Proper digestion

I feel that this should had been my first article on nutrition. What’s the point of eating healthy if your body can’t properly extract and use all the nutrients, right? Imagine an engine, you can provide as much expensive fuel as you want, if there are always incomplete burnings you’re just wasting money. In order to better understand this essential process let’s look at the way things should work.

            Everything starts in your mouth by chewing and exposing food to the enzyme ptyalin found in saliva. This enzyme is pH neutral and helps in the breakdown of carbohydrates to simpler sugars. This is why if you extensively chew a carbohydrate, for example bread, it begins to get a little sweater. Next, the food stops in the stomach, which I’m sure is the first thing you think of when you hear the word digestion. In the presence of the gastric acid and other enzymes, such as pepsin, food is further broken down. The acid itself doesn’t participate directly in this process.
It helps build the necessary environment for enzymes to do their job. Not all enzymes require the same amount of acidity (as said earlier, ptyalin requires a neutral pH and won’t work in other conditions). And because different foods have different effects on the amount of gastric acid produced (as well as altering the stomach’s pH themselves), means that food combining methods are also important.

            The next segment in the digestion chain is the small intestine. Contrary to most believes this is the place where the majority of the digestion and absorption occurs and not the stomach. The semi-fluid produce resulted from the stomach is mixed with the bile, pancreatic juice and intestinal enzymes to receive further transformation. The pH level increases, which aids the enzymes do their job. Nutrients are absorbed by small finger-like extensions called villi. The remainings end up in the large intestine where parts of it can still be absorbed.

As you can imagine, that was only an overview of the whole process. What you should understand from this is that making all the right food choices doesn’t mean that you’re living a healthy life. Fortunately there are things that you can do to mend this. First you can check if there are foods that you’re intolerant to (there are specialized tests which you can take), and you could eliminate them from your diet. After that you can check the health of all your digestive system’s components. In my opinion one of the most important and neglected ways to improve this system’s efficiency is by properly chewing all your foods. As said earlier everything starts in your mouth. Don’t rush a meal, eat it slowly and wait for each byte to be mixed with your mouth enzymes. Research show that proper chewing and low stomach acidity can do almost 75% of the job of breaking down carbohydrates. This really sounds like it can make a difference.

Posted in: Nutrition