDER: This is how fat is broken down. So if you’ve had your gallbladder removed, there is certainly a need for ox bile supplementation in order to help you break down fats. And if gallbladder issues run in your family, I would recommend you work with someone to help prevent you from needing to have it removed one day. Contrary to what we’ve been told, this is a VITAL organ. When the small intestine secretes CCK, this tells the gallbladder to release bile, which is necessary for the digestion of fats.
LARGE INTESTINE: This is where the indigestible items go (fiber, bile, poorly chewed food, etc). If there are any nutrients left, this is where they’ll hopefully be converted into B and K Vitamins. The large intestine also recycles water and waste material as much as possible. But what cannot be used is excreted as…
POOP: While I can definitely talk about poop more than the average Joe, I’ll spare you for now. Suffice it to say that your poop says a lot about your health.
Why Does it Matter?
You can eat the absolute healthiest diet in the world and not get any of the benefits if you’re not digesting it well. Not only that, but undigested proteins can cause inflammation, food allergies, and all sorts of other health issues that we won’t get into right now. The first thing that I address with clients is almost always digestion, because nothing else will improve if that isn’t first working properly. Pretty much any issue that you’re having can probably be traced back to not digesting food well. It is the cornerstone of nutritional therapy, and it’s something I LOVE to help people figure out. Because once you’re in a place where your digestive system is working as it should, you’ll be AMAZED at how much better you feel. Plus you might actually be able to see results in other areas that you didn’t before.
Like I said earlier, this is a brief overview of the digestive process, but I hope you’ve learned a little bit about how it works and why it matters. If you want to know more, I can recommend some great books or other resources. Just email me, I’d love to answer any questions you have!
One last thing… I’ve got a challenge for you.
Before you eat your next meal, sit down and take 5 deep breaths. Once you feel calm, begin eating slowly (not looking at your phone or watching TV). Chew each bite more than you think you should, say 20 times? Take your time and don’t rush off as soon as you’re finished. Sit a few minutes longer and notice how you feel. Try to pay attention to your body. Does it feel differently than it did after the rushed morning bagel you shoved in your face in the school car line? I’d love to hear about your experience!
All hail, Queen Digestion.