What does the Digestion System contain ?

 NOTE: Google’s new policy on advertising prescription drugs does not let us mention the names of many of the body’s naturally occurring hormones. In this article we cannot mention the hormone secreted by the pancreas that controls the amount of sugar in you blood - clue it is often taken by diabetics. In this article the offending word is marked as Ins**in.

Digestion System Contents

At no point in this description should we forget that the system we are viewing is infinitely more complex than our understanding allows us to see.

To lose sight of this great wonder, and replace it with our sterile, and wholly inadequate labels, is to rob yourself of the miracle of life - and the great tragedy that scientists are often responsible for.

Bacteria

The length of the intestine alone, indicates an expectation for a diet of predominantly raw vegetable matter.

Firstly, sweeping all misconceptions aside, the body does NOT digest food. Microbes are the main players in this amazing process, and while the body both harbours and gardens them, it did not create them, and therefore cannot lay claim to them in any real sense. At best it is a symbiotic relationship.

The body has simply created an environment in which these bacteria proliferate. And they do so at the expense of the food that we eat. We pour in foods, water, heat, and both acids and alkalis, to keep their situation just how they like it, so that they can breed more of themselves. In doing so, they give off bi-products that our bodies utilise. The body does aid them with certain chemicals that they cannot produce, such as fat dissolvers, and a whole array of powerful digestive enzymes, so that our bodies may gain as much from the exchange as possible, but they are pretty much on their own terms in there. We call them friendly bacteria because the process of their multiplication is digestion, and the products of these processes are known as nutrients. They free up vitamins, minerals, amino acids (proteins), simplify carbohydrates, split fatty acids, etc., that would be locked away in the cells of the foods that we eat and would pass through us untouched without these little guests of ours.

However, there are thousands of other bacteria that would love to live inside of us and be fed and housed in such perfect conditions. And they do, in relative harmony with the 'friendlies' until they get out of control. The bi-products of this fermentation or putrefaction differ greatly in chemical composition from nutrients we reep from the good guys. They are therefore useless to the body, and we loosely use the term 'toxins' for these aberrant results.

The friendly bacteria should dominate the intestines by about 80%, with just 20% unfriendly bacteria existing in their shadow. But a lifetime of foods which tend to breed more unfriendly bacteria must end up with the inevitable results - about 80% unfriendly, 20% friendly, or worse.

Fresh, raw, ripe fruits and vegetables eaten in reasonable amounts and simple combinations will always help the "friendly" bacteria to proliferate. These were the foods we evolved eating; they are the fuels that our systems are designed to work with, and the elements that our body is built from. Only in the latest fraction of our existence has Humankind drifted from this entirely satisfactory diet.

Foods that are high in complex carbohydrates (starch), will tend towards fermentation and those too high in protein will certainly aid putrefaction. Moreover, the more complex the combinations of foods, the greater the tendency there is away from digestion and towards putrefaction/fermentation. This is because certain things must happen at certain stages during their passage throughout the digestive tract. Even a delivery of the RIGHT materials to the wrong place in the tract, or at the wrong time, will mean that a different bacteria will act upon them, and instead of nutrients, you end up with toxins.

The body has learnt to recognise the difference between these products, as well as the processes that create them, and has some degree of control over which of the two processes predominate. But of course, endless use of these control measures leaves them somewhat strained. Observation of a few ground rules in how this human monkey's closest relatives eat, tell us to simply and reel in our eat habits.

The Psychology of Battle

There is often a great psychological response to the subject of bacteria, and infection. Most people greet the subject with emotionally charged visions of being eaten alive from the inside. But there is enough ambiguity in facts on this subject to suggest an entirely new approach, and provoke a much more agreeable and healthy emotional response.

With any invader to the body, there is a defence against them, this is true. But modern science has chosen to use the terminology of war to describe what may be an entirely symbiotic relationship.

It is known that many of the toxins stored within the body are lumped together in sticky masses (not only within the bowel, but also within the sinuses, lungs, muscles, liver, etc.), and the breakdown of these sticky masses for elimination from the system is best done, not by the body itself, but by external bacteria. Whether they are "brought-in for the job", or whether they are opportunists seeking an easy ride, is immaterial here. The point is that they exist, they do perform this function and the body (when in balance) does have dominion over their activities.

What is of major importance is the mental attitude evoked by the two approaches.

In response to the battleground scenario, with wars of defence being always waged against our terrifying attackers, there is much fear and stress, which are certified immune-repressing emotions, and definitely lead to a faith in medicine that undermines the individual's self-confidence and the body's integrity.

However, if the same scene can be viewed as a calming exchange of symbiotic needs, where unassimilable lumps of waste are broken down into manageable parts by an outside entity, thereby obtaining its food, then an altogether more healthy and healing tranquility ensues.

Certainly there is no benefit in further stressing the immune system, or distressing the intestines by encouraging the fears of the mind.

This in turn elucidates the wonder of life's dynamic balances, and erodes the belittling concept that the body ends, and the world begins (very Buddhist), and all outside of us is to be feared !!!