Sustainable Living

Digestion is the mechanism which recaptures solar energy from its plant-based container, and delivers it to the cells in the form of nutrients. The foods we eat are chemically complex. They must be broken down into simpler forms, so they can be absorbed through the intestinal walls and transported by the blood into the cells. The body creates the proteins it needs, based on our individual DNA map, out of the nutrients it finds in our food.

As soon as we see or smell food, our body begins to release digestive enzymes. This is why cooking slowly makes food more desirable. A long, slow cooking process allows the body to prepare itself to receive food. The aroma of a pot of simmering spaghetti sauce, a basting roast, a grilling hamburger, or a bubbling hot soup, signals the body to release hydrochloric acid, ptyalin, amylase, and other enzymes. The smell of food literally "makes our mouth water."

If we microwave our food, however, or eat in a place where these cooking smells cannot penetrate the air, we are less prepared for the eating process. Our bodies haven't been signaled properly that eating is about to begin. As a result, the digestion is slowed, or is imperfect. When digestion is imperfect, it is like plumbing gone awry. Clogs ensue, and we find we can no longer flush. Poor digestion is the beginning of longer term problems and mystery illnesses which require The Purple Pill, or the Pink and White Pill, or the little Chocolate Bars that make things go whoosh. One big problem with microwaving our food is: we don’t have a house full of cooking smells when we microwave. No cooking smells equals no release of signaling hormones which leads to poor digestion.

The olfactory system

You may know that if you lose your sense of smell, you also cannot taste. But did you know that your capacity to smell, which occurs through your olfactory system, is the only sense connected directly to the limbic system, or emotional system, of the brain? That’s why a smell can evoke a childhood memory. It is the smell of food which signals our digestive hormones to get ready.

We smell because tiny molecules travel through the air and into our respiratory system. It isn’t the cosmetics of the smell that prepare our bodies for digestion. Our body can tell the difference between an artificial smell and the molecule of a pure, essential oil from the essence of a plant. Plants are built to defend themselves, and to reproduce. They create an essence which sometimes attracts a mate, or attracts a bee to distribute their pollen, or fends off parasites and attackers. This essence is powerful, full of nutrients, and called an “essential oil.” These essential oils are in the plants when we eat them. Our bodies recognize them, and our limbic system relates to them. They bind with our primitive brain area, called the amygdala. In this binding, they incite our primordial id to action.

When the id is called to action, it knows its own. If you breathe in artificial smells, from artificial food . . . made from chemicals instead of the soil of Mother Earth . . . your limbic system knows it is not getting “the real thing”. The proper hormones for digestion are not triggered. Failure to eat real food from Nature means failure to digest fully and properly. The nose knows, even if the smell is ever so subtle that your consciousness doesn’t notice it. Your olfactory nerve tells the brain, which tells the emotion, which releases the hormones. Your olfactory nerve is right between your eyes. It’s like your third eye. It sees what you do not see, by its smell. Through this smell, emotes hormones. Emotion is chemical. Your food fuels it, leading to depression when you do not get what you need. The essence of plants is unique, and identifiable to the primordial olfactory bulb. If you smell a real essential oil, and then you smell a chemical substitute, you will know the difference. You will feel it in your chest, your lungs, and your sinuses. Most importantly, you will feel it in your chemical emotions, your muscles, your organs. Ultimately, smelling an artificial smell long enough, will cause your body operations to go out of whack. You can be in a state of chronic, long term depression, just because something around you doesn’t “smell right.” When we live with a bad smell long enough, our conscious mind stops smelling it. Our primordial limbic system, however, does not. If you feel chronically depressed, check the smells you live with.

The enzymatic process

When a smell has signaled that food is coming, the mouth first secretes ptyalin, which is used to break down the carbohydrates. Ptyalin breaks the starches into smaller subchains. By chewing food, we allow the starches to be sufficiently broken that they will be able to be carried through the digestive process. If we do not chew well enough, we will not have full digestion of what we eat. Inadequate chewing leads to inadequate use of the available nutrients. Cooking slowly allows enzymes to be released in our bodies. Chewing slowly allows the enzymatic processes to work efficiently. Gulping down a microwave dinner surprises the body, allowing the enzymatic processes to fail at their job of delivering nutrients to their destination. This is why "civilized" people cook slowly, eat slowly, and chew well.

Like soil, our bodies register acidity and alkalinity. We all know that plants grow best in an environment that is within a specific range of acidity versus alkalinity. This is also true for our bodies. Digestive processes and enzymes test for alkalinity or acidity as a signal for their release. As long as the environment is alkaline, the enzyme ptyalin continues to do its work of breaking up the starches. If our body's environment becomes too acid, however, ptyalin does not receive its signal to release, and the starches in our food fail to digest properly. This robs us of nutrients necessary to build the unique proteins specified in our DNA, and it leaves us constantly "hungering". We hunger for the nutrition we were promised, but failed to receive.

The level of acidity or alkalinity in our body is measurable in our saliva, our blood, and our urine. Foods that raise our acidity level are grains, fruits (including tomatoes), sugars, coffee, alcohol, and meat. Foods that raise our alkalinity level are beans, and most green, red, and yellow vegetables. For best digestion, we need to be in a slightly alkaline state at all times. That means we must eat sufficient servings of salad, spinach, kale, cabbage, broccoli, dark greens, and beets. The Standard American Diet is highly acidic. Too much acid brings out anger and violence. We are a highly aggressive nation. We blame our young children for “acting out”, when what they may be doing is having a reaction to the acid and sugar in their diet.

The small intestine

Having left the stomach, the partially digested food passes into the small intestine, where it is acted on further by proteolytic enzymes produced in the pancreas. The proteolytes continue their process, joined by bile, which is produced by the liver from cholesterol. Bile breaks up the fat globules into small droplets, so that the pancreatic enzyme lipase can break them down into fatty acids. These bile salts are transported out of the system through elimination. The more quickly they exit through bowel action, the less danger of a cholesterol buildup in the system. If  the bowels are sluggish, cholesterol levels trend up. High cholesterol is a sign of improper elimination. Herbalists the world over never tire of repeating the caution: eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. Quick bowel action prevents the cast-off poisons of the digestive process from re-circulating in the bloodstream. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, skin diseases, degeneration: these are all symptoms of a failure to sufficiently eliminate and keep the toxins flowing out of the body instead of back into the bloodstream. We have an idiomatic expression used sometimes about a person who is arrogant. Sometimes we say, “he thinks his excrement don’t stink.” That is a telling phrase. You see, human excrement, like good compost, is not supposed to stink. If it does stink, it means there is something going wrong in the digestive process. The fact that most Americans think it is supposed to stink is a worrisome clue about the state of our national diet.

Entering the bloodstream

Food continues to be broken down into its smaller parts as it moves, through peristalsis, along the small intestine. The small intestine is lined with millions of fingerlike projections called villi, which look like fur. The villi absorb the nutrients of the digested food and carry the nutrients into the bloodstream. The normal purpose of the villi is to act like a cheesecloth filter against undesirable elements, preventing their absorption into the bloodstream. But if the villi have been worn down and weakened through ingestion of non-food items like harsh chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, and pollutants, they do not do their job well. If the villi are worn down, toxins from the intestines pass through their filtering system. These toxins ultimately "break down" our body systems.

This is a very important point, and one which has generated confusion: environmental pollutants, drugs, pesticides, etc, are not the cause of disease in the body. Rather, these pollutants and poisons are the cause of wearing down of the intestinal villi. Worn down villi means the bloodstream absorbs body wastes. Body wastes, when allowed to back up into the bloodstream, cause disease. Therefore, scientific tests which look for cellular damage by the pollutants come up negative. The pollutants test as harmless. If your toilet backs up because somebody threw a sock down it, you can’t blame the sock, can you? So also, the FDA declares our pollutants and pesticides and chemical preservatives as harmless. They can’t be blamed for causing our disease. They’re just the innocent sock in the plumbing.

We understand, however, that eating pollutants and chemical preservatives is harmful. This is why we must choose to eat only real food, grown by nature, the child of a mother, not produced in a laboratory. A person who is concerned about the health of their body would not eat chemical by-products (pesticides, pollutants, preservatives, artificial food additives, and foodstuffs with chemical names). Eating these by-products is the equivalent of eating plastic.

Conclusion

The digestive process is ordered and strict. It is observable and documented by mainstream science. The action of nutrients in our body is known and measured. The impact of nutritional processes and nutrient absorption is evident. This process kicks off every time we eat or drink, smell or see food. Whatever we put into our mouths, these enzymatic factory processes begin to work on it. If we eat plastic, meaning things which are not "food", we will tax and destroy the factory mechanisms which exist to keep our body running. Much plastic is packaged and sitting on our grocery shelves, filled with chemical additives and devoid of food. Those who eat it will reach for one pill after another, searching for a cure. They will be both obese and undernourished, always hungering for something unspecified, and always irritated, depressed, and sad, as a result of the enzymatic action of the digestive process.

Like a polluted river, however, the digestive system constantly flows and eliminates. Even the most polluted river, if the pollution is stopped, will recover and be restored to health. By immediately ending our plastic-eating behavior, and eating only whole, natural foods, grown in the Earth without pesticides, pollutants, additives or preservatives, we can, over time, restore our health and our balance. This restored balance is the means to achieving a healthy weight, a healthy body, and a positive outlook on life.

read more articles about sustainable lifestyles from the archives!

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