It’s All About The Gut Pt.1
Hi guys,
This is a 2-Part Series I’ll be presenting to you about a Seminar I attended on 22 June 2019 by Dave O’Brien from 5th Element Wellness.
I am a longevity guy.
My perspective on health is taking a long term view but taking small actionable steps every day.
Understanding Gut Health is a big step in avoiding chronic disease and only the beginning when it comes to quality of life.
So with that being said… let’s dive in!
Let’s look at your plate for a minute. What’s on it?
Did you know the food you put in your mouth, chew into small pieces and swallow is the beginning of a chemical process called digestion.
In the body, breaking food down starts a cascading effect where a lot of cellular machinery start to identify the foreign object (food) and begin the process of breaking it down and absorbing it.
What does that mean?
Think of the plumbing from your mouth to your stomach as purely a pipe. The small muscles massage the food from your mouth down the oesophagus and into the stomach.
There are 5 stages of the Gastrointestinal Tract and when the food moves from the stomach and into the small intestine that’s where absorption happens.
The key in the process is imagining the pipes that lead from the stomach through the small and large intestine have small microscopic holes.
Those microscopic ‘pipe’ holes allow the nutrients from food to pass from the gut and into the body via the bloodstream.
The body uses the nutrients from the food you eat to power the ‘machine’ aka you.
This is the beauty of our gut – absorption.
You see if you chew a piece of cardboard into small pieces, it travels down the pipes just like normal food but when it gets to the gut it does not pass through those microscopic holes and into the body.
There are small proteins along your whole Gastrointestinal Tract (from the mouth to the anus) called enzymes that slowly break the food down so the body has a better chance of absorbing the good stuff!
I wrote previously on the ‘Leaky Gut’ Syndrome.
If you have a problem with the plumbing wall around the small intestine then you may have Intestinal Wall Permeability or Leaky Gut.
Remember that piece of cardboard you ate earlier?
Instead of the cardboard passing straight through the gut and excreted out the backdoor (anus) imagine if the cardboard passes through the intestinal wall and into your body (via the bloodstream)?
The body recognise this foreign body within the bloodstream and you’ll trigger the immune response aka inflammation.
Allow this inflammation to occur over a long period of time and that’s how systemic and chronic inflammation, autoimmunity and food intolerances can occur!
Our body is a wonderful unique machine and the balance of all the little cogs that makes us tick is resilient but only for a period of time.
If you eat poor quality food without the essential nutrients then the body can survive… for a short period of time.
Just think if you eat cardboard all day how will your continue to power the machine?
You won’t and it will start to break down on you.
My view is that different type of food elicits a different reaction from the body.
A bunch of Tim Tams will bring on a different response from the body compared to a handful of broccoli.
The gut has a big part to play in your overall health and longevity.
Believe me I’ve only scratched the surface.
In Part 2, I’ll discuss simple things you can do NOW to ensure your gut stays bulletproof so you can avoid unnecessary problems!
#MakingHealthySimple
– Leki