Hello Students/Members:
It is holiday season, a busy time of year and a time of year that we are all tempted to over indulge in foods that we all know are not good for us. The majority of these foods are hard to digest and aggravate our digestive system and core organs. And, for this reason I decided to discuss the digestive system. We should all know how our digestive apparatus operates. Understanding the process also helps us to have a greater understand how we can be negatively affected by the food we eat and how digestion can be a major reason for a flare or an episode lasting for a long long time. Together lets learn about the digestive system and the importance of eating foods that digest quickly and exit the body quickly. Our bodies require nutrients and vitamins from food in order to maintain a balance pH through out the body and balanced hormones. We will continue this discussion next and I will go into which food digest quickly and how to eat foods in the right combination so they don't get stuck and ferment.
Please read the following article and your assignment is to write out the words and definition that are in color in your notebook that your using for this class and too leave a comment with your thoughts in the box below.
Human Digestive System -The Mouth + Saliva
The human digestive system is a complicated and impressive system. Understanding how the digestive system works helps us to eat healthier. Stay healthy by what you eat and keep your digestive system healthy.
When you eat food, the saliva mixes with the food. This is a very important process in preparing the food for the stomach. The salivary juices and enzymes help break down the food beginning the process of changing the food to the parts the body can utilize –such as carbohydrates (disaccharides –maltose, etc), proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, etc.
Breakdown of Nutrients
When you take smaller bites and chew the food well before you swallow it, you help make the job of the stomach a little less difficult. The stomach is an amazing place where acids and enzymes work hard to kill bacteria, start the process of breaking food down into small molecules -nutrients the body can actually process –such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, etc.The stomach’s digestive juices include saliva, mucous, hydrochloric acid (HCl), enzymes, bicarbonate and bile. What ends up leaving the stomach and heads to the small bowel is chyme –which is semi-digested food.
Human Digestive System -The Small Intestine
The body absorbs the molecules and nutrients that have been broken down, when it goes through the ileum (~5-7 feet long), which is the last section of the small intestine before it links to the large intestine. The villi lining the wall of the ileum help give a large surface for absorption.
Nutrients are absorbed through various ways including active transport, endocytosis, facilitative diffusion and passive diffusion.
For example:
- Fatty acids, fat-soluble substances, monoglycerides and cholesterol are absorbed through simple diffusion.
- Amino acids are absorbed through active absorption.
- Sugars like fructose are absorbed with the help of carrier protein molecules.
- Water and water-soluble substances are absorbed through osmosis. Water soluble nutrients leave the GI tract in the blood and travel through the portal vein to the liver and then to the heart.
The Body's Fuel + Nutrition
The nutrients that come from the food we eat and get broken down are absorbed into our body and then transported by the blood system and the lymph system to all the cells and organs in our body. The cells use these nutrients on the molecular level to give us the energy we need, the ability to heal, the fuel for our cells to do what they are supposed to do: like your heart beating!
When you smell food or think of food, this triggers the hormones and nervous system that coordinates digestion and absorption (like the brains behind it). If you are stressed or sick this can slow the process of digestion down.
The Large Intestine -The Colon
At the end of the digestion process, the waste products leave the small intestines with the help of fiber and enter the colon –the large intestine. The colon reabsorbs water and the friendly bacteria helps process vitamins and nutrients. Any fiber or undigested food that does not get broken down is excreted in the stool. That is how the digestive system works in a nutshell!
You Are What You Eat!
There is so much more than we think about that goes into how food processes in the human digestive system. The better we understand the process of how the digestive system works, the more realize the value of eating healthy and eating a balanced diet: vegetables, fruits, fiber. Nuts and seeds are good for us as well as long as we don't eat them in large amounts.Man a Digestive Apparatus ( meaning machine or device)
The simplest definition for man is that he is a digestive apparatus. Food is taken into the stomach and bowels, where it is dissolved--brought to the liquid state--and then absorbed into the circulation and distributed throughout the body. From this circulating medium the cells of the various tissues of the body select the food elements required to do their work.
This process is called nutrition. When nutrition is going on normally, the standard of health is normal. Any influence that decreases, increases, or prevents nutrition is disease-producing, or, in better words, lowers the health standard.
The detrimental influences of nutrition may begin in the stomach; yet, farther back, the chewing may be imperfect; and, farther back still, the food may be imperfectly prepared.
The common cause of gastro-intestinal indigestion is enervation (eduction or lack of nervous energy; weakness; lassitude; languor) and overeating.
Nerve energy is required to digest food; nerve energy is required to keep up secretions and excretions; nerve energy is required to prepare enzymes (Organic substances (proteins) composed of amino acids that trigger and regulate chemical reactions in the body) for digesting our food intake and keeping up a normal resistance to environmental influences as well as those that are auto (auto refers to self when we talk in medical terminology)-generated.
When this nerve energy is up to the standard, we are poised--or balanced, as it were, with our environments--and we can eat a maximum amount of food, and take care of it. This being true, it should be obvious to those who care to reason that any influence which uses up nerve energy lowers the digestive powers of the body, and that an amount of food which can be utilized when the nerve energy is up to standard must necessarily be too much when the energy is used up in work, play, or sensual indulgence. (in other words food that are processed, refined sugar, salty fatty, oily, meat, diary, most grains, most supplements, medication - too much of these tax the digestive apparatus)
It should be obvious to any reasoning mind that a full dinner taken into a tired body cannot be digested properly; that a full meal, or any meal at all, eaten by one in great mental anguish over some great trouble, cannot be digested. And, when food is not digested, it becomes a poison. (another reason to learn to set limits and boundaries, to not do everything for your kids or your partner, to learn to say no, to learn to how exactly how you feel, to take care of you, to keep stress levels down, to exercise, to meditate)
When food is taken into the stomach in too great quantities--more than the digestive secretions (enzymes) can dissolve--digestion takes place on the outside of the ingested meal, and continues until the digestive energy is used up. As fast as the food is liquefied, it passes out through the pylorus, where, in the duodenum, it meets with other enzymes and is further fitted for absorption. Absorption is going on as fast as the food is liquefied enough to fit it for absorption, which is in a very short time after leaving the stomach.
Copy these definition down in your notebook.
- Pylorus the passage at the lower end of the stomach that opens into the duodenum which is the beginning portion of the small intestine>
- Small Intestine starting at the lower end of the stomach and extending to the jejunum >
- Jejunum the section of the small intestine between the duodenum and the ileum >
- Ileum the terminal portion of the small intestine extending from the jejunum to the cecum >
- Cecum the large blind pouch forming the beginning of the large intestine >
- Large Intestine the portion of the intestine that extends from the ileum to the anus, forming an arch around the convolutions of the small intestine >
- Small Intestine the narrow, winding, upper part of the intestine where digestion is completed and nutrients are absorbed by the blood. It extends from the pylorus to the cecum and consists of the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum.
When enzymic fermentation--digestion---ends, bacterial fermentation of the remainder of the food in the stomach begins. One or the other of these fermentative processes must go on, or eating will end; for, unless the food is liquefied, it cannot get out of the stomach and bowels.
Fact - A low fat vegan diet is much easier to digest.
Tip - Elimate one type of food from your diet at a time. I recommend eliminating first meat which is an acidic food and takes hours to digest, using up a lot of our nerve engery.
Fact - Alcohol is the most acidic beverage, Pork is the most acidic meat and Parmesan Cheese is the most acidic cheese.
Tip - If you would like to have a drink on special occasions try a red imported wine. Red wine is less acidic than white and imported wines do not have sulfates (IC Patients have intolerance to sulfates which are in domestic wines.)
Have a great week!
Gloria
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