Why Digestion is important
The NTP approach starts by addressing the foundations of health from a nutrient-dense whole foods perspective. One of the most common areas of health that can benefit from foundational support is digestion. Many people have health complaints that seem unrelated to digestion. But when we look closer, there are many connections throughout the body, and digestion is connected to almost every aspect of health. — a simple answer to why digestion is important.
In this article I want to dive deeper to answer a common question: “Why should I focus on improving my digestion, if my real problem is ______ ?” This could include a wide range of problems such as food reactions, frequent infections, autoimmune disease, hormone imbalance, high cholesterol, plaque buildup in arteries, anxiety, stress, etc. It may surprise you to hear that digestion can in fact impact ALL of these health challenges, and more! Each of these areas can be supported by improving digestive function and gut health. This is one reason that nutritional therapy focuses on the foundations such as digestion, because it has a much wider impact than its own area and can improve symptoms throughout the body – even symptoms that at first seem unrelated to gut health. Let’s take a closer look!
Digestion and Immune Health
Immune health is linked to digestive health in many ways. The first lines of defense in your immune system are the physical barriers between the inside of your body and the outside world. This even includes most of the digestive tract, since it can be imagined as a tube through your body. One important protection along the way is the acidity of gastric juices in your stomach; when the pH is acidic enough, harmful microbes are destroyed and nutrients (especially proteins) are broken down before moving on to the next stage. Another physical barrier is the mucus membrane that forms the lining of your small intestine. However, if harmful microbes survive the stomach acid (often because it was not acidic enough) they move into the small intestine and can cause irritation and inflammation to the delicate gut lining. Undigested or partially digested proteins can also cause damage. Even worse, continued damage to your gut lining can lead to weakening in the cellular junctions (often called “leaky gut”), and these microbes and proteins are allowed to infiltrate the barrier and actually enter your bloodstream! This can be a cause of infections and food reactions, and even some autoimmune issues.
The large intestine hosts your microbiome, a wide variety of bacteria and other organisms that live in your bowel. When those harmful microbes get down this far, they can disrupt the balance and lead to overgrowth of things like candida or E. coli. The balance can also be disrupted by any long-term extremes in your diet – such as high amounts of refined carbohydrates or very high amounts of fats. The best way to support your gut microbiome balance is to eat a balanced diet that includes plenty of whole food fiber.
Digestion and Hormones
The endocrine system is what releases hormones into the body. At first glance it may look like hormones can’t have anything to do with digestion, but let’s look closer! What are hormones made of? There are two groups of hormones: fat-soluble and water-soluble. Many of the fat-soluble hormones such as testosterone and estrogen are made of cholesterol, and your thyroid hormones are built of iodine plus tyrosine (an amino acid). The water-soluble hormones are made of amino acids, either modified or joined together in chains. And now we see where digestion comes into it! Amino acids must be gathered from proteins that are digested from food that you eat. Also, both cholesterol and iodine can be absorbed from your food. Even more importantly, healthy fats are essential for making and transporting the fat-soluble hormones, but of course the fats must be well digested and absorbed.
Without proper digestion, hormones can become imbalanced due to poor absorption of proteins or cholesterol and fats. In addition, if bowel function is slow, waste hormones can be reabsorbed instead of eliminated, leading to a further imbalance in the body. By focusing on improving your digestion, you can support hormone health with the building blocks that are needed.
Digestion and Cardiovascular Health
By this point you may not be surprised to hear that digestion is important for the health of the heart and blood vessels. Stomach pH levels are very important for the absorption of calcium and B vitamins from your diet. Stomach acid also helps breakdown proteins into amino acids such as taurine and carnitine which are necessary for heart function. The liver and gallbladder have the important task of managing bile which helps digest fats and fat-soluble vitamins – these fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin D, A, and K are necessary for the body to use calcium in the right way (i.e. for bone and cell health instead of blocking arteries!). Further along in the digestive process, a balanced microbiome allows several key vitamins to be produced in the gut. If any of these steps – stomach acid, bile function, or disrupted gut bacteria – are not working properly, this can lead to problems with cardiovascular health. We often hear marketing of “heart-healthy” foods, and while it is true that what you eat does affect your heart, your food can only help your heart if it is digested well!
Digestion and Detoxification
Detox is a word we come across often these days, but true detoxification depends on the proper function of digestion. We need to be careful in detoxing that toxins are both mobilized AND eliminated. Let me explain… many toxins are fat-soluble and are stored in fatty tissue. When those toxins are mobilized or released from being stored, they enter the bloodstream. If they are not eliminated, they will recirculate in the body and can cause an increase in symptoms and will end up being reabsorbed by the body. This is why elimination is so important. And elimination depends on… digestion! The digestive system assists detoxification generally in two ways – it prevents toxins from entering your body, and it eliminates toxins that have been mobilized and prepared as waste. As prevention, the stomach acid and the microbiome of your mouth and gut was designed to prevent many toxins from ever becoming a problem. If toxins do enter your body, they are dealt with along with other unwanted substances – this is the mobilization and elimination part of detoxification which starts in the liver. Your liver produces different enzymes to break down toxins into water-soluble molecules for easier transportation (called Phase I detoxification). Those molecules must then be bound to specific “escort” proteins so that they will exit your body (called Phase II detoxification). Both steps are vital to ensure that the toxins do not recirculate in your body, and both steps depend on healthy digestion and regular bowel movements.
Digestion and Mental Health
Mental health is another important area that can be impacted by digestion. The nervous system is a complicated network of nerves and synapses throughout your body, not just in your brain! The largest nerve of all is called the vagus nerve which provides a strong connection between your brain and your gut, and signals travel both ways – from the brain to the gut, but also from the gut to the brain! Do you remember ever feeling like you had a knot in your stomach or feeling nauseous when you were nervous? These are symptoms of the close gut-brain connection. It turns out that changes in your gut microbiome (the many different organisms like bacteria that live in your gut) can have an impact on some mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and stress. Studies have found that eating prebiotics and specific probiotics daily led to a reduction in severity of these symptoms. This demonstrates the impact your gut can have on your mental health, and the importance of a balanced microbiome as part of healthy digestion.
Digestion also contributes to mental health indirectly, though nutrient absorption. When nutrients are not being absorbed (even if you might be eating them), they cannot be used to support the vital functions throughout the body — including the brain. Studies have shown that nutrients such as fiber, B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, and selenium may all play a part in supporting mental health and reducing symptoms of depression. The studies also show the reverse — that depression is more likely when there are deficiencies in these nutrients.
Conclusion
So let’s revisit the original question that we started with at the beginning: “Why should I focus on improving my digestion, if my real problem is something else ?” I hope you can see now why digestion is important — and foundational! — in all of these different areas of health. While it can be helpful to address problems directly, it is crucial to address underlying issues. Otherwise, it may be just a band-aid solution, and the problem could resurface in other ways. By focusing on digestion, the surface problems such as hormone imbalance or frequent infections or anxiety can be helped from the foundational level. Sometimes results are quick and dramatic! Other times it can take more perseverance to see improvements. But improving your digestion is a great place to start in supporting your body through many different health challenges, even chronic illnesses that may seem unrelated at first.
As an NTP, I work with clients to optimize digestion, along with the other foundational areas of health. If you would like to learn more about this approach, please contact me! I would love to help you take the first steps to improving your health with nutritional support.