Digestion and Nutrient Intake

Health, Chronic Disease, Nutrition - All these things come down to what we put in our body an how it handles them

Our modern culture has produced some amazing things. We have made huge advances in technology and medicine and understanding the world around us as well as the workings of our inner self. But despite all the new knowledge and technology, we have also produced a society full of chronic disease.

There has been a dramatic increase in obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes in our society. And it all comes down to a pretty simple fact – People Eat too MUCH!

You are what you eat!

More specifically, we tend to eat too much junk and not enough of the food that has the right nutrition. Sugar intake has skyrocketed as has the consumption of processed food.

Food is required for our bodies to produce energy, but it also is responsible for other things such as tissue repair, hormone production, immune system function, and growth.

The chemical make-up of our blood is directly related to what we eat and that in turn determines how well our body functions and shows up in our general health and fitness or lack thereof. If we don't consume the right foods our body will not absorb the right nutrients, and if we consume "bad" foods we can actually absorb toxins and chemicals that our body must then fight and clean up and dispose of.

Digestion and Nutrient Intake

The topic of diet and food choice is a big one and can fill volumes. In this article, I am going to focus on simply the process of digestion and nutrient intake because…

If you don't completely digest the food you eat a series of events will start to unfold that can increase weight gain and push your body farther down the path towards chronic disease.

First, when food is not digested completely, the undigested pieces can pass through the intestinal tract into the body. Once in the blood or lymph system, this food material is treated as a foreign invader and white blood cells are released to find it and break it down. This is a form of leukocytosis. A medical dictionary would describe this as an abnormally large number of white blood cells observed after eating. White blood cells are a part of the immune system involved in defending the body against infectious disease and foreign materials.

Second, because the body isn't completely breaking down the food being eaten, the body is missing out on adequate nutrition. This can be true even if you were eating healthy food, so imagine if you are eating a typical American diet. Your brain is going to tell you to eat more as a way of compensating for the missing nutrients. Quite often this might be seen or felt as food cravings (You will often crave the foods that your body is not digesting properly). Over periods of time this can lead to weight gain and a continued loss of metabolic enzymes which will perpetuate the problem.

What you eat can lead to illness!! Not just because it's "Junk food", but because your body is too busy fighting it and not fighting the harmful viruses and bacteria.

Finally, parasites and other microorganisms take advantage of the undigested food and see it as a lovely home where they can live. These bacteria will do things such as give off gas, ferment the carbohydrates and putrefy the proteins. You will most likely see and feel this effect as bloating.

As this undigested food accumulates in the digestive tract, it can lead to various health problems and even toxemia. And since a large portion of your immune system and white blood cells are dealing with this food problem, you are left wide open for other bacterial and viral infections such as the flu and the common cold and any other disease looking for a place to set up shop.

Solutions - Make the change...

There are several suggested solutions to help aide in avoiding this problem.

First, supplementing with a digestive enzyme can help to break down your food more completely and get it digested correctly. Enzymes are required in order to break down food into smaller parts and getting the food into usable materials for the body. As we age we don't produce enzymes like we used to. We have all had the realization one day that "we just can't eat like we used to". There are also enzyme rich foods such as raw seeds and nuts and raw fruits and vegetables.

Second, increase the fiber content of your food or supplement with a good, natural fiber. Fiber is like a scouring pad that cleans out your digestive tract and your colon. No matter how good your digestive enzymes are, there are just some things that aren't going to get digested correctly – especially in this day and age of processed, genetically modified, and over cooked foods.

You simply can't avoid all the bad stuff so do what you can to push it through and clean it out of you system before it cause problems. Ask any doctor who has done autopsy's on sick and/or healthy people. They can tell you which was which just by looking at their colon.

Finally, do what you can to eat the right stuff. Avoid the man-made chemicals and processed foods. And supplement your diet with a good natural food supplement. Most people call them vitamins, but the cheap vitamins from the drug store are not what I am talking about. You need to find supplements that are natural, not overcooked in the removal from the source and not crammed together using additives and artificial junk.

Even if you eat a good healthy diet, our foods just don't have the nutrition they once did. Overworked land, early picking and long shipping and storage times have reduced the nutrition you once found in the fruits and vegetables your Mom "made you eat".

It comes down to making a choice and getting what you need while avoiding what you can.

Don't expect or even worry about perfection.

Even small changes can make a BIG difference.

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