A Recipe for Chronic Disease:
Root Cause Driver #3: Digestive Dysfunction
“All disease begins in the gut”….Hippocrates
Hippocrates certainly was right when he made that statement almost 2,500 years ago - well before we’d refined sugar, created processed “food” products, and added antibiotics and a slew of other toxins to our diet!
Every bite of food we eat passes through the 20+ feet of our digestive tract, which is lined by our delicate “inner skin”.
Just one cell thick, the thin lining of our intestinal tract comes into intimate contact with everything we swallow. Everything, from the bread we eat, the mold on the bread, the glyphosate herbicide sprayed onto the wheat and the allergens in the wheat itself.
OK, brace yourself. Yes, one of the problems really is gluten (sorry, wheat)! As a Kansas girl, it breaks my heart to point a finger at one of the world’s favorite grains!
But we’ve hybridized wheat to the point that it now contains very high levels of two proteins, gluten and gliadin. These proteins make dough stretchy and easy to work with, but in high concentrations they wreak havoc in our gut.
The issue is that gluten and gliadin open the “tight junctions” between the cells that line our intestinal tract, allowing partially digested food, microbes and toxins to enter the bloodstream.
A steady diet of wheat (like we have) promotes “intestinal hyper-permeability” (or “leaky gut”) and results in almost constant stimulation of the immune system, which sees these compounds as foreign invaders and mounts an immune response.
The overuse of antibiotics both personally and in animal feed has led to loss of diversity in the ancient microbial species that have always inhabited our large intestines.
Add refined and processed foods, chronic stress, alcohol, too little sleep and acid-blocking drugs that inhibit digestion and the result is that 74% of Americans suffer digestive problems!
We’ll dive deep into digestive function in The Healthy Aging Reset! I’ll take you on a guided tour of your digestive tract, so you start to recognize the truth of Hippocrates statement! And it will set the stage for you to better appreciate the healing power of food.
In future posts, we’ll continue to review the other root causes of the chronic disease epidemic and then dive into the solutions!
Luckily, there is so much we can do to address these processes!
In the Healthy Aging Reset, my online course starting on September 24th, we’ll cover these key drivers and how to test for them and address them.
Knowing how to address these root causes gives you the power to intervene early in this process and reduce your risk of a range of chronic health problems.
Course registration closes on Tuesday, September 24th at 5:00 PM, right as the course starts.
I hope you will join me, as I am doing this for you: I want to empower you to take charge of your health now so you can live with vitality as you age!
Dr. Sally