Healthy for Life Newsletter January/February 2011 Vol. 8 No. 1. Digestive Health

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1 Healthy for Life Newsletter January/February 2011 Vol. 8 No. 1 Digestive Health This issue of the Healthy for Life Newsletter is going to focus on digestive health. Its purpose is to give you some practical guidelines when it comes to considering whether or not you should be taking digestive enzymes and probiotics to maintain and optimize your health. You will first need to learn some basic health concepts about digestion and what I refer to as the Garden Within in order to make the decision whether or not digestive enzymes and/or probiotics are appropriate for you. Digestive Enzymes First, you must realize that enzymes are protein molecules that are produced in our bodies and are catalysts for all kinds of chemical reactions. In other words, they allow these necessary chemical reactions to occur more easily and more quickly. Digestive enzymes are primarily involved in the breakdown of our food. There are digestive enzymes in many of our whole, raw foods and this is why they are sometimes referred to as live food. However, since most of our food is now processed, many of the enzymes normally found in whole foods is destroyed. Most of your digestive enzymes are made by the body in the pancreas, liver, stomach, and salivary glands. Digestive enzymes are designed to enhance the breakdown of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats into useable fuel. Normal Digestive Process Digestion begins in the mouth as soon as you begin to smell food or even think about food. This stimulates the release of saliva within your mouth in the anticipation of eating. Saliva primarily contains amylase (ptyalin), which hydrolyzes our carbohydrates into simple sugars. The act of chewing actually breaks up your food into particles and the saliva works to moisten your food and begin to breakdown the sugars so that your food is more easily digested. Therefore, when your mother told you to chew your food well, she was correct in assuming that this is good for you. Since you can only taste food when it is in your mouth, I would encourage you to enjoy the experience and at the same time begin to digest your food more effectively. What good does it do to quickly chew and swallow your food so it is dumped into your stomach prematurely? You can t enjoy the pleasure of eating as long and the entire process of digestion is hindered. Once your food hits your stomach, it enters a very acidic environment that is the result of the hydrochloric acid your stomach produces. The Ph of the stomach is normally around 2.5. This acidic environment is critical in beginning the breakdown of your food, destroying microorganisms, and converting 1

2 pepsinogen the stomach also makes to pepsin. Pepsin is the key active enzyme in the stomach and its role is to breakdown proteins into peptides or smaller protein fragments. The stomach is continually churning up your food, which also allows your food to literally begin to dissolve. Some of my patients who experience gastritis or ulcer like complaints wonder what really protects their stomach from their own acid. Well, it is a nice mucous barrier that the stomach makes. There are many things that can increase your stomach acid or irritate the lining of your stomach. Some of these are aspirin, NSAIDS, alcohol, stress, and spicy foods. Our tendency is to just take additional antacids or acid suppressing drugs to give ourselves symptomatic relief. However, I would suggest avoiding those foods, medications, and stress as best we can to eliminate the cause of your problem. Neutralizing or decreasing the amount of acid you make will significantly decrease your ability to digest food. This in itself can lead to indigestion, irritable bowel syndrome, and even reflux. If you are not effectively digesting your food, it becomes stuck in your stomach and can slow down the entire digestive process. Your food then passes out of the stomach into the first portion of the small bowel known as the duodenum. When individuals develop ulcers, this is where they primarily occur. The duodenum of first portion of your small bowel is where most of the digestion and absorption of your food begins. Here the digestive enzymes from both the liver and pancreas pour into the small bowel and begin the final phases of digestion. The pancreas is the primary digestive organ in the body. It secretes several different enzymes that are needed to digest your food. Pancreatic juice contains sodium bicarbonate, which neutralizes the acidic material from the stomach. Pancreatic juice also contains amylase, trypsin, chymotrypsin, and lipase. Pancreatic amylase further breaks down the carbohydrates into simple sugar, completing the digestive process of the carbohydrates that began in our mouth. Trypsin and chymotrypsin digest proteins that are now mainly peptides because of the action of pepsin in the stomach. This allows the proteins to be better absorbed and in a form (amino acids) that the body can use and utilize. Pancreatic lipase breaks down fat into fatty acids and glycerol. The liver is also an important organ for digestion. The liver produces bile, which is stored in the gallbladder and transported to the duodenum via your bile ducts. Fat within any meal or snack stimulates the contraction of the gallbladder to secrete an increased amount of bile into the duodenum during the digestion process. Bile emulsifies fats (separates it into small droplets) so they can mix with water and be acted upon by enzymes. The liver is also your primary detoxifying organ. The liver detoxifies the blood from the intestines via the hepatic portal vein. For example, the ammonia produced by the digestion of proteins in the small bowel is converted to a less toxic compound (urea) by the liver. It also is a storage area for glycogen or those quick glucose stores when your body needs some additional glucose quickly. Your food now begins to traverse the long small intestine where the digestive enzymes are able to continue breaking down or digesting, as well as absorbing, your food. Almost all absorption of your food occurs in the small intestine. The colon or large bowel is primarily responsible for reabsorbing water from your food and creating a more solid waste or stool. However, the large intestine is also the area where most of the bacteria, 2

3 fungi, and other microorganisms live and is what I refer to as the Garden Within. The Garden Within It is estimated that there are between 300 and 1000 different species that live within your GI tract. Bacteria make up the overwhelming majority of microorganisms found in the gut and most of these come from 30 to 40 different species. There are also fungi and protozoa; however, their function is less well understood. These microorganisms are thought to be symbiotic with their host rather than just existing together with no affect on each other. Symbiosis means that there are benefits for both the host and the bacteria. However, the gut also contains some harmful bacteria that if they increase or become out of balance can cause serious problems and even death to the host. Therefore, balance is the key when it comes to the Garden Within. When a child is born, their gut is sterile or contains no flora. However, within one month in a child that was born vaginally their gut micro flora is well established. By two years of age, the micro flora of the gut seems to mimic that of adults. This balance seems to remain relatively normal and healthy as long as our diet is healthy and use of antibiotics does not occur. However, with today s modern medicine it is very unusual to find anyone who has not taken some course of antibiotics in the past few months to a year or who is eating a healthy diet. You then add the All-American high-glycemic, high sugar diet to the mix and you begin feeding your fungi-like yeast much more than you do your bacteria. Both the use of antibiotics and our poor diet has been shown to change our Garden Within so that it is no longer in balance. This may allow your yeast to overwhelm the GI flora and cause an increase in vaginal yeast infections and even, in some cases, systemic yeast. Antibiotics will destroy the bad bacteria that are causing your illness; however, they also destroy the good bacteria in your bowel. For example, clostridium is a species that is common in the GI tract and usually causes no problems. However, antibiotics can kill off the good bacteria and allow clostridium difficile (or C. Difficile) to grow out of control and create a serious diarrhea for the individual. Even the antibiotics that are found in our meat, milk, and other foods can destroy enough good bacteria to create an antibiotic induced diarrhea because more of the good bacteria are destroyed and the pathogenic bacteria are allowed to flourish. There have been several positive benefits from having a balanced micro flora in your GI tract. Medical studies have shown the good bacteria in the gut: Help in the digestion of carbohydrates Stimulates the immune system Helps in the absorption of vitamin k, calcium, and iron Stimulates the lymphoid tissue of the gut, which also helps the immune system Normally suppresses the growth of the bad or pathogenic bacteria and fungi Decreases the risk of allergic reactions Has been implicated in weight gain if it becomes out of balance There are many other benefits of having a healthy, well-balanced GI flora; however, there are also some negatives that can occur from our GI flora. They are able to break down certain protein fragments that can potentially be toxic to the GI tract and to the host. These toxins have been implicated in the increased risk of colon cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, leaky gut syndrome, autoimmune disease, and irritable 3

4 bowel disease. This is why consuming adequate fiber in your diet is key in removing any of the toxins produced in the GI tract during digestion. Fiber causes our bowels to eliminate these toxins much more quickly and much more effectively. Healthy for Life the Answer The Healthy for Life Program strongly recommends that you consume a diet that does not contain high-glycemic carbohydrates and sugar. It is also important that you consume 8 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables and many of these should be raw fruits and vegetables that are considered to be live foods because they contain those natural digestive enzymes. Because you will not be spiking your blood sugar, it will also keep your yeast in check and is actually the answer if you have problems with recurrent yeast infections. It will keep your blood sugars lower, which is also critical in keeping your GI flora in balance. We also encourage you to increase the amount of good fat and good protein you are consuming as you decrease the amount of bad fat and bad protein you are eating. In the Healthy for Life Program, we also recommend that you consume high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements at the optimal levels that have been shown to provide a health benefit in our medical literature. However, even with these healthy lifestyles there are problems that occur that are sometimes out of your control. As we age, it has been shown that the amount of digestive enzymes we produce decreases. When you combine this with a diet of highly processed foods with few or no natural digestive enzymes, many of us end up not having the same capacity to digest our foods and absorb our micronutrients as we once did. You may be suffering from irritable bowel, GI distress, reflux, and chronic fatigue. I would recommend that you consider adding digestive enzymes to your regime and consume 1 to 3 high-quality digestive enzymes prior to or with each meal. This will allow you to replenish your digestive enzymes and better digest and absorb the nutrients from your food and supplements. The nice thing is that you will usually be able to note improvement in your GI tract and general health within 4 to 6 weeks of starting digestive enzymes. Obviously, you adjust the amount of enzymes you are consuming based on your response. If you seem to respond very well with just one digestive enzyme tablet prior to or with meals, then I would stay at this level. If you respond better to 2 or 3 tablets, then this may be the level you need to take. I also recommend that you consider taking high-quality probiotics at least every other day. This allows you to bring your GI flora back into balance and suppress those bad bacteria and yeast. If you have to take a course of antibiotics for an infection, then you should take a packet of probiotics daily while you are on the antibiotics and for at least two weeks afterwards. This will help you better avoid many of the terrible GI complications antibiotics can cause and protect your health by bringing this Garden Within back into balance as soon as possible. If you are eating a healthy diet and have not had to take antibiotics, then you may find that after a couple of months of consuming probiotics you no longer need to continue them. However, many individuals have such good health benefits or are concerned with the antibiotics that are in our food supply, which cannot be avoided by most of us, that continuing to take probiotics every other day or at least a few times a week is a good idea. Keeping your Garden Within in balance is a 4

5 key aspect of general health and an optimal immune system. 5