Here is our first newsletter; it's about
the digestion of proteins, fats and carbohydrates and THE TRUE CAUSES OF
INDIGESTION. There is also a special offer on the enzymes needed to digest
them, which will save you 15%.
If you suffer, or know someone who
suffers, from any of the following, then this special offer will be of
interest to you:
BioCare HCl & Pepsin (stomach acid with
pepsin) – The healthy stomach normally secretes adequate amounts of
hydrochloric acid (HCl) and pepsin for the complete digestion of foods, in
particular proteins. Many factors can disrupt acid production such as
infections (even something as simple as a cold), surgery, stress or trauma,
fever, candidiasis, spicy foods, foods eaten too hot or too cold and certain
drugs.
BioCare Polyzyme Forte (normal price
£21.95 – your price £18.65 if you use the voucher code). Polyzyme
Forte is a high potency, broad spectrum mixture of digestive enzymes,
enhanced with Lactobacillus acidophilus
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Don’t forget, there’s no postage on
BioCare orders either.
*These products
are not suitable for individuals with colitis, gastritis, gastritis due to
pregnancy or ulcerative conditions of the stomach or colon.
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FOCUS ON : DIGESTION
As soon as you even think about food, your
brain makes you secrete saliva; a mixture of water, mucus and a
starch digesting enzyme. Do it now – think about sucking a segment of lemon
and you’ll notice it happen!
When you chew you grind the food into
smaller pieces and mix them with saliva. Your tongue makes you taste the
food and helps project it to the back of your mouth and into your throat.
Here, the epiglottis covers your windpipe, so that food goes the
right way, backwards and downwards to your oesophagus.
The oesophagus is a muscular pipe which
propels the food towards your stomach. Believe it or not, this
would still happen even if you were standing on your head (though we don’t
recommend it!).
From the moment food entered your mouth,
your stomach started producing hydrochloric acid. This stomach acid
(often referred to as HCl) not only purifies food and drink by
killing parasites and bacteria, but also helps break down of food by
converting pepsinogen into pepsin.
Pepsin now begins to break down the large
protein pieces into polypeptides, and once the food has been properly
acidified and partially digested, the pyloric valve at the end of
your stomach opens and allows this chewed and semi-liquid mass, called
chime, to pass into the duodenum.
Your duodenum is a bit like a second
stomach. Here, the enzyme trypsin from the pancreas, and
bile from the gall bladder, are mixed with the chime and
digestion continues.
The pancreatic enzymes digest the protein
into amino acids, whilst carbohydrates are further digested into
glucose. Meanwhile, the bile begins to break up the fat particles so
that the pancreatic enzyme lipase can break down fats into fatty
acids and glycerol, which are then absorbed.
The food has by now been largely broken
down into absorbable particles (at least, in theory – in practice that’s not
always the case, as we’ll cover in future newsletters). Now it’s still got
to be absorbed into the body.
The food now passes from the duodenum to
your small intestine. This is a twenty-foot tube, covered on the
inside with billions of tiny protrusions called villi, each of which,
amazingly, has several million microvilli. Absorption takes place
through these villi and microvilli.
If you cut open this twenty-foot tube
along its length, it would be about as long as a mini-bus but only a few
inches wide. Not much space to absorb a Sunday roast! But if you could
cut open the billions of villi and trillions of micro-villi, and spread them
flat onto the floor, it would probably cover an entire football field. This
huge area is what makes it possible to absorb one meal before the next one
goes in.
By the way,
gluten from wheat and some other cereals, in many people damages these villi,
which become shorter and shorter, until the intestines are much flatter than
they should be – rather like an overused bristle nail brush! (e.g. Crohn’s
Disease). In these people, absorption is hampered, and they become
malnourished. This is quite common. For other people, milk and other dairy
clogs up the space between the villi, so in effect the length of the villi
becomes shorter. These are two reasons why gluten and dairy are so often a
health-hazard.
Onwards! Now the food passes from the
small intestines, through the ileo-caecal valve, into your large
intestine, or colon, where large amounts of water and more
nutrients are extracted and absorbed. All this takes about six hours.
The large intestine, though much shorter,
is wider. Remnants of the food stay here for about 8-10 hours
(unfortunately, MUCH longer for people who are constipated, or where there
is a lack of fibre, although they may not even know it).
Various beneficial friendly bacteria play
an important part here (e.g. bifidus bacterium) and continue to break down
the residue in the colon, help to absorb a few more nutrients, and protect
against ‘unfriendly’ organisms, such as candida.
Approximately 18-24 hours later, the
journey is complete (well almost!).
