-: Today, we are talking about assessing digestion.
Now, to be fair we could do an entire curriculum on the gut.
So what, when we're going into this,
keep in mind that we're trying to be as efficient
as possible not trying to teach any of you guys
to be doctors and so we're not gonna go
into like nuances of the mucosa or anything like that.
We're gonna look at the tangible stuff
and try and also leave you guys
with some applicable guidelines
in terms of how deep to go, how not to go
and, you know, it really is just gonna come down
to common sense and staying in your lane
and not being afraid to focus on the basics
and not be overly drawn to super sexy, you know,
like, oh, this is a magic, you know, antifungal
you know, thinking you, whatever that you take
because you're gonna be surprised by how much
like digestive stuff is corrected or caused
by things that aren't, you know,
going between mouth and anus, right?
It's, there's a huge impact between sleep and stress
and your autonomic nervous system.
So many compounding factors that come into impact the gut.
So the gut I would say is even more diverse
in terms of what impacts it than a slip,
you know, cause I mean obviously
you have all of the food that you're intaking
and that's just, you know a chemistry
that's constantly changing as well.
So when it comes to variability
there's so many things that can impact the gut
and there can be so many possible reasons
that somebody would have a particular symptom.
So, my goal is gonna try and create just a little bit
of a logical thought process for you guys
to get to the quickest intervention
that is within your wheelhouse.
So, without further ado let's get on.
So, when we look at digestion over time
and how many things that are going to impact it, right?
So in terms of like, or in terms
of what it's going to impact in terms of your physiology.
So, we got digestion in terms of the breakdown portion,
how well you break down your food is gonna have
a huge impact on your immune response to food,
you know, how many infections and stuff that you get
and your immune systems needs
to maybe you have to fight off pathogens
that aren't getting killed, you know,
in the stomach and stuff like that.
It's gonna affect your energy
and nutrient costs is for the entire, you know,
the entire track of digestion.
So if you don't, we're gonna talk about chewing your food.
Chewing your food is a mechanical part of the digestion
but that mechanical part of digestion massively
decreases the amount of chemical work needed
for digestion.
So you're not only, if we're not breaking
down things properly.
Not only are we having to expend more energy
to try and get nutrition from that food
but because we have to do it more from biochemical means,
it means it costs us more energy.
We either have to make more stomach acid,
more enzymes and things like that.
You know, we have to do more, you know,
management of fluid and stuff.
So we can essentially create like, you know,
a energy, we'll say like a bottleneck
by not like, you can literally be like being inefficient
in terms of getting energy while eating
if you are not eating well, if you're not digesting well
in terms of the breakdown process.
And then obviously, because this is the input, right?
So basically the breakdown is going to impact
everything downstream.
It's gonna affect absorption,
it's gonna affect inflammation,
it's gonna affect, you know, toxin and flora
all of the stuff, basically everything, you know, South.
Like everything in the digestive tract
is gonna have an impact North to South.
So, starting at the top, if things aren't good there.
Treating the colon before treating, you know,
chewing your food, isn't a very good, you know,
isn't a very good approach because everything is affected
from the top-down or North South mouth to bump.
So that's kind of what we wanna focus on in terms of,
you know, we wanna make sure we've corrected
the stuff at the top first as best possible
before trying to focus on an issue
that may just be an issue further downstream
that may just be being caused by something further upstream.
So then, next space of digestion is the actual absorption.
So provided, we are actually able to break things down
now, let's what, what can we absorb?
How well can we absorb it?
And that's gonna affect everything from hydration
to insulin sensitivity and cellular chemistry,
because you know, how well we break stuff down
is gonna affect how much of the micronutrients that we get,
how many of the electrolytes and the minerals
that we can get out of the food that we eat.
So, digestion you know, break down
is gonna impact absorption
but that absorption is going to be also impacted
by the health of your intestinal lining,
inflammation, stress and emotional stuff and training
and things that are gonna impact bowel transit time, right?
Cause how fast our digestive system moves,
how spastic it is, how much it's focused
on actually absorbing versus pushing fluid in,
all of those things are gonna affect our ability
to absorb nutrients.
Then it's kind of paired in with that is inflammation.
So, we'll be looking at inflammation and the gut lining,
a lot of that's gonna have to do with how porous
your gut is, but also like fluid management.
So, inflammation in the gut can either be a fast-forward
or stop meaning, you know inflammation
can cause constipation or it can cause diarrhea,
but in many cases inflammation is going to cause us
to possibly absorb things we don't wanna absorb
and might decrease our ability to absorb nutrients
that we do wanna absorb kind of depending
on which one of those scenarios that happens to be in.
So, when inflammation, you know, creates a porous
like membrane or a mucosal lining, that's when we get those
you know, food sensitivities where essentially,
you know, basically small particles of the foods
that we eat that are still big enough
to trigger immune response
they get through those tight junctions
and you know, then we create an immune response.
So then when we have that food,
essentially we over react to it
in terms of our immune system response
because I mean, think of it this way.
If you were to say put sugar in your gas tank,
in your car, right?
That's a contaminant, it's gonna cause issues.
That's essentially how your body is looking at things
coming into the bloodstream that aren't completely digested
or shouldn't have made it through the GI lining.
You don't have a mechanic, you have an immune system
and your immune system is the thing
that's gonna take action with that.
And that can create a lot of issues
because we can start to develop a hyper responsiveness
from our immune system to a lot of foods.
And sometimes the proteins in those foods look very similar
to proteins and our own tissues
and that's where we can get kind of auto-immune conditions
from food sensitivities cause essentially
we're reacting to the proteins or the peptide
of the small peptides, you know, which are basically
the shorter amino acid sequence than proteins.
So we're reacting to those and we are essentially
structurally like, you know,
we're made of a bunch of proteins.
And so, if there's something in food
that's coming in and it's too big
and then we're creating an immune response
but that happens to be part of a protein
that, you know, makes up something, you know,
in my liver cells or my joints or whatnot,
then the immune system can actually start attacking
those tissues and creating inflammation there.
So, when we're looking at inflammation from the gut
that's one of the areas where we wanna try
you know, get that resolved as soon and as fast as possible.
Now, what I will tell you guys is that
the reason I don't talk about food sensitivities,
is that I don't have a slide on food sensitivities
but since we're right here,
I, when you're looking at food sensitivities,
removing the foods that somebody is offended to
can create the environment for healing to occur
but it doesn't like, it doesn't correct anything.
So that means that, you know, you may need
to make other adjustments
because you can remember the reaction to the foods
came out after there was inflammation in the gut
that basically led to it being porous, right?
So basically, leaky gut proceeds the food sensitivity.
So removing the foods that the immune system
happens to be reacting to will reduce the inflammation
but you need to double check and be like,
oh, okay, but why did we actually get to the point
where our gut was permeable in the first place?
Was it a stress management thing
or you know something else further up the stream
that we can work on and correct,
because that's kind of, that I mean, you know,
that's where we need to focus on.
Was it an a pathogen and infection?
Things like that, that you need,
you should refer out and double-check.
So, essentially if you get to the point where,
you know, you're working on food sensitivities,
you're probably pretty close to that point
where you should have had that conversation
or maybe it is worth referring out to somebody
that specializes in that
and you know, they can run a stool test
or they can run a Cyrex labs test
for their gut health or something like that.
And see what what's gonna need to take this
to full resolution cause otherwise,
what happens is, you know, say somebody's got like
these three foods that they're basically
having reactions to right now because of a leaky gut issue,
you taking away, take away those, you know, those foods
and initially they get better
but what's gonna happen if you didn't correct the issue
that caused the leaky gut in the first place
or it's a stress management system,
you know, issue or whatever is that they're just gonna be
start reacting to other foods
and it's just gonna be this cyclical thing
where you're just trying to basically, you know,
stay ahead of which foods are causing the most problems
but the root problem always exists.
So when it comes to gut inflammation,
we're always trying to get to the root cause
but there may be times where we're eliminating things
to get, because essentially you can't rebuild
a house that's on fire,
you got to put the fire out first
and then we can go in and do the repairs.
So you still are gonna need to remove anything
that's bothering somebody whether that's in as a food,
whether it's an artificial sweetener,
whether it's a supplement, you know,
whatever they happen to be intaking that is causing
that inflammation cascade to kick off,
you're going to have to remove that
in order to then start the healing process
and then maybe you're gonna use some herbs
or you know, may, if it's a caused by an infection
or led to an overgrowth of know imbalanced flora
that needs to be corrected, you can work all those things
but you have to work on those things
in the absence of the inflammation, when the fire is gone.
So gut inflammation, it's gonna affect a lot of things
but it also, cause it's gonna affect absorption,
is gonna affect insulin sensitivity, cellular chemistry
and absorptions for micronutrients.
And then the last part here got detoxification,
so you know, we detoxed in a variety of ways.
We detox things that of our skin,
we detox things out of our urine
and we detox through our stool
and the majority of the far soluble things that we detox,
we detox through the stool.
So, you know, we're gonna go through the systems here
but detoxification is a very important function
of the GI tract, right?
It's, you know, it's a really good way
of getting things out that we don't wanna be there
and if that isn't functioning properly,
then and then that can be from a getting stuff out
at the liver aspect where it could be a reabsorption
of toxins, you know and so we end up
basically recycling the same toxins
over and over and over in our body
and the liver just has to keep detoxing them
over and over again, very wasteful,
very stressful on the system.
Again, those things are going to impact things
like insulin sensitivity, cellular chemistry,
and then you know, also immune reactions and inflammation.
So, you see there's a lot of overlap, right?
So, breakdown is gonna impact everything below.
So if we're not breaking stuff down,
you can't get in what we need,
we might not be able to absorb it,
we might be getting more pathogens in there,
so if we're getting less nutrients, more bad things,
well that's bad for cellular chemistry, energy production,
insulin sensitivity, it's bad for inflammation.
You see how it's just like you can kind like take something
and throw it on the wall
it's gonna hit something and be like,
yeah, that's possibly, you know
caused by the upper portion of digestion.
Pretty much all of these things have a lot of overlap.
So, how are we gonna start separating that?
And actually being able to make a decision
when somebody presents with a symptom of dysfunction
at any of these levels.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna use anatomy
as our guideline.
So, obviously the digestive track
is a one way street hopefully, right?
You know, long night out, you know,
after a tailgating or something like that
maybe it goes the other direction, but that's not the norm.
The norm is it goes North to South.
So, that means that there is a time course of, you know,
when certain symptoms and things may present themselves.
That also means that there are anatomical regions
where symptoms may present themselves
so that we can start to say like,
well actually this was more of a bloat
like I was more full in my stomach,
like you know right under my ribs versus,
you know, more lower abdomen, you know.
We can actually start using time and anatomical positioning
to kinda help separate some of these very similar things.
So, we'll talk through quick review here.
If anybody does not know the digestive tract
and the components in it, this is a limited reduced view,
but it's gonna cover the important things
for today's conversation.
We have the oral cavity, right?
That's where chewing is going to break down food
into smaller particles.
Basically the whole purpose of chewing, okay?
Is to take, like say, you got like a piece of steak,
like it's a cube and you know, if you were to take that cube
and dip it and acid only the outside portion of that cube
would get exposed to the acid.
So it will take a long time for the acid
to break down that cube.
So the goal of chewing is to increase the surface area
of your food right?
That's, the mechanical goal.
Now from a stimulatory goal,
it's also going to be impacting the juices and the hormones
and stuff that are coming, you know,
that are going to be released further
down the digestive track, right?
So, as you're chewing, your stomach is prepping,
your pancreas is prepping like the taste buds are, you know,
getting signals to your body.
We're also releasing amylase in our saliva, right?
Which starts the digestion of starches.
Now, probably if you guys are anywhere in the fitness space,
you've heard of things like SIBO
which is small intestinal bacteria overgrowth
where essentially you got too much bacteria
and the upper part of the intestine, right?
And that tends to happen when you've got
a lot of fermenting bacteria, you know,
flourishing up there.
That doesn't happen if we're killing off bad bugs
in the stomach and we are, you know,
digesting all of our carbohydrates at a healthy rate.
Now, chewing up those carbohydrates,
getting that amylase in there, that's gonna be
a really good way of trying to, you know,
fend off the development of something like SIBO.
Chewing your food really good also it increases
that surface area which makes it easier for the acid
to do its job, right?
So it's gonna, like basically it's gonna be able
to get more into the food particles
which means it's gonna be better at killing pathogens.
The other thing that it does is,
that acidic environment in your stomach,
it's where we kind of separate like the substitutes
or the constitution of the food.
So, fats like the oily part is gonna separate
from the aqueous, the water-soluble part
which is gonna be your carbohydrates and your protein.
And that allows your gastric, like your stomach
to like kind of have it's pulsatile release
of the fluids and kind of control
what's getting empty down into the intestinal track.
But it also a lot makes it easier
than for all of your digestive enzymes
to go and do what they're supposed to do.
So, cause think of it this way,
if you don't have like the lipids and you know,
the aqueous portion, like really well separated,
if you still got like clumpy stuff, it's like, you know,
think of it like a, you know, like a mayonnaise,
like mayonnaise is water and oil mixed together,
like you can't, they're not separated from the two.
So, if I was to tell you to just like isolate
the egg protein out of the mayonnaise,
though I can't do it, it's all mixed together.
Same thing here.
So, if you have all of these, you know,
all of your peptides proteins from your meat
still kind of like coated and mixed with all the fat,
it's gonna be a lot harder for the enzymes
to get to the point in those proteins and peptides
and do their little cutting into smaller more digestible,
more absorbable peptides and amino acids, okay?
So, it starts at the top.
Gotta chew your food, okay?
Then we've got to get into the stomach
and provided we did that, okay?
The hydrochloric acid there, that 2.0 low acidic pH
in the stomach is gonna kill down pathogens,
it's gonna start breaking down the food particles,
it's gonna start separating the constitution of the food
which is gonna make it easier for those enzymes
to digest your proteins and fats, okay?
Then, we're gonna take a little break from the actual,
you know, roadway of the digestive track
and we're gonna talk about the liver, gallbladder
and the pancreas.
So, these are things that are adding
into the digestive track, right?
So, they're not doing any of the digestion themselves
but they are releasing things into the digestive tract.
So, the liver is releases a little bit of bile salts itself
but a lot of times, you know, the liver uses bile
to be able to transport toxins into the GI tract
so that you can get rid of them later.
So, you have basically two things
that are coming from liver bile.
You got toxic stuff but then you also have co-factors
that are gonna help activate the bile
coming from the gallbladder
which is gonna be things like glycine and taurine.
So basically, that allows your bile to be more functional.
So the liver's job is to put toxins in bile
for disposal removal, you know, deposits,
taking the browns to the super bowl,
whatever you wanna call it.
So the only way the browns are getting to the super bowl
or it also is adding nutrients that help the bile
from the gallbladder become more active.
So, the gallbladder that's late releases
the majority of your bile.
Now, the pancreas is going to release enzymes
into the small intestine that digest fats
and carbohydrates and proteins, like pretty much
your digestive enzyme manufacturer is the pancreas
but it is also going to release things
that help neutralize the stomach acid.
So, essentially you have to think of it like this
and I think if you visualize, or you kind of think
of it like the physical constitution of these things.
You have this liquid chyme that is very acidic
that is coming from the stomach
and as it is flowing down,
oops, it is gonna be met with a surge of bile
from the bile duck, right?
Which is essentially going to thicken it and slow it
and then the pancreas is going to then, and you know,
shoot out stuff that is going to help neutralize
the acidity and promote digestion.
So, basically we got the stomach acid coming down,
we essentially have a thickening and emulsifying effect
from the gallbladder dumping in the bile
and the neutralization of the acid
from the pancreas and the bile combined
and now essentially what we've done
is we've taken a very volatile, acidic thing
from the stomach and we've neutralized it
and we've put it in a position where now digestion can occur
at a more micro level.
We can take instead of like, okay,
we're just separating, you know, fats and aqueous things,
now we can start separating proteins into small peptides
and amino acids that can be absorbed.
We can start breaking down carbohydrates even further.
We can start breaking down fatty acids
and attaching them to glycerol molecules and absorbing them.
So, we're in a good place for the whole rest
of the digestive track,
if everybody from there did their job.
And so, when you're looking at issues in terms of digestion,
it's likely gonna be from there up,
from the pancreas up, something up there not doing its job
is likely going to be the main reason
we have issues down below.
So when we're looking for solutions,
most of your solutions are gonna come up North.
It doesn't mean you won't have interventions that go
after the intestinal tract directly,
it just means that like,
if there's an issue in the intestinal track,
I mean, it's last in line,
so if the problem was created, it likely didn't start there,
it's likely dealing with a problem created further upstream.
So then just continuing through the anatomy,
we'll go through this stuff in a little bit more detail
step-by-step but small intestine,
I mean do have some digestive enzymes
that are continued to be released in the small intestine.
You also have the majority of your bacteria,
your probiotics if you will, your beneficial flora
but also your non-beneficial flora
increases in concentration
as you get further down the digestive tract.
So, you don't have very much at the beginning
or you shouldn't have very much
at the beginning of your small intestine
but that will start to increase as we go down.
So, in the small intestine, the majority of the digestion
that occurs there is all enzymatic.
And we're getting a lot of absorption
of amino acids and stuff.
As we get into the large intestine,
we should now only have basically food
that wasn't able to be digested and absorbed
by that entire enzymatic process.
So, that's why we have a large concentration of bacteria
in the large intestine because essentially
it's gonna start digesting the things
that are leftover, your prebiotics,
your fiber, you know, anything
that was a little bit more resistant to digestion, right?
Resistant starch is, you know, is fermented
in the large intestine.
When we ferment in the large intestine,
it doesn't have a negative impact on us
quite like fermenting in the small intestine.
We deal with the gasses and everything
there significantly better.
I mean, well, we should.
Some people, when they create gasses there
it's bad for everybody around them
but for the most part, we're able to ferment
and produce less methane and stuff when we are managing it
in the large intestine with beneficial flora.
So, essentially majority of your absorption
is gonna occur in the small intestine
and then the large intestine, you know,
not only is it bigger in size
but you got to think of that bigger size is functional.
The appendix is also, you know,
think of it as like a savings account
for the flora and your system
and so that is that is essentially gonna be
think that's kind of like the checkpoint
where things should really start to go up
and concentration and turns to the flora level
and at that point in time, now we're fighting
to get the last amount of nutrition out of whatever's left
in the, you know, you could say,
we're starting to transition from food to poop
at this point in time, right?
We've got all the good stuff out or whatever's left,
we're trying to get that out
and then basically it's really simple,
whatever we can't get out of here
that's good it's shit, literally.
So, essentially, we wanna go through that process
as smooth as possible, and if you kind of follow
that flow of information and look, you need
to get in the mindset of thinking like, well, okay
if I have inflammation in the small intestine, or
if I have a SIBO, or if I have whatever,
like what likely was the cause?
Cause the small intestine, like if something got
in the small intestine, it had to have bypassed
the oral cavity, the stomach, the liver, the gallbladder
and the pancreas to get there.
So it's not likely that it is the source of the problem.
There may need, you may need to do an intervention there,
but the long-term solution likely is further up.
Now, the problem is when these issues become chronic,
you gonna have so many things going on in some people
that it's really hard to figure out where to start,
and that's why focusing on the basics is gonna so important
because essentially, you had to get
some improvement or eliminate some symptoms or, you know
somehow reduce the number of possibilities to be able to,
you know, get a good intervention.
And if you can't do that with the basics, you refer out.
(air whooshing)