Digestion Basics Vol 1

by Manny Aragon

For most of you who have been reading my previous two emails, you know that I regularly get tested to find out what nutrients, my body needs to best facilitate health and the healing process. I do this because I have found the combination of Designed Clinical Nutrition and a diet of whole foods has let me down the path to increasingly superior health and physical performance. This wasn’t always the case though.

Years ago, when I was growing up, my mother, wanting to give us the healthiest diet, went just about completely off of all processed foods, save for things like butter, milk, and juice (things I now know to be generally unhealthy items for most people). Her reasoning was that we eat well to grow up healthy and strong and be able to age without disease. Problem was, her nutritional knowledge was only as deep as the books that she read and the nutritionist who she consulted with.

Unfortunately, that included a lot of grains (and soy).  A- lot.  Which I now know causes myrid long term health problems. Nonetheless, given the times, we likely did eat pretty well as compared to our contemporaries- we almost never ate out (couldn’t afford it) and my mom cooked everything pretty much from scratch- bread, nut butters, yogurt- all of it. Our lunches looked and tasted a bit “funny” to us and no, we never had the stuff the cool kids had- ding dongs, soda, chips,  fruit wraps, etc.

We didn’t eat many sweets either- my mom didn’t buy them. This was the achilles heel of her plan: Lots of grains and no sweets allowed. This was a bad combination because eating a lot of grain results in large blood sugar fluctuations and  almost ensures that one will crave sweets. And we did. A lot.

 

My sister and I craved sweets so much that we would secretly go to the candy store and spend ALL of our allowance on candy and gum. These, we would secretly eat at home, in our rooms, and hide the wrappers under the mattress so they would not be seen in the trash. The upshot and legacy of all of this was I became psychologically addicted to sugar. Restriction against choice leads to rebellion.

Needless to say, when I went away to boarding school for high school and to college I ate pretty much whatever I wanted. My dental health and overall health suffered. By the time I was in my late 20s/early 30s, I was suffering from all of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome- weight gain, energy swings, reliant on coffee and sugar to get through the day, diminished sex drive, poor bowel movements, poor sleep.

All this and I thought I generally ate “healthy”.

I get this a lot from my clients. “I eat pretty healthy”.

What does that mean?

To you and to me it means two different things. I now understand food and the ways it affects my metabolism, the way I feel, my moods, and my overall health in ways that I never considered in the past.

That is why I am sharing with you. Hopefully some of you can benefit or are inspired to make the connection between what you put into your mouth and how you are feeling.

But I digress. You are interested to find out what I do when I eat something unknown during my travels and here it is: Just before I eat every meal, I take three supplements that will help me

1) fully break down the food once I thoroughly  chew it and swallow

2) help my further chemically prepare the food for assimilation and

3) prepare my gut to best assimilate the nutrients that I need most while minimizing absorption of things that should stay out.

These three supplements are staples and they alone can make a huge difference in your overall digestion and health. They are:

1)   Betaine HCL- better known as “stomach acid”. As we age we don’t produce enough of it for proper digestion. This breaks down the food.

2)   Digestive Enzymes to help further process different parts of the food- there are enzymes to break down animal protein, there are enzymes to break down cellulose, and so forth.

3)   Prebiotic/Probiotic- this helps “seed” my gut with “friendly” bacteria. Assimilation in the gut starts with the resident mix of bacteria further breaking down the food into absorbable and non absorbable components. The bacteria aid in absorbtion of the nutrients- depending on the mix of bacteria- they will do different things. Getting the right mix is crucial to your health.

Whatever Supplement protocol I am on based on my getting tested,  I pretty much always take these three. The upshot is, when I eat something I wouldn’t ordinarily eat, I will usually take additional stomach acid and enzymes. If my stool is off, I will take additional probiotics. This generally resolves the problem.

NOTE: For those wanting to hear more about what constitutes healthy eating -I will share more about what I have discovered about what diets tend to work best for different kinds of folks- in later newsletters- stay tuned.