Well, does it?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all going to be putting food in our bodies just about every day for the rest of our lives. Most of us will do it several times a day. We\u2019ll chew it, send it down the esophagus into our stomach, and expose it to gastric juices and digestive enzymes. We\u2019ll strip it of nutrients and send the excess down to the colon for dismissal, feeding resident gut bacteria along the way. The whole process should go smoothly. There shouldn\u2019t be any pain or discomfort, bloating or constipation. Oh sure, nobody\u2019s perfect, and there will be slow-downs or speed-ups from time to time, but in general a vital, fundamental process like digestion shouldn\u2019t even register in our waking, conscious lives.<\/p>\n
But sometimes it does.<\/p>\n
Instantly download your Guide to Gut Health<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Sometimes digestion can be downright unpleasant, or even unproductive. The symptoms are familiar:<\/p>\n To get to the bottom of these symptoms and hopefully fix them, let\u2019s look at the actual process of digestion. We\u2019ll go step by step down the line to identify and offer solutions for various issues that can arise at each.<\/p>\n What happens when you eat something?<\/p>\n The stops along the digestive route involve:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how it works.<\/p>\n Omega 3s just got easier. Primal Omegas contain a high-quality source of the two key omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, with a lemon-lime flavor\u2026 no fishy taste or odor!\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n You start digesting before you\u2019ve even taken your first bite. Have you ever smelled burgers grilling, and you mouth started to water? Certain aromas can signal to your body that food is coming, and you begin to salivate and secrete digestive enzymes.<\/p>\n Even thinking about food can trigger a response.<\/p>\n Now, you\u2019ve taken a bite.<\/p>\n First, you chew your food. Chewing is the first step in digestion. You physically break it up with your teeth into smaller pieces, increasing the surface area for digestive enzymes to access. Most of those enzymes appear later in the gut, but some appear in the saliva and start working immediately in the mouth during the chewing process.<\/p>\n Your taste buds communicate what<\/em> you\u2019re eating so that your body starts getting the right digestive juices flowing. For example, if you ate something sweet, you\u2019ll make insulin. If you\u2019re eating a fatty food, you\u2019ll start secreting bile and enzymes.<\/p>\n Salivary amylase begins converting starch into sugar for easier digestion. Chew a potato for long enough and it\u2019ll start tasting sweet.<\/p>\n Lingual lipase begins digesting the fats you eat. This is more important in babies, who express very high levels of lingual lipase in order to optimize their calorie intake from breastmilk. It still has an effect in adult fat digestion.<\/p>\n Chew more<\/strong>: The longer you chew, the better you digest your food. In one study, healthy adults who chewed 50 times for each bite ended up eating fewer calories than those who chewed 15 times per bite, a strong indication of more efficient digestion and nutrient extraction. They were getting \u201cmore\u201d out of their food simply by chewing it up more.<\/p>\n Heed your salivary amylase levels<\/strong>: How much salivary amylase you produce is determined by your genetics, with historically agricultural (and thus starch-consuming) populations tending to possess more copies of the salivary amylase gene than other populations. There\u2019s no good way to test salivary amylase gene status because the commercial genetic analysis sites don\u2019t cover it. You\u2019d need a more specific (and expensive) test for that. Ancestry can be a rough proxy; try to match your carb intake with the carb intake (and thus amylase copies) of your recent ancestors. But whatever number of amylase copies you (might) carry, chewing more times per bite will increase the efficacy of the salivary amylase you do produce.<\/p>\n As for meat and other animal foods which salivary amylase doesn\u2019t affect, chewing is still important because it breaks apart the fibers and makes the nutrients contained therein more accessible to protein-digesting enzymes (proteases) in the stomach.<\/p>\n Leaving the mouth, the food travels down the esophagus on into the stomach, where hydrochloric acid and a protein-degrading enzyme called pepsin break the food down into a big semifluid mass of partially-digested food components, water, enzymes, and acid known as chyme. The stomach walls undulate (move up and down) and mix the chyme,<\/p>\n Get your thiamine<\/strong>. Thiamine is a B-vitamin involved in hydrochloric acid production. If you want optimal stomach acidity\u2014and you definitely\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>want it\u2014you need to be replete in thiamine. The best source of thiamine is pork.<\/p>\n Watch the antacids<\/strong>. While heartburn meds can make a person feel better in an acute case of heartburn, they do so by inhibiting production of hydrochloric acid, which makes the stomach more alkaline and worsens your digestion in the long run. Pepsin cannot work without adequate acidity.<\/p>\n Try bitters<\/strong>. Post-meal bitters stimulate production of hydrochloric acid and assist many of the digestive organs, making the whole operation run more smoothly. But they must be bitter<\/em>. Covering up the bitter flavor with something sweet mitigates the beneficial effect on digestion.<\/p>\n Get enough sodium<\/strong>. Low sodium levels reduce hydrochloric acid production. Make sure you\u2019re salting your food to taste, as our moment-to-moment desire for salt is a good marker for sodium requirements. As long as you\u2019re not eating packaged junk food, you won\u2019t crave too much salt.<\/p>\n Try supplemental hydrochloric acid<\/strong>. A little betaine HCl, especially with protein meals, can really help if your acid production is too low. If you take betaine HCl and you feel a burn, you probably don\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n Since the stomach is too acidic for amylase to work, the chyme migrates down to the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine immediately after the stomach where the pH is more alkaline. The pancreas produces protein-digesting enzymes as well as amylase and delivers them to the duodenum, where the full range of digestive enzymes can get to work liberating nutrients for absorption down the line. This is also where bile is introduced to assist in fat digestion.<\/p>\n Eat meals rather than graze<\/strong>. The human digestive system operates best when it encounters whole meals with plenty of time between subsequent meals, rather than a steady stream of incoming food. It even tries to enforce this; when a bolus of chyme enters the duodenum, the opening leading from the stomach to the duodenum tightens up to prevent more food from coming in. Overriding this with constant snacking will only impair your digestion and back things up.<\/p>\n Go for a walk<\/strong>. A short walk after eating speeds up the transition of food from the stomach through the duodenum into the small intestine. It \u201cgets things moving,\u201d in a good, beneficial way.<\/p>\n After softening up in the duodenum, the chyme passes on into the small intestine where the bulk of nutrient absorption occurs. All along the intestinal walls lie villi \u2014 microscopic finger-like projections that increase the surface area of the intestinal lining and pluck nutrients from the passing slurry to be absorbed and assimilated. (You may have heard of villi in the context of gluten. Gluten can wipe out the villi in some people, leading to nutritional malabsorption.)<\/p>\n Optimize your serotonin<\/strong>. 95% of the serotonin in our body occurs in the gut; it\u2019s one of the primary regulators of intestinal peristalsis \u2014 the muscular contractions that move and mix food through the digestive tract. I\u2019ll have a much more in-depth post in the near future on this topic.<\/p>\n Fix leaky gut<\/strong>: Leaky gut isn\u2019t just about allowing in pathogens and unwanted, allergenic food components into your bloodstream. It also impairs nutrient absorption and digestion in the small intestine. Go through this post and make sure you\u2019re practicing excellent tight junction hygiene.<\/p>\n Pay attention to FODMAPs<\/strong>: Not everyone with digestive issues has to do this, but anyone who gets bloating, belly pain, excessive gas, and many of the other symptoms of poor digestion after eating should analyze their diet for FODMAPs and do an elimination trial. FODMAP foods include a wide range of fermentable fibers, sugars, vegetables, and fruits that have been shown to provoke uncontrollable and uncomfortable gut issues. These are often foods we consider to be healthy. Read the posts I\u2019ve done on FODMAPs and follow the advice listed therein if you suspect you may have a problem with them.<\/p>\n You can also get tested for SIBO to see whether eliminating FODMAPs will benefit you.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t actually \u201cdigest\u201d anything in the colon. Rather, you gather and expel the waste \u2014 mostly fiber \u2014 that\u2019s left over from digestion. Some of that \u201cwaste\u201d is food for the gut bacteria who live in your colon. So someone\u2019s digesting the stuff, just not you.<\/p>\n Eat some prebiotic fiber<\/strong>. Ironically, sometimes you need to eat stuff you can\u2019t digest in order to improve your digestion over the longterm. Fermentable, prebiotic fibers like inulin and resistant starch are some of the best-studied examples. They feed the (mostly) good gut bacteria, who in turn produce short chain fatty acids that power your colonic cells and improve your metabolic health.<\/p>\n Take probiotics<\/strong>. Certain probiotics have been shown to reduce bloating and belly pain, improve GI symptoms, improve IBS symptoms, reduce leaky gut, and reduce antibiotic-related diarrhea. I created Primal Probiotics with precisely these probiotics to tip the balance in your favor.<\/p>\n Get Primal Probiotics here<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Digestion must be approached as a single unit. You don\u2019t just pick one of these tips to try. You do them all, together, if they apply to you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nSymptoms of Digestion Problems<\/h2>\n
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The Digestive Process: Troubleshooting Top to Bottom<\/h2>\n
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Sensing and Signaling<\/h2>\n
Oral Digestion, or Chewing<\/h2>\n
How to optimize oral digestion<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Mechanical Digestion, in the Stomach<\/h2>\n
How to Optimize Stomach Digestion?<\/h3>\n
Duodenum Digestion<\/h2>\n
Small Intestine Digestion<\/h2>\n
Colonic Digestion<\/h2>\n
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