Kids and veggies

Toddlers that have just begun to use their gums and teeth to chew foods typically have less amylase to mix with carbohydrate-rich food. This is why your young one may like sweeter foods. Continue to offer less sweet foods because the enzyme secretion will develop and increase as the child’s chewing and gumming of foods becomes more consistent.

If you urgently run to the bathroom shortly after a meal, it’s a surefire sign that your body has not tolerated something you have eaten. Corn, for example, is hard for people to chew completely due to its resilient outer coating. Any time you see something in your stool that looks the same as it did on your plate, you have a problem. Your digestive tract is a place where food should be broken down completely into molecules only visible with a microscope. What you eliminate is 80% bacteria, not mostly food.

There is a test called the Transit-Time Test (see here), which uses whole sesame seeds to mark how long it takes for food to move through your system. This test is a perfect example of why a grain or a seed of a plant may be hard for us to break down entirely. Even on a molecular level, some proteins may not be fully digested or assimilated by your body. As I said, this is common with grains and legumes because they fight your digestive system.

what’s wrong with legumes?

Well, you already know that beans are famous for causing gas. This is due to the presence of carbohydrates that we can’t properly break down in our bodies. The bottom line is: If you’re experiencing gas symptoms, you have eaten a food you don’t digest well.

It’s possible to make beans more digestible by soaking, sprouting, and fermenting them, typically overnight. Many people take this approach to traditional food preparation and find that the beans are easier to digest. To assume this is a great protein source is misguided, however, as beans are primarily a source of carbohydrates, not protein. So this method may help you consume beans without digestive distress, but it isn’t recommended as a regular practice. More nutrient-dense foods are always a better choice!

the part: stomach

Your stomach is a pouch that holds roughly 1-3 liters of food and liquid. A healthy stomach has a thick mucosal lining and is an extremely acidic environment. Yes, you read that correctly! The acidic environment serves several important purposes. It’s your first line of defense against “bad bugs” or other pathogens that try to hitch a ride into your body by way of food; and it’s where the breakdown of proteins begins.

Your stomach acid is necessary. After you swallow, food passes through your esophagus and enters your stomach, where it’s the job of stomach acid (hydrochloric acid, HCl) to kill any microscopic, pathogenic material (bad bugs) in your food before it passes through to the small intestine. When your HCl level is adequate, pathogens are killed.

You probably swallow more pathogens than you think, but we only hear about one of these pathogens when stomach acid fails to destroy it, leading to food poisoning or an infection.

An entire array of digestive reactions occurs when food arrives in the stomach, as digestive-signaling hormones and enzymes “read” the contents of your stomach and begin to make secretions in response. The breakdown (or “denaturing”) of food begins in the stomach by the actions of these enzymes.

Proteins are broken down by enzymes called proteases and peptidases, while fats are broken down by gastric lipase. While the majority of nutrients and substances you consume won’t begin to be absorbed until they continue on through your small and large intestine, the absorption of water, some minerals, aspirin, and alcohol occurs at the stomach lining.

Gastric (stomach) secretions, including HCl and the aforementioned digestive enzymes and hormones, help to break down food while maintaining adequate stomach lining integrity and cell growth. Last, but not least, your stomach is responsible for the further mechanical digestion of food through “churning and burning,” which breaks food down physically while mixing it with the gastric secretions. The resulting mix of denatured food plus gastric secretions is called “chyme.”

FUN FACT

While fat breakdown isn’t a primary or significant action in the stomach of adults, it’s a fairly active process in infants, whose ideal diet of breast milk is primarily composed of fats.

what can go wrong?

When your stomach’s lining is sufficient and allows the proper breakdown of food, you don’t feel the high level of acidity. When you have low stomach acid, you end up with—you guessed it: bad bugs. That leads, as you may suspect, to heartburn and acid reflux. Most people reach for an antacid when they feel heartburn or acid reflux, but the actual cause of the problem is usually too little stomach acid.

According to Chris Kresser, L.Ac, acid reflux “is caused by increased pressure in the stomach resulting in a malfunction of the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). The increase in pressure is caused by bacterial overgrowth and malabsorption of carbohydrates, both of which are precipitated by low stomach acid. Reducing bacteria loads and limiting carbohydrate intake have both been shown to greatly improve, and in some cases completely cure, acid reflux and GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).”*

*source: Kresser, Chris. “The hidden causes of heartburn and GERD.” April 1, 2010.
http://chriskresser.com/the-hidden-causes-of-heartburn-and-gerd

To reiterate, when you feel acid reflux or heartburn, you’re actually feeling the effects of pressure and backup caused by poorly digested food and bacterial overgrowth—a result of low stomach acid, not too much. Low or inadequate stomach acid means “bad bugs” thrive, and certain foods aren’t broken down, which causes the pressure and allows acidic HCl to creep back up your esophagus where it doesn’t belong. The acid then causes a burning sensation in the sensitive lining of the esophagus.

digestive enzymes decoded!

The first portion of the name of an enzyme tells you what type of molecule it will break down, while the second part, the “-ase,” tells you it’s an enzyme.

lipase = lipid (fat) breakdown enzyme

protease = protein breakdown enzyme

amylase = amylopectin (a carbohydrate) breakdown enzyme

When stomach acid remains in your stomach where it belongs—provided you don’t have a medical condition like a gastric ulcer—you don’t feel it. Once again, your stomach is designed to have a thick, intact mucosal lining which enables the acid to do its job without your feeling anything at all.

Beyond simply keeping you comfortable while digesting foods, stomach acid is essential to not only the downstream signaling of appropriate enzyme secretions from other digestive organs, but also to the assimilation of minerals (like iron and calcium) and B vitamins (especially B12) into your cells from your food. Many conditions that are the result of nutrient deficiencies—including anemia, depression, anxiety, and fatigue-like symptoms from an iron or B12 deficiency, osteoporosis, or osteopenia—are rooted in low stomach acid. Without appropriate levels of stomach acid, you may suffer from vitamin or mineral deficiencies, frequent bouts of food poisoning, gas, belching, or bloating after a meal despite chewing your food very well.

TRYING TO ‘SOAK UP’ BOOZE WITH BREAD?

While this seems logical enough, it’s not actually helping your body to slow the absorption of alcohol from your stomach to your blood stream. A better approach would be to eat a meal or snack with some fat in it to lower the rate of gastric emptying.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14