Digestion is fundamental to Nutritional Therapy and for many reasons is considered to be the most important foundation. The digestive system breaks down and provides nutrients to every cell of the body, and the organs and systems of the body require those valuable nutrients for structure and function. (1) You can be eating all the right foods but if you are not able to properly digestion and absorb the nutrients, it could cause some imbalances in the body. Today let’s spend some time reviewing those consequences and the impact that digestion has on each of them. Did you know that:
Immune HealthThe immune system is comprised of a complex network of cells, tissues and organs which protects your body from harmful substances, germs, and infections that could make you ill. It is our body’s natural defense system that helps us body fight off infections and other diseases. As mentioned earlier, the gut is the location for 70-80% of our entire immune system. This is why healthy digestion is critical to healthy immune function. One of the first lines of defense in the digestion process is hydrochloric acid (HCl or stomach acid) and pepsin in the stomach. This helps break down the food and disinfect it to prevent any microbes or pathogens from going further into the digestive tract. **One way you can support healthy HCl production is by drinking water with 1T fresh lemon juice or ACV before meals. Healthy liver and gallbladder function is also not only vital to the digestion process but also for the production of complement proteins, which are part of the immune system that helps fight off invaders. It is essential to make sure we are producing quality bile. ** Digestive bitters, dandelion root, milk thistle and yellow dock can be supportive of liver function. Another one of our immune barriers is the mucosal lining of our small intestine. It is important to keep this healthy and strong because when it becomes weak, some undigested food particles and microbes can easily pass into the blood. Since these particles will appear foreign to the body, this can trigger an immune response. Your body will work hard to try and fight them off and this can contribute to allergies, inflammation, auto immune issues and further weakening the mucosal lining. You may have heard of this before, it is also known as “leaky gut.” As you can see, healthy digestion is key to healthy immunity. ** You can support a healthy mucosal lining by eating collagen rich foods like bone broth because it helps soothe the digestive tract and supports the integrity of the gut lining. Endocrine HealthThe endocrine system is responsible for producing hormones, which help control many important functions of the body including regulating your metabolism, energy balance, and your sleep-wake cycle. They also help control growth and development as well as playing a major role in the reproductive systems. (2) Our hormones are literally derived from the food we eat. In order to produce these hormones, we need to be sure we are consuming healthy fats and quality protein sources. If we are including the necessary dietary components to make the hormones, we need to make sure we are digesting them well. The production of hormones relies on the digestion of proteins and fats. Protein digestion relies on the appropriate balance of stomach acid. The assimilation of minerals also requires the proper acidity in your stomach. Many organs depend on those minerals to function efficiently, which makes it that much more important to support healthy stomach acid production. Some people think they have too much stomach acid, but in reality, most people don’t have enough. **You can support healthy stomach acid through mindful eating and drinking warm water with lemon juice prior to meals. Our liver and gallbladder are responsible for the digestion of essential fatty acids. If our liver isn’t able to produce bile to break down the fats, it can have potential hormonal impacts and the ability for our body to control inflammation may be affected. (3) **You can support your liver by limiting consummation of processed foods and focusing on a diet comprised of whole foods. Arugula, beets and cruciferous vegetables are also great for your liver. Hormones are tiny, yet so impactful because they affect almost every cell in the body. So even though we might be eating all the right foods to help support our endocrine system, if we can’t digest and absorb them properly, our efforts are futile. This is why it is important to make sure your digestion is working properly so you can produce all those lovely hormones your body needs to function properly. Cardiovascular HealthThe cardiovascular system which is made up of your heart, blood and blood vessels has many functions. One of them is that it helps supply your organs with the oxygen and nutrients they need to do their jobs. Digestion is essential because we need to make sure we are able to digest the critical proteins and fats that the heart needs to be able to pump the blood through all of our 60,000 miles of blood vessels. (4) A healthy heart depends on a healthy body as well as the ability of your digestive system to cleave the proteins, healthy fats, minerals and nutrients from the food we eat. Did you know that fat is the preferred fuel source of the heart? There is a big misconception that you should avoid meat, butter, eggs, and full fat dairy because of the impact it may have on your cholesterol. Contrary to popular belief, dietary cholesterol has very little effect of your body’s cholesterol. When cholesterol intake in the body goes down, the body makes more cholesterol and when cholesterol intake goes up the body makes less. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent, aren’t they? Eating healthy fats is the first step in ensuring we support our cardiovascular health, the next step is to make sure we are digesting them well. Our liver and gallbladders are responsible for fat digestion, so it is vital for them to be working optimally so that our heart can take advantage of all those healthy fats we eat. Certain vitamins are fat-soluble, so we also rely on our liver and gallbladders to be able to digest those important vitamins. Our heart relies on the amino acids taurine and carnitine in order to function properly. This means not only must we consume quality proteins, but we must also digest them well so they can be made available to the heart. B vitamins and calcium are also critical to heart health. Appropriate stomach acid is vital to break down the protein, absorb calcium and digest B vitamins. (5) A healthy heart starts with good digestion. DetoxificationDetoxification is how the body heals and repairs itself. When we hear the word detox, most people probably think of those popular cleanse programs or a quick way to lose weight. Many of the quick fix cleanses can do more harm than good, when the foundations haven’t been addressed first. Digestion plays one of the biggest roles in detoxification. Our gastrointestinal tract has many roles to support us such as filtering our food and intestinal bacteria and it also eliminates toxins and other unusable substances from the body. (6) The liver plays a principal role because it is responsible for cleaning and purifying blood that nourishes the entire body. Once it neutralizes the toxins, they pass to the gallbladder in bile to eventually be flushed out of the body in feces. This is why it is vital to support liver gallbladder function because of the important role they play. Bowel regularity is essential to ensure we are able to remove toxic waste from re-circulating through our body. Supporting proper fat digestion is imperative to prevent clogging our lymphatic system and in turn the liver. Some ways we can support our body’s ability to detox efficiently are to consume nutrient-dense whole foods, with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, essential fatty acids, and high quality protein sources from eggs and meat. Like digestion, detoxification is also a parasympathetic process, meaning that we need to be in a relaxed state for it to work properly. Focusing on mindful eating and limiting distractions during mealtime could go a long way in supporting your digestion and detoxification. We need to be sure we are supporting our digestive system because if we aren’t digesting properly, even the most perfect diet can clog the body’s detoxification pathways. (7) The Bottom LineDigestion is essential to our health and wellbeing and it also in turn supports many systems of the body. It helps with hormone production, building a strong immune system to fight off infections, keeping your heart strong and also supports your body’s ability to detoxify. 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Nutritional Therapy Practitioners (NTPs) are holistic providers trained and certified by the Nutritional Therapy Association (NTA). We provide nutritional consulting targeted at getting to the root cause of a client's health issues. NTPs believe that the body's innate intelligence has the ability to heal itself if the body is given the nutrients it needs. Nutritional Therapy might be right for you if you experience any of the following:
As a Certified NTP, I evaluate each client and address six foundations of health.When we support your foundations, this helps bring your body back into balance. |