Before diges­tion actu­ally occurs, the smell of food or the thoughts about food when you are hun­gry is the sig­nal to sali­vate. This moist­ens the mouth and makes it pos­si­ble to swal­low food.

Diges­tion occurs in four stages begin­ning with the mouth, stom­ach, small intes­tine and large intestine.

Mouth

There are two actions that take place when you put food in your mouth. One is to start break­ing down food by chew­ing. While you are chew­ing saliva fur­ther breaks down food because of the enzyme amy­lase. Not chew­ing your food enough causes strain on the stom­ach to break down larger chunks.

Stomach

The stom­ach pro­duces about 3 quarts of acid per day. This in com­bi­na­tion with enzymes fur­ther breaks down the food. It is in the stom­ach that pro­teins, fats, car­bo­hy­drates, vit­a­mins and min­er­als are processed for nutri­ent absorp­tion. The hydrochlo­ric acid also kills off viruses and bacteria.

Small Intestine

The pan­creas, which releases enzymes, and the gall­blad­der, which releases bile salts, assist the small intes­tine in fur­ther break­down. It is in the small intes­tine that most of the nutri­ent absorp­tion takes place. Unfor­tu­nately, today’s poor diets from over processed foods, pol­lu­tants in our agri­cul­ture and mis­in­for­ma­tion, has cre­ated a nation sus­cep­ti­ble to poor health and dis­ease. Long term poor diet results in the body lit­er­ally starv­ing for nutri­ents while we gain unwanted weight, fatigue and immune sys­tem difficulties.

Large Intestine

The large intes­tine takes the remain­ing mass and absorbs water, elec­trolytes and some left over nutri­ents. The indi­gestible mass remains until it can be excreted.

What Can Go Wrong

Most every­one has expe­ri­enced diar­rhea or con­sti­pa­tion in their lives and some­one who is in rel­a­tively good con­di­tion will find this to be tem­po­rary. Diar­rhea is when the mus­cles in the intestines move the mass along too quickly and there is not enough time for the water to be absorbed in the sys­tem. This is why doc­tors get con­cerned about dehy­dra­tion. The oppo­site is true for con­sti­pa­tion where the waste moves along very slowly so the water gets absorbed and the waste hard­ens mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to excrete.

There are sev­eral con­di­tions that cause havoc in the intestines that can cause poor health.
Irri­ta­ble Bowel Syn­drome or IBS, is where the mus­cles in the colon are not work­ing prop­erly. This can cause con­sti­pa­tion or diar­rhea, bloat­ing and cramp­ing, a very uncom­fort­able condition.

Col­i­tis is a chronic inflam­ma­tion of the intestines where the top layer of lin­ing of the intesti­nal wall can be dam­aged and ulcers occur. This causes diar­rhea, abdom­i­nal pain and pos­si­ble bleed­ing. Ulcer­a­tive Col­i­tis can be dif­fi­cult to diag­nose because it is sim­i­lar to IBS and Crohns disease.

Crohns dis­ease mainly affects the small intes­tine but can affect any part of the diges­tive sys­tem includ­ing the mouth and stom­ach. This dis­ease causes inflam­ma­tion even deeper in the intesti­nal lining.

The stom­ach and esoph­a­gus are not immune to irri­ta­tion. The esoph­a­gus can get inflamed from acid reflux or GERD. The acid from the stom­ach can move up to the esoph­a­gus and dam­age the lin­ing. The stom­ach can expe­ri­ence ulcers which can be quite painful.

There are other diges­tive dis­or­ders that can make one’s life mis­er­able, but, there is hope for any of these con­di­tions. Lifestyle changes and eat­ing habits can do much to ease or reduce symp­toms. The fuel you put in your body has every­thing to do with how effi­ciently your body runs. It is a well known fact that if you put bad gas in your car it will run poorly or not at all. The same holds true for a body. If you have spent years abus­ing your body by giv­ing it bad fuel, it stands to rea­son that it will not func­tion well. So what do you do?

Start by eval­u­at­ing what you eat on a daily basis and keep notes. Get edu­cated in health and nutri­tion. The gro­cery stores are full of canned and pack­aged processed foods. Processed foods are truly an enemy to good health. Some nutri­tion is taken out, preser­v­a­tives put in to ensure shelf life, great for the share­hold­ers who are happy with their prof­its but bad for proper health.

Next time you go to a gro­cery store try this lit­tle exer­cise. Avoid all the cen­ter aisles for food items. This means no canned or processed foods, only non food items such as tooth­paste, paper tow­els etc. Do go to the meat dept. for all nat­ural meats, (but do keep por­tions way down, you really don’t need much more than 3 oz). Then go to the pro­duce sec­tion for fresh fruits, veg­eta­bles and herbs, prefer­ably organic. This means actual cook­ing which may not be as con­ve­nient as processed foods, but by far much health­ier. If you don’t have time to cook daily, take a Sun­day after­noon and pre­pare meals to place in the freezer.

Drink a lot of water! Just drink up all day long. You would be amazed at what drink­ing water can do for your health. (Note, the more dehy­drated you are, the more pain you feel) Water is so impor­tant in flush­ing your sys­tem of tox­ins and waste. Your toi­let will not flush with­out water and this is true for your body as well. Most Amer­i­cans are semi dehy­drated and don’t know it. You can get some of your liq­uids from fruits and veg­eta­bles, teas etc., but not drink­ing water through out the day will make it tough on your entire body. Some times when you feel a bit hun­gry you may actu­ally be thirsty. Drink a glass of water first. If your crav­ing for food goes away then you know it was thirst.

Your body relies on the diges­tive sys­tem for your very sur­vival. A mal­func­tion­ing sys­tem impairs water and nutri­ent absorp­tion. It can go like this for a long time but at your own peril. *** Long term neglect can result in con­di­tions such as GERD, IBS which includes chronic con­sti­pa­tion, diar­rhea, Crohn’s dis­ease, ulcer­a­tive col­i­ti­sor Celiac dis­ease or even can­cer.*** While you may enjoy the cook­ies, pies, cakes and fatty foods that you know are not good for you, you will pay later! No mat­ter the state your body is cur­rently in with regards to the diges­tive sys­tem, you can do some­thing about it. So DO some­thing about it! You’ll live longer, lose weight and feel so much better.

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