Your gallbladder and why it’s important

Posted on April 7, 2019 by G. Belanger

Yesterday I had a video coaching session with one of my patrons, and the last thing we talked about was the gall bladder. They recently had an ultrasound done to check out the insides of the abdomen—obviously to make sure everything looks good. The kidneys looked good, the liver had a small benign lump of 1–2 mm in size (angioma sounds so much more serious), and the gall bladder had a bunch of little stones. I asked what the doctor recommended.

“There’s nothing to worry about. Let’s check again in half a year.” That was it. Nothing more. So, they asked me if there was anything that could be done to help in some way.

What do you think? Is there not always something that can be done to help—to help the body cleanse itself, repair itself, heal itself, improve its physiological and metabolic functions?

We’ll take the time to study and explore the liver and its functions in greater detail later—the liver is a lot more complex. The gall bladder is quite simple, and so, I just wanted to share with you what I explained yesterday, and at the same time, take the opportunity to expand a little on that.

First the Anatomy

Looking at the abdomen from the bottom of the sternum (the bone between the pectorals) to below the hips, after having removed the skin and layers of muscle, cut out the front part of the ribs, and changed the appearance to make it cartoon-like, without any blood, veins, arteries, or nerves, and thus not so shocking to look at, we would see something like this:

Digestive system: front view with labels

The large, dark red organ that is the liver sits at the very top of the abdomen with its largest lobe located on the right side of the body. On the left, below the liver’s smaller left lobe, is the stomach that curves back towards the middle where it connects to the small intestine (duodenum). The gallbladder—the small dark green pouch—is nestled between the bottom of the liver’s right lobe and the first part of the duodenum. Below the stomach, sweeping across the abdomen from one side of the body to the other is the transverse part of the large intestine (colon). The entire lower portion of the abdomen is filled with the longest segment of the intestines.

If we zoom in on the upper abdomen,

Upper digestive system: close up front view

and then hide the liver,

Upper digestive system: close up front view without liver to show bile ducts

we see all of the little green ducts embedded into the liver whose function it is carry the bile from the different parts of the organ to the main bile duct and gallbladder.

Taking a look at the same part of the abdomen from the back,

Upper digestive system: close up back view with labels

we see how the gallbladder sits between the liver and duodenum, and how the main bile duct sweeps down behind the pancreas to connect to the main pancreatic duct such that the bile from the liver and gallbladder can be injected into the small intestine together with the enzymes, insulin, glucagon, and bicarbonate from the pancreas. We also see from this side the dark red, bean shaped, right and left kidneys, and the yellow adrenal glands sitting on top of them.

And then the physiology

Why do we need bile and what does it do? Why is there a gallbladder? And what is bile anyway?

Bile is 97% water, 0.7% bile salts (sodium and potassium), 0.5% cholesterol, fatty acids, and lecithin, 0.2% bilirubin, and a tiny bit of inorganic salts. In human adults the liver produces 400–800 ml of bile per day (Wikipedia).

The liver produces bile continuously but slowly. When we eat, depending on how much fat there is in the meal, the digestive system may need quite a bit of bile to handle the fat that was just ingested. Hence the need for storage and thus the function of the gallbladder.

The purpose of bile is to emulsify fat. Emulsifying means making into tiny droplets that can mix into another liquid to form a smooth homogeneous solution. For example, a bit of mustard works very well to emulsify the oil and vinegar that would otherwise not mix into a smooth creamy vinaigrette. After emulsification, fat droplets are typically 15–30 microns in size.

We need bile to emulsify the fats that we eat so that the pancreatic enzyme lipase can then break these triglycerides down into monoglycerides and free fatty acids. This is done in the small intestine where the bile and enzymes are secreted from the pancreas with the bicarbonate solution. This in turn allows the fat to be transported through the intestinal wall before being reassembled into triglycerides and absorbed into the lymphatic system. Without bile, fat could not be absorbed. It would go straight through the gut and be excreted undigested.

Why would stones form in the gallbladder? Is there a way to prevent the formation of gallstones? And what actually are these gallstones?

Gallstones are basically little hard lumps of cholesterol. One of the functions of the gallbladder is to concentrate the bile which comes in quite diluted, as we saw earlier, being 97% water. But when the concentration grows too high, then cholesterol precipitates out and forms little lumps. These are what we call gallstones.

Given that we know that stones form out of precipitated cholesterol when the concentration of the bile is too high in the gallbladder, it is simply logical that if the concentration can be kept low enough, below the threshold at which cholesterol will precipitate, then no stones would form. But why does the concentration of bile grow to the point of precipitation?

Let’s ask another question: what happens if we don’t eat much fat? The liver produces bile continuously, between 400 and 800 ml per day. This bile is stored into the gallbladder until it is needed after a meal in which fat was ingested. If we don’t eat much fat in a meal, then, naturally, not much bile will be needed, and most of the available bile will therefore remain in the gallbladder. Because the liver continues to produce it, the gallbladder needs to make room for it, and thus concentrate its contents further.

So, what happens if we never eat very much fat, and if actually, every meal is a relatively low fat meal? Well, what happens in a pool of water if the water does not flow out, and is by this not renewed by fresh water? Stagnation. In the case of the pool of water, we all know what happens: it grows dirty, then thick, then greenish, then totally filled with lumpy green gelatinous stuff. In the case of the gallbladder, we can imagine that something analogous takes place, and that the lumps of cholesterol are like the lumps of green gelatinous stuff in the water.

The solution is simple: eat plenty of fat on a regular basis. This way, the gallbladder can empty itself out regularly, and the bile does not stagnate, grow more concentrated, and eventually lumpy with gallstones.

Your gallbladder and why it’s important

Here’s what we learned:

The gallbladder sits between the right lobe of the liver and the first part of the small intestine. It stores and concentrates bile which is mostly water with small amounts of salts, bilirubin, lecithin, and cholesterol. The liver produces bile continuously in the amount of 400 to 800 ml per day.

The function of bile is to emulsify the fat we eat to make it absorbable. Without bile, fat just go through and gets excreted undigested. The same is therefore true for all fat-soluble minerals and vitamins, including some of the most important of them all, the crucial vitamins A, D, E, and K2.

If we don’t eat fat, there’s no need for bile. If we don’t eat much fat for a long time, the bile will get more and more concentrated. Eventually, the concentration will be high enough for cholesterol to precipitate out of the bile and form little lumps. These lumps of cholesterol are called gallstones.

Imagine that this continues for years and even decades, following a good “heart-healthy” low-fat diet. What do you think will eventually happen based on what we’ve just discussed? More stagnation, more highly concentrated bile, more gallstones, and then at one point, this whole thing explodes into acute infection, acute inflammation, excruciating pain, and emergency surgery to remove the infected gallbladder.

And then what? I’ll you finish this exercise in deductive reasoning which you now have all the necessary background to complete.

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Why every undigested protein is an allergen

Posted on March 3, 2019 by G. Belanger

We come out of our mother’s womb, and we are very soon thereafter given a bottle to suckle on. In the bottle there’s a powdered ‘infant formula’ mixed with water, or milk, or both. “The most commonly used infant formulas contain purified cow’s milk whey and casein as a protein source, a blend of vegetable oils as a fat source, lactose as a carbohydrate source, a vitamin-mineral mix, and other ingredients depending on the manufacturer” (source: Wikipedia). The water is municipal tap water with residues of agricultural and industrial chemicals, of prescription drugs of various kinds, fluoride that suppresses the immune system and makes the bones and teeth brittle, and chlorine that kills the bacteria and destroys the flora of the gut. The milk is most likely UHT, which stands for ultra high temperature pasteurised, cow’s milk from cows that have never set food outside, have never eaten a blade of grass, have only ever eaten soy, oats, and corn, and have their whole lives received antibiotics preventatively to lower the probability infection due to the fact that they are sick and immunosuppressed from the living conditions they are subjected to. How’s that for a start?

We start teething and we are given ‘teething cookies’ to nibble on. Cookies, like Gerber’s classic arrowroot cookie, made wheat and arrowroot flours, dairy proteins and solids, vegetable oils, sugars, and other stuff like stabilisers, preservatives, texture and flavour enhancers, and some added vitamins and minerals, of course.

We don’t need to have teeth to have ice cream. In fact, parents are encouraged to give cold things like ice cream teething infants to soothe their gums aching from the teeth pushing through them. And we love it, of course! We’re still far from being able to speak, but we eagerly await the next spoonful, which, if delayed too long, makes us impatient, and soon angry enough to cry out and let our parents know we want more.

Naturally, we never make a fuss when we are fed apple sauce, or pear sauce, or pureed bananas, peaches, or apricots, nor when we are are given mixes like banana-strawberry, or strawberry-kiwi, or even apple-carrot-parsnips. We also like sweet potatoes, squash, and even regular mashed potatoes with our pureed meals. But the green things like mashed pees or broccoli, that we like less—quite a lot less.

We always start the day with orange juice. In fact, this is so much a part of our upbringing that we can’t even imagine a morning with having orange juice. And as soon as we can chew, our breakfast is made of those delicious, sweet and crunchy cereals served in a big bowl of milk. This is another part of our upbringing that is so much a part of us that we often consider it a normal part of life, and can’t imagine a life with it.

We snack on cookies, on muffins, on granola bars, and particularly like the chocolate covered ones. We snack on chips, crunchy and salty—on Doritos, Pringles, and all sorts of different kinds of chips—and we love them too. We love our regular home pasta dinners, our pizza dinners, our hot dogs, our burgers, our fries. When we’re hungry in the afternoon, we make ourselves those delicious peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwiches on ultra moist slices of white bread, and they’re so good we have a hard time to stop eating them one after another. And what about our Nutella, that amazing chocolate spread we can never have enough of? We really could eat the whole jar if we didn’t force ourselves to stop. It’s so delicious we even eat it by the spoonful when we don’t feel like having bread with it. And they tell us it’s good for us, that’s a good source of nutritious milk and hazelnuts. Wow! How great!

We get sick pretty often as school children, but not more than anyone else, about ten times a year or so. Our parents seem to get colds less often than we do, only about 4 or five times per year. Sometimes it’s worse than others, and we are given antibiotics. We take them because our parents give them to us. And they give them to us because our family doctor tells them to. We get loose stools for a while, and we don’t understand why. After some time, things kind of get back to normal.

We go on like this for years. Actually, usually for at least two or three decades. Everything we do destroys our gut flora. All the foods, the chemicals, the drugs, destroy the essential health-promoting bacteria and the balance between the different varieties that are meant to populate the gut, and at the same time promote the overgrowth of specific kinds of pathogenic bacteria and yeasts that take over our gut.

All the foods we eat are loaded with lectins that damage the lining of our gut, making it thinner, less functional, less protective, and more vulnerable to further damage. This damaged gut with its damaged lining and damaged glycocalyx becomes leaky. Not only do we not digest food properly, not only do we not absorb nutrients properly, not only do we not excrete wastes properly, but all sorts of stuff starts leaking from our gut into our blood. And possibly the worst thing that can happen is to have a leak into our bloodstream of undigested proteins.

The reason is that undigested proteins in the blood trigger the immune system that responds to them as allergens. As this is the result of a degenerative process, and is therefore a chronic condition that grows more severe with time, the dysfunction eventually manifests itself into auto-immune disease conditions. Those ‘incurable’ disease conditions on which modern conventional medicine has given up. This is how serious it is.

Proteins from out food are not meant to enter the bloodstream—ever. So much so that the kidneys will completely clog themselves up trying to remove proteins from the bloodstream to the point of kidney failure. Proteins are meant to be broken down into the much smaller units of which they are made called amino acids. And breaking down proteins into amino acids is meant to be done by the stomach before entering the intestines. Hence, having not fully broken down proteins in the gut can only really happen if they haven’t been broken down while they were in the stomach. Clearly, it isn’t therefore only the gut that is dysfunctional and damaged: the stomach must also be dysfunctional in some way to allow these undigested proteins to pass into the intestines in the first place.

We have previously looked in detail at the process of digestion in Understanding digestion. The essence of what we need to know is that the stomach has specialised cells whose purpose is to secrete hydrochloric acid to break down proteins; that acid is produced when these cells detect the presence of protein in the stomach; that as proteins are broken down, the pH rises and the stomach secretes more acid to keep the pH low in order to continue breaking down the protein; that when the pH stays low for a few hours or so, this signals that all the proteins have been properly broken down, and that the chyme (the processed contents of the stomach) can be transferred to the small intestine; and that at which point the stomach valve opens, the acidic chyme moves through, and the pancreas injects into the small intestines a concentrated solution of bicarbonate to neutralise the acid which would otherwise damage the lining of the intestines. This is how it’s supposed to work.

But if there isn’t enough bicarbonate in the system, the pancreas cannot do this properly. If there isn’t enough water, the pancreas cannot do this properly. If the stomach doesn’t produce enough acid, the proteins are not broken down properly. And if the acid producing cells of the stomach are not regularly exposed to high concentrations of hydrochloric acid, they lose their ability to produce it. This happens when little or no concentrated sources of protein are eaten, like when we are vegetarian or vegan for a long time. But it also happens when the lining of the stomach, which is supposed to be protected by a thick layer of mucus while digesting protein, is instead exposed to and damaged by its own hydrochloric acid. This happens when there isn’t enough water to make that protective layer of mucus, and it is why we should drink water before meals.

So, here’s what we get: not enough water or bicarbonate—loss of acid-neutralising function of pancreas, and damage to intestines; not enough protein in the diet—loss of acid production ability, and undigested proteins; not enough water—damage of stomach lining, loss of acid production ability, and undigested proteins; undigested proteins—chronic immune response to circulating allergens and autoimmune disease conditions. This is compounded with the damage that results from exposure to chemicals and antibiotics, from the overload of sugars and starches, and from the destruction of the cells lining the gut by the lectins in our diet.

The end result is, as expected, precisely what we observe: a population where basically everyone has, to some extent, compromised digestion, and therefore, a population where everyone is, to some extent, sick. Because we don’t know any of this, because we don’t know how food affects the body, because we don’t know how the organs of the body function, because we don’t now how digestion works, and because nobody else around us knows any of it either, we believe everything is normal and everything is just fine, just as it should be, just as it always has been. But the truth is that it isn’t.

What’s actually hard to believe is how simple the solution is: 1) avoid as much as possible exposure to chemicals and antibiotics, and adopt measures to systematically help the systems of the body cope with and recover from the exposure we cannot entirely avoid; 2) avoid as much as possible the overload of sugars and starches, and focus on animal protein and fats from free range animals, and green vegetables. This will automatically lead to a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet that also minimises exposure to gut-damaging lectins; 3) drink plenty of clean water to ensure good hydration, especially with enough time to replenish the stomach’s and pancreas’s reserves before meals, and take a little extra bicarbonate on an empty stomach with your first glass of water in the morning to maintain a good alkaline buffer and balance.

This strategy is so simple, and yet it is both preventative and curative. The extent to which we need to be strict depends on the extent of the damage from which we need to recover. And as it true for everything, it’s far easier to prevent damage than to recover from it. That’s obvious but it’s good to remind ourselves of it when our motivation weakens or strength of will falters. The amazing news is that, as shown by doctors Terry Wahls and Steven Gundry who specialise in the treatment of autoimmune disease conditions, recovery from even the most severe cases is virtually guaranteed and only a matter of consistency, patience, and time. I hope this is enough of a motivation for you. Enough of a motivation to at least start to make the effort to regain and then preserve the health of your gut and digestive system—the system on which everything about your health depends.

Oh, and breakfast? Just skip it and have your first meal at lunchtime. Breakfast is not, as we have been told over and over again, the most important meal of the day. It’s actually the most important meal of the day to skip. We’ll get back to this point some other time.

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Every undigested protein is an allergen

Posted on February 2, 2019 by G. Belanger

If someone asked you what you thought was the most fundamental, the most essential, the most important health challenge that we face as modern human beings living in industrialised countries, what would you tell them?

Take a moment. Shift your gaze away from this text, and think about it.

When we read or hear something about health and nutrition in the news, on websites, on blogs, on social media, or even in books, the information we encounter is almost always biased and directed in some way. It is also always restricted in scope. In fact, it is usually very restricted in scope. All this is perfectly natural and expected: whenever we sit down to write, it is usually about something in particular, something specific, some topic we want to address or explore. It’s hard to think of circumstances where this would not be the case.

Moreover, basically everybody who writes anything, does so in order to be read, and therefore naturally attempts to appeal as much as possible to their readership, both in content and in style. But maybe the most influential factor is that we have grown accustomed to information packets, to bite-size bullets of information: quick-to-read, quick-to-scroll-through, and quick-to-either-share-or-forget. And this has above everything else shaped the way information is being presented by all those people out there trying to appeal to more readers. Little can be done to counter this tendency. It’s just how it is at this time.

As a consequence, for all these reasons, we are—the whole world is—migrating away from the mindset that encourages inquiry into the global, the general, the underlying aspects of things. Instead, we are migrating towards an evermore concentrated, focused, laser-beam approach to basically everything. This is true in all fields of study and inquiry to some extent. In matters of nutrition, it is particularly noticeable, and the reason is surely at least in part because we tend to be at the same time very interested and highly sensitive to advice about what we should or should not eat. We take such advice very personally, and often react strongly to it.

Our relationship to food is very deep because it is so constant and continuous, so intimately related to our survival. This relationship starts when we come out of our mother’s womb, and persists throughout each day, every day of our life, until this life of ours itself comes to an end. What in addition makes this relationship so close and so intense is that if we don’t drink or eat, usually even for a few hours, we get headaches and stomach aches, we get light headed, weak, and unable to concentrate and function, we get grumpy and irritable. It is very clear and naturally understandable that we therefore tend to be—that we are—very sensitive to advice about what to eat, but immensely more so to advice about what not to eat, especially if we happen to eat those foods about which the advice is given.

Hence the movement to superficial, non-contentious, bite size bullets of information: ‘blueberries are excellent: they are low in sugar and full of antioxidants’; ‘avocados are amazing: they are not only full of healthy fats but they are also alkalising’; ‘hydrogenated vegetable oils are very bad: they are full of toxic trans fatty acids.’

But what about the essential, the fundamental, the underlying aspects of things?

You have had more than a few minutes to think about it. What would you say, then, to this question of what is most fundamental to the health, to what constitutes the most fundamental health challenge we face? I would say it’s digestion.

Digestion is where everything about us begins and ends. It is in and through the digestive system that we absorb all the nutrients from our food and excrete all solid wastes. It is through the digestive system that we absorb all the constituents of everything that we call body, and excrete all that is toxic, be it produced from the environment or from within through healthy digestive and metabolic processes. Do you find this sufficient to illustrate why digestion is so fundamental? For me it is. But we can go a lot further.

Evolutionary considerations, arguments, and observational evidence, are always useful, and usually very powerful in guiding clear thinking about matters of health. One of the main questions that has and continues to preoccupy evolutionary biologists is that of the growth of the human brain. In this, one of the most compelling ideas put forward to explain its evolutionary history is called The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis. I plan to, in the future, devote much more time to it. But I must refer to it here because of its relevance to digestion.

The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis is based on the fact that there is a strict minimum to the amount of calories any animal requires to survive, the observation that the brain is the most metabolically expensive organ in the body, and the conclusion that it would be very hard for any large complex animal to sustain two systems as energetically expensive as the brain. Because the gut is the second most metabolically expensive, and because both the brain and gut together account for a disproportionately large fraction of the body’s caloric needs, an increase in the size of the brain would necessarily be at the expense of that of the gut, and vice versa. It simply would not be possible to sustain both a large brain and a large gut. And thus, the growth of the brain would have to be accompanied by a shrinking of the digestive system. This is what is observed.

However, it is important to emphasize that it is the shrinking of the digestive system that allowed for the growth of the brain; not the growth of the brain that precipitated the shrinking of the gut. The growth of the brain would only be possible with a surpluss of calories for it to growth and have its increased activity sustained. It is even more important to emphasize that this evolution was the unintended consequence of a shift from a high-fibre, nutrient-poor, plant-based diet, to one consisting mainly of low-fibre, nutrient-rich, animal-based foods.

Number two Silverback Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei) of Kwitonda Group, Akarevuro, Virunga Mountains, Rwanda

Male mountain gorilla of the berengei berengei subspecies of eastern gorillas in Ruanda (Source: Time). As you can see from the chest muscle definition, this adult male’s bodyfat is low. The huge bulging belly that is apparent when they are seated and relaxed is the consequence of having it hold the very long gut required to process each day approximately 20 kg of fibrous roots, leaves, and stocks of the plants they eat.

It is very interesting—and it is surely related to this evolutionary history—that the gut has by far the largest number of nerve endings, second only to the central nervous system. Moreover, unlike other organs and systems of the body, all of which are entirely controlled by the brain, it is the only one with directive nervous signalling to the brain. Because of this, it is the only organ with a direct influence on the brain. Thus, besides the physical implications, some of which we’ll explore soon, it is quite literally the case that a happy gut means a happy brain. And conversely, a sad, unhappy, depressed brain is very likely to be caused by a dysfunctional gut.

It is a sick, dysfunctional, damaged gut that is the primary characteristic underlying states of disease. This is why I would say that it is a sick, dysfunctional, damaged gut that is the most fundamental health challenge we face today as modern human beings.

I know this might leave you hanging. Especially because we have not yet made any reference to the title. But I promise, we’ll pick up from here next time.

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Understanding digestion

Posted on August 3, 2013 by G. Belanger

There are four things about digestion that I believe to be essential to understand, remember, and always keep in mind. The first is that although the environment of the stomach can be, and is generally at least mildly acidic, the intestines must be alkaline. The second is that the level of acidity inside the stomach depends on what is in it: it is in response to whatever comes into the stomach that specialised cells of its lining secrete hydrochloric acid in greater or lesser amounts. The third is that only protein requires a highly acidic environment to be properly broken down into the amino acids that make up protein before moving on into the small intestine; fats and carbohydrates neither require nor stimulate the secretion of acid in the stomach because they are broken down in the alkaline environment of the intestine. And the fourth is that water is totally crucial to the proper function of all digestive organs, and to the whole process of digestion from start to finish.

Model of the human digestive system with labels

Because proteins are so hard to break down, they must remain in a highly acidic environment in the stomach for about 3 hours before the resulting chyme should be, can be, and is normally transferred to the small intestine. (Obviously, the time depends on the amount.) And the more acidic the environment of the stomach, the better it is for the breakdown of protein, but also to protect the organism by destroying pathogenic bacteria that could have come with the protein, as is presumably often the case in the wild.

In addition to the hydrochloric acid secreted by the stomach, protein-digesting enzymes (proteases) like pepsin are also secreted by the stomach when it contains protein. Moreover, the acid activates the inactive forms of the enzymes prorennin and pepsinogen into their active forms: rennin is necessary for digesting milk protein, and pepsin breaks down the proteins into polypeptides. It is very important to remember that the stomach has cells that sense what nutrients are present, so that it knows what and how much to secrete for their digestion.

Many people suffer simultaneously from amino acid deficiency, and the consequences of putrefaction of undigested protein in the intestine, even though they eat plenty, if not too much protein, because their stomach does not produce the amount of hydrochloric acid that is needed for proper protein breakdown. In fact, this is very common in older people, but it is also a problem in the middle aged and even in young adults. This problem can be partially remedied by taking hydrochloric acid supplements with protein meals, an approach that works very well for the elderly, but addressing the fundamental issues that lead to digestive dysfunction is obviously most important. The digestion of fats and carbohydrates is entirely different.

Simple carbohydrates eaten on an empty stomach will move out of it and into the intestine in a matter of minutes. This is why blood sugar levels go up almost instantly when we eat or drink simple carbs like whole fruit or fruit juice. Starchy carbohydrates begin to be broken down into sugar when they come into contact with those enzymes in the mouth whose purpose it is to do this (primarily amylase), and will be broken down completely over the course of a few hours, not in the stomach, but in the small intestine.

The same goes for fat: fat or oil by itself eaten on an empty stomach will swiftly move to the small intestine as it does not need an acidic environment, and thus simply does not need to stay in the stomach. But unlike carbohydrates, fats need to first be emulsified into droplets that can mix in the watery environment of the small intestine. This is done by the bile produced by the liver, but stored and secreted by the gall bladder into the small intestine. The emulsified triglycerides are then broken apart by pancreatic lipase that separates the glycerol backbone from the three fatty acids. The free fatty acids are absorbed in the small intestine and into the bloodstream by passive diffusion (as is water).

Another important difference between the digestion of carbohydrates and fats is that while it is no problem at all for fat to sit in the stomach for hours, together with the protein being broken down by the acidic chyme, carbohydrates, and especially simple carbs, start to ferment very quickly if they do not move out of the stomach. This is what gives rise to the characteristic bloating that we feel when we eat simple carbs together with other foods, but especially when combined with any kind of protein, the best example of which is having sweet things either with or after a large meal that typically contains plenty of protein, such as the terrible habit of having fruit after the meal, as is done in most western countries, as opposed to the much wiser habit of eating the fruit as a starter, before the meal, as is done in some other cultures. Bloating, burps, gas, stomach aches, etc, as well as really bad digestion followed by really poor absorption all result from the fermentation of the simple carbs that remain in the stomach for longer than a few minutes, as they normally would, before passing to the small intestine, as well as the incompatibility of various digestive enzymes, each with its own specific nutrient to break down, released into the intestine by the pancreas, all trying to do their work, but clashing against one other in the process.

Therefore, to properly digest protein there should be no simple or starchy carbohydrates in the stomach for the entire breakdown process that lasts about 3-4 hours for a normal (smallish) meal. In addition, there should not be any alkalising liquids like alkaline water, sodium bicarbonate water, lemon water, or green juice in the stomach, because they will work to neutralise the acid needed to break down the protein, and thus cause bad digestion and stomach aches. You can try any of the combinations described here if you want evidence through personal experience, but I’m sure you have experienced most of them at various times, although most probably unaware of it. I guarantee that it works in exactly the same way for everyone, even if some are definitely more sensitive than others.

In case you don’t know or don’t remember from other articles, I think no one should consume simple or starchy insulin-stimulating carbohydrates because their consumption in any amount inevitably damages body and health in any one of several very predictable ways. The reason why I am emphasising these points about carbohydrate digestion is not only because the majority of people in the world get most of their calories from insulin-stimulating carbohydrates, but also because these carbohydrates are most disruptive to digestive health in many more ways than we tend to know or consider.

I have written recently in the article Detoxification about the disastrous consequences on the digestive system of a diet consisting mostly of simple or starchy carbohydrates, all of which are caused by chronic acidosis of the intestine. To recover from or avoid these digestive disorders and the diseases that result from them, it is of paramount importance to, on the one hand, eliminate these acid-forming sugars and starches, and on the other, alkalise as much as we can the intestinal tracts on a continual basis, day after day, and year after year.

The natural consequence of these facts and considerations is that the most healing and health-promoting of diets is one that consists primarily of alkalising drinks and foods—alkaline water, green juices, lemon water, and green and leafy vegetables—and in which energy needs are covered by the best fats—coconut oil, raw grass-fed butter, wild fish and meats, and whole, soaked nuts and seeds—with protein consumption kept to the essential minimum based on individual needs.

Water is exceedingly important for digestion, and I have written about this in Why we should drink water before meals. The two most crucial roles of water in the digestive process are: First, to provide the stomach the level of hydration needed to make, maintain and adjust the thickness and consistency of both the layer of mucus that protects the lining of the stomach from the corrosive acidic secretion required for the breakdown of protein, and for of the chyme itself during the initial phases of digestion when it is churned by the stomach. Second, to provide the pancreas the required hydration for it to be able to produce the all-important pancreatic fluid (bicarbonate solution) whose purpose is to neutralise the acidic chyme once it is transferred from the stomach to the small intestine, as well as to carry the enzymes produced by the pancreas to break down those foods that do not themselves carry and provide the enzymes needed for their proper digestion.

As is always the case for everything that relates to health, we can only truly understand by understanding the physiology—how things work. The digestive system is the one around which all other systems are arranged because the health and survival of the organism as a whole depends entirely on it. And the key to optimal digestion and health is the understanding that the stomach only needs to be acidic when there is protein in it, the intestine must always be alkaline, and the digestive system as a whole always requires a good supply of water.

Therefore, we should aim primarily to alkalise and hydrate by drinking lots of alkaline mineral and chlorophyll rich drinks together with liberal but appropriate amounts of unrefined sea salt (see How much salt, how much water, and our amazing kidneys); consume plenty of fat; always consume protein either by itself, with fat or with green vegetables, but never with simple or starchy carbohydrates; if you eat simple carbs such as sweet fruit, make sure you eat it by itself on an empty stomach; and always make sure that when you eat protein, the environment of the stomach is kept acidic, and thus do not have any alkalising liquids for at least 60 minutes before and 3 hours after the protein meal, but also make sure to have at least half a litre of plain water, at least half an hour before eating.

Keeping to these simple principles will ensure optimal digestion, optimal digestive health, and optimal overall health, day and day, and year after year, throughout life, from childhood to old age.

Detoxification

Posted on January 12, 2013 by G. Belanger

Do you know why cattle raised industrially, either for meat or for dairy, need to be on various drugs and antibiotics? Because they’re sick. Do you know why they’re all sick with viruses, bacteria, infections, tendonitis, chronic inflammation, arthritis, atherosclerosis, diabetes and cancer? (sounds familiar?) Because their intestines are chronically acidic. Do you know why their intestines are chronically acidic? Because they are fed a high-carbohydrate diet based on corn.

Do most people know this? No, they don’t. But is this a well-known problem in the industry? Of course. Is the cause of this problem also well-know? Of course it is. Industrial veterinarians say so themselves: “If these animals grazed on grass, we would be out of our jobs!” (from The Omnivore’s Dilemma).

And why is that: why is it that if cattle were to eat grass—as they always have, not just for the last ten thousand years since our ancestors domesticated them, but for millions of years along the slow evolutionary path—they would not get sick? Because they are meant to eat grass: they are herbivores. Yes. But that doesn’t explain why. The reason that they would not get sick is because their intestinal tract and their blood would be alkaline.

Now, the most important question is the following: why is a chronically acidic intestinal tract the root cause of so much sickness and disease in cattle? The answer is simple, relatively speaking: Cattle are herbivores. This means they have evolved eating grass. Dark green, chlorophyll-rich, fibrous grass loaded with minerals is not only excellently nutritious for them (and for us), but it yields in the intestines an alkaline residue after digestion, sometimes referred to as ash in analogy to something that has been consumed by fire.

The pH of the entire length of the intestines is meant to be and remain alkaline. (Recall: 7 is neutral, below that is acidic, and above is alkaline.) Unlike the stomach in which the environment must be acidic (from mildly to highly depending on its contents) in order to break down proteins into simple amino acids, and that for this reason has cells that secrete mucus to form a thick layer that protects the lining from the corrosive acid also secreted by cells in the stomach in response to the presence of proteins, the delicate lining of the intestines does not have such a protective coating of mucus. The mechanism intended to protect it is the secretion by the pancreas of a strongly alkaline sodium bicarbonate solution into the small intestine in order to neutralise the acid following the transfer of the contents of the stomach into the duodenum.

However, even though this process does take place more or less efficiently depending on many factors like pancreatic and kidney function but especially on hydration status (see Why you should drink water before meals), the final stages of digestion and breakdown of the foodstuff—the now pH-neutralised chyme that came from the stomach—leave either an alkaline or an acidic ash depending on what it is, and on how well this entire digestive process takes place.

Now, if you didn’t already know this, the digestion and breakdown process is not done by “us” or by the intestines themselves: it is done by the trillions of bacteria, yeasts and fungi that live in our gut. These microscopic inhabitants that make up our intestinal flora depend on us for their survival, but we also depend on them for ours. This is the definition of a symbiotic relationship.

As you may have guessed, some are beneficial and essential, while others are detrimental and pathogenic. What is it that regulates the proliferation and lifecycle of all these microscopic inhabitants of our intestines, different kinds throughout, depending on the section and specificity of the cells and nutrients that are absorbed in that particular stretch of the long tube that is our gut? It is the environment, the surroundings, the medium in which they live. And what determines the characteristics of that medium? The foods we eat, and when we eat them; the drinks we drink, and when we drink them. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

When the intestines are chronically acidic, the pathogenic yeasts, fungi and bacteria thrive and proliferate: their metabolic by-products, their eliminations—that are highly acidic—make the environment increasingly more acidic, the lining of the intestinal wall is gradually corroded, and eaten away by the acid. Once it is thin enough the yeasts’ and the fungi’s tentacles and outgrowths pierce through the intestinal wall and spill out their toxins and themselves into the bloodstream and outside the gut, spreading throughout the body, multiplying and proliferating in every other place where the environment is suitable, and given that in the crushing majority of people, most tissues are already quite acidic, that’s not hard to find.

The result? inflammation, yeast infections, urinary tract infections, vaginal infections, fungal overgrowth, generalised candida all over the place, inside and out. This is what causes the cattle to be sick. This is what causes all of the diseases from which they suffer, from which they need to be treated with drugs and antibiotics, and from which they need to be treated by the vets. Why? Simply because they eat corn instead of grass. Once more: is this known by most people who gingerly go to the supermarket to get a their meat for dinner? Sadly, no, it isn’t. But is this known by the vets in the meat industry? Sadly, yes, it is.

What does any of this have to do with us? It has everything to do with us because exactly the same thing happens in our own gut (see Sick and Tired). You’ve certainly heard of the so-called leaky gut syndrome. Well, this is it: exactly it. But what you probably haven’t heard is that this is what is happening in your intestines, and in those of almost everyone you know, and, in fact, almost everyone everywhere, to a greater or lesser extent.

Why? Because we all eat lots of simple and starchy carbohydrates, because all simple and starchy carbohydrates make the intestines acidic, and because all the pathogenic inhabitants of our gut thrive on the sugar and starch it is fed, and in the increasingly acidic environment this promotes.

What does any of this have to do with detoxification? It has everything to do with detoxification because the metabolic by-products and eliminations of the pathogenic yeasts, fungi and bacteria thriving in our gut are by far the most important source of toxins from which the body is sickened, but also of which it is desperately trying to detoxify itself.

Furthermore, all toxins resulting from the natural and normal digestion and metabolism of proteins are also highly acidic. And what is generally the case for most of us—here again, almost everyone everywhere—is that every tissue in the body is overly acidic, every cell that needs an alkaline environment to function properly is desperately trying to survive in this acidic medium. And so, exactly like the cattle, we are all sick, we suffer from viruses, bacteria, infections, tendonitis, chronic inflammation, atherosclerosis, arthritis, diabetes and cancer, and everything else you care to add to this list.

What happens when we stop eating simple and starchy carbohydrates? It’s simple: the pathogenic micro-organisms in the intestines are starved because they cannot survive without a constant supply of sugar, and consequently begin to die off, massively. The beneficial ones do not. In addition, there is a quick metabolic adaptation and shift to using fat instead of sugar as the primary source of cellular fuel: nutritional ketosis is triggered within about 48 hours, takes about 4 weeks to be well established, and about 8 weeks to be completely established (from The Rosedale Diet and The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living).

This keto-adaptation causes a fast and sudden activation of fat-burning stimulated by the drop in blood sugar and insulin levels, thus releasing into the bloodstream the heavy metals and chemical contaminants stored in the fat cells. This causes the spilling out of toxins all at once and from all directions that can manifest in a variety of ways: headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, vomiting, boils, rashes, anxiety, insomnia, as well as asthma-like or other allergy-like reactions, to mention the most common.

But all of these are signs of detoxification and are therefore good, very good, extremely good. The only thing is that depending on the initial state of the body, the process may be more or less extreme, more or less painful, more or less prolonged, and more or less stressful. In some cases, we may want to do it more gradually in order to avoid an extremely fast, and thus intense detox phase that can sometimes actually make us sick(er) for a while. But no matter what, everything that manifests is a positive and encouraging sign that we are moving towards a healthier state of body and of mind, for sure. There are several things that help in the process of detoxification.

The first, that you will have read or heard about anywhere you encounter mention of detoxification, is to drink a lot of water. What you will not have read or heard about, however, and that I will add to this recommendation, is that it is essential to take plenty of unrefined sea salt to accompany all the water. Without the salt, you will quickly dilute your blood sodium and chloride concentrations and consequently dehydrate instead of hydrating. The ratio is 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of salt per litre of water, depending on how much you eat, and how much salt you take with that food. The more you drink, the more salt you need, and it is particularly important if you don’t eat for an extended period of time. Drops to make the water alkaline is also very helpful; just make sure you don’t do this just before, during or after having complex proteins, as they require a highly acidic stomach.

The second is that since you can consider all the toxins being released as acidic waste, it is extremely helpful to alkalise as much as you can to neutralise as much of the acidity as possible. So, drink green juices and chlorophyll, either fresh or in powdered form, and eat cucumbers, celery, kohlrabi and huge dark green salads with avocados, and fresh parsley and basil as often as you can. All of this is also true every day and always.

Third and also crucial are psyllium husks, to help clear out the toxins from the intestines as efficiently as possible. A good way to take them is to dissolve in a 1 litre bottle of water, 1 heaping teaspoon of green juice powder, 1/2 teaspoon of unrefined Atlantic salt, and two teaspoons of psyllium husks (aloe vera juice to enhance cleansing and a tiny bit of stevia to sweeten and counter the salty taste are optional). Also good is with lemon water (1 litre, 2 lemons, stevia, salt and psyllium). Make sure you let it sit for some time so that the psyllium husks are well hydrated before you start drinking, and shake well every time before drinking.

You should have at least one litre per day (I do this every day, drink relatively slowly typically between 10:30 and 12:30, always on an empty stomach), and two litres during the acute detox phase would be excellent (mid-morning and afternoon). This will clean out the entire length of the intestines very effectively but also very gently.

Remember to always start the day with a 3/4-1 litre of plain, room temperature, alkaline water, drank over the course of at least 30 minutes. Or, alternatively or in combination, you can also start with a litre of tulsi herbal tea. Tulsi or Holy Basil is a powerful anti-stress and adrenal support that is soothing and relaxing without inducing sleepiness, and that over time helps the adrenal system recover from the very commonly encountered state of partial or nearly complete adrenal exhaustion. I usually to do both the water (between 1/2 and 1 litre) and tulsi tea (also from 1/2 to 1 litre) for a total that is always between 1 and 1.5 litres, typically taken over the period from 7 to 9, first thing in the morning.

Finally, it is very useful to soak in a hot bath with 2 to 4 cups of baking soda or epson salts (magnesium sulphate), or even better, 1 cup of nigari flakes (magnesium chloride). This will help relax the muscles, alkalise by pulling out acids from the tissues, and promote maximum detoxification through the skin. Magnesium chloride is also a powerful detoxifying and metal-chelating agent on its own. Make sure to supplement with it both orally and through the skin (see Why you should start taking magnesium today). Putting food-grade, virgin coconut oil, scented with a little essential oil of lavender or geranium on the skin is excellent. (Melt the coconut oil at low temperature, add the essential oils in the ratio of 10 ml per litre, seal, shake well and put in the fridge to cool quickly. Then take it out and keep it a room temperature.)

The acute phase can be hard to get through, but it is relatively short (a few to several days), and you will really start to feel a lot better after all these toxins have been cleared out of the body: all the pathogenic micro-organisms starved off and eliminated together with their acidic metabolic byproducts.

The process of healing the intestines, the blood and the tissues takes a long time, but on the way there, you will feel better with every passing day. Regular green juice fasts are an excellent way to accelerate the process of healing and then to maintain health.

It is essential to remember, however, that beyond the initial acute detox phase, optimal health depends entirely on a continual process and perpetual cycle of cleansing, detoxification and alkalisation followed by nourishing, repairing and rebuilding, carried out every day, and day after day. The profound systemic detoxification and healing process that results from the complete elimination of sugars and starches from the diet is without any doubt the most important and powerfully healthful change you could ever make.

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Healthy and lucid from childhood to old age

Posted on February 15, 2012 by G. Belanger

So you’ve been around for 70 years, and you’re still well enough to read this. Have you actually made it past 75, 80 or even 85? This is really great! Through a combination of different factors, various reasons, personal habits and choices, you have made this far.

Maybe because of your genetic makeup: Your parents and grand-parents all lived well into their 80’s or 90’s by following a kind of innate, traditional wisdom based on the understanding that we really are what we eat, in a very real sense, and you’ve done more or less the same, following in their footsteps.

Maybe because you have always been moderate in your eating habits: You’ve never been overweight; you’ve never eaten much sweets or deserts; you’ve never eaten much preserved meats and canned foods; you’ve never drank much alcohol; you’ve never drank sweetened soft drinks, juice or milk—mostly just water, always paying attention not to drink too much coffee or strongly caffeinated tea.

Maybe you have made it this far because you have also been moderately active throughout your life, never exercising too much or too intensely, but always quite regularly: Walking; doing light exercises for your joints (rotations of the arms for your shoulders, stretches for your neck and back, and exercises for your knees); riding a bike a couple times a week in the good season, not getting off the bike but instead riding up those hills; maybe you went skiing a week or two most years; went for long walks or even hikes in the mountains during holidays; or did a little swimming in the sea or in lakes when the occasion presented itself.

The golden middle, as my grand-father called it: everything is moderation. And he almost made it to 90 years of age! But no matter what the reason is, it is truly wonderful that you have indeed made it this far. Then again, you might be young or middle aged, but interested—maybe somewhat, maybe highly, but nonetheless interested—in being healthy and lucid for as long as possible, and hopefully well into your old age.

Either way, young or old, you live in this modern world like most of us. You live in a city, you drive a car, you work in an office, you fly or flew often on business trips, maybe even several times per week. You eat meat and fish; bread, potatoes, rice and pasta; fruits and vegetables, all from the supermarket. And so you have, throughout your life, been continuously exposed to increasing amounts of chemicals, heavy metals and various other toxins in our environment, most of which have been accumulating in your tissues. You live in the modern world like most of us, and so you have taken medication on various occasions during your life: antibiotics a few times, maybe some pain killers, maybe some sleeping pills, maybe simple anti-histamines when you had a cold. Maybe you are and have even been taking medication on a daily basis for some “minor” but “chronic” condition.

You live in this modern world and so you have been told to drink plenty of fluids and that salt is bad and should be avoided. You’ve been told that fat in general, but especially saturated fats and cholesterol, are bad because they cause heart disease: they cause your arteries to clog up with fatty plaques that eventually block them to give you a heart attack. You’ve been told to avoid them as much as you can, and instead to consume polyunsaturated vegetable oils, plenty of whole grains and cereal products, legumes, plenty of fruits and vegetables, and so you have done that: you have decreased or almost eliminated your intake of butter, eggs, fatty cheese, fatty yoghurt, red meat—never ever eating the fatty trimmings, and also of the fatty skin on chicken or fish.

Consequently, you have increased your intake of morning cereal—but only sugar-free whole grain cereal like muesli; increased your intake of bread—but usually whole grain bread; increased your intake of rice—but usually brown rice; increased your intake of pasta—but usually also whole grain pasta; and increased you intake of potatoes—but never fried, only baked, steamed or boiled potatoes.

Maybe your total lipoprotein levels are around 220 or 240 mg/dl, and you have been told that this is too high, and for this reason you have tried to further reduce your fat intake, and are even taking statins or other cholesterol-lowering drugs, every day, just like hundreds of millions of other people in this modern world.

Unfortunately, you have not been told that you should be drinking water; not fluids in general, and that there are many reasons water, ageing and disease are intimately connected—the lack of water, that is. In addition to that, you have not been told that it is not enough to drink some water sometimes: it is essential to drink water before meals. Unfortunately, you have not been told that sodium is one of the most important minerals for health: why else would the kidneys, without which we cannot live for more than a few days, go to such great lengths to prevent its excretion in the urine, and keep it in the blood if it wasn’t? But even more unfortunately, you have not been told that minerals in general, are essential for health, and that unrefined sea salt contains all naturally occurring trace minerals is proportions that closely match those of several of our bodily fluids. And that furthermore, proper bodily function depends intimately on the balance of the minerals available, and that our salt-phobic and calcium-phillic society has led to most of us becoming completely over-calcified while growing more and more deficient in the rest of the trace minerals, and in particular magnesium. The link between generalised magnesium deficiency and minerals, ageing and disease are now everywhere painfully obvious.

Unfortunately—and indeed very sadly—you have not been told that cholesterol is absolutely vital for life and good health: that it forms the membrane of every single cell in your body and in that of every animal, that your entire nervous system and especially your brain are built using cholesterol and depend intimately on the availability of plenty of cholesterol, that your hormonal system relies completely on cholesterol for building hormones, and that your best defences against infectious and inflammatory pathogens are in fact the lipoproteins carrying around the precious cholesterol throughout your body. You have not been told that cholesterol is so important that it is manufactured continuously by our liver to keep up with the body’s needs, and that therefore, the cholesterol we eat does not in any ways raise lipoprotein concentrations. You have not been told that in addition to cholesterol, fat is also essential for building hormones, essential for absorbing minerals from the intestines into our bloodstream, essential for the binding of these minerals into the bones and teeth, essential for energy production in every cell of our body.

Furthermore, you have not been told that saturated fats like those found in animal products and coconut oil are molecularly stable, whereas unsaturated and particularly polyunsaturated oils such as those that make up all vegetable oils are molecularly unstable, some more than others, for the double bonds between carbon atoms in the chain that forms the fat molecule are weak and readily broken to permit some other unstable molecule seeking a free electron to attach in order to make the final molecular configuration stable. But that those unstable compounds are actually scavenging around for any electron to bind to, and unfortunately most of the time if not always, these free-radicals will attach themselves to healthy tissue without proper enzymatic action to guide them in the proper place and position, thus damaging our tissues.

In fact, you have not been told that all large studies that have been conducted to evaluate the “health-promoting” properties of polyunsaturated fats have not only failed to do so, but instead have shown that the more polyunsaturated oils we consume, the more atherosclerotic plaques develop in our arteries, and therefore the more likely we are to suffer a heart attack or stroke. And that on the contrary, the more saturated fats we consume, the less plaques we have, and consequently, the less likely we are to have a heart attack or a stroke (see any of the books about cholesterol in Further readings).

You have not been told, that for millions of years our species has evolved consuming most of its calories in the form of saturated fats from meat and animal products—in some cases exclusively from these, from coconut and palm oil (where these grow), and to a much lesser extent from polyunsaturated fats, and this only in whole foods such as fish, nuts and seeds—never concentrated into vegetable oils.

Unfortunately—and indeed very sadly—you have not been told that we were never meant to eat simple or starchy carbohydrates: that eating such carbohydrates always triggers the pancreas to secrete insulin in order to clear the bloodstream of the damaging glucose in circulation, that chronically elevated glucose levels lead to chronically elevated insulin levels that in turn lead to insulin resistance—first in our muscles, then in our liver, and finally in our fat cells—which leads to type II diabetes, to heart disease from the buildup of plaque in the coronary arteries and vessels, and to Alzheimer’s and cognitive degradation from the buildup of plaque in the cerebral arteries and vessels.

Unfortunately—and indeed very sadly—you have not been told and have not considered that all the multitude of chemicals and heavy metals that we are exposed to in the medications we take, in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the food we eat, in the soaps and shampoos we use, and in the household products we employ to keep our house sparkling clean and bacteria-free, accumulate in our bodies. They accumulate in our fat cells, in our tissues, in our organs, in our brains. They burden, disrupt and damage our digestive system, our immune system, our hormonal system, our organs, tissues and cells. Sometimes they reach such concentrations that we become gravely ill, but none of the doctors we visit in seeking a solution and relief understand why. Most often, however, we don’t get gravely ill but instead start developing different kinds of little problems: we get colds more often and take longer to recover, we get mild but regular digestive upsets that we can’t explain and that seem to get worse with time, we get headaches and have trouble sleeping, we feel depressed, tired, alone, helpless, not acutely but enough to disturb us enough that we notice it.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, you have not been told how truly essential vitamin B12 really is, but how, for a variety of different reasons, blood concentrations B12 decrease with age, and eventually dwindle to very low levels. That B12 is essential most crucially to preserve the myelin sheath that covers all of our nerves healthy, and thus crucially important for everything that takes place throughout the nervous system, which means, everything in the body and brain. Levels of B12 should never go below 450 pg/ml, and ideally should be maintained at 800 pg/ml throughout life, from childhood to old age hood.

Can we do anything about all this?

The most fundamental point to understand is that everything about your health depends on the state of health of your digestive system. All absorption of nutrients and elimination of waste happens in the digestive system. Since our health depends on proper absorption and efficient elimination, the digestive system should be our first as well as our main concern.

The first step is to rebuild and establish a healthy intestinal flora of beneficial bacteria (breakdown and absorption), and at the same time begin to detoxify the body and clean out the intestines (elimination). This is done by taking high quality probiotics to supply beneficial bacteria on a daily basis, high quality chlorella to both supply a lot of micronutrients and pull out heavy metals, and water-soluble fibre like psyllium husks to clean out the intestines by pushing out toxins and waste products. If you are not already taking these, read Probiotics, chlorella and psyllium husks.

The second step is by far the most important, and in fact, crucial dietary change necessary to achieve optimal metabolic health. It is to eliminate simple and starchy carbohydrates from you diet, and replace them with more raw vegetables—especially green and leafy salads and colourful vegetables such as red and yellow peppers, more nuts and seeds—especially raw and soaked, more good and efficiently absorbed protein—especially eggs, fish and raw cheeses, and much more saturated fats—especially coconut oil (at least 3 tablespoons per day) and butter. Doing this is essential for the systemic detoxification, rebuilding and then maintaining a healthy digestive system. Everything should be organic: you obviously don’t want to be adding to your toxic load while trying to detoxify.

And the third step is to supplement our now-excellent, health-promoting diet with a few essential and very important nutrients that are, for most of us, difficult to obtain. The only such supplements that I believe to be essential, and that my family and I take daily, are: Vitamin B12 and vitamin D3—the most important supplements to take for overall health, but in which we are almost all deficient; Krill oil—a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fat with its own natural anti-oxidants, highly absorbable, and particularly important for proper brain function; Ubiquinol—the reduced and thus useable form of coenzyme Q10, critical for cellular energy production, and a powerful lipid-soluble anti-oxidant that protects our cells from oxidative damage, but both of whose synthesis as CoQ10 and conversion from CoQ10 to ubiquinol drop dramatically after about age 30-40; Vitamin K2—essential for healthy bones but very hard to get other than from fermented foods, which we typically eat little of.

In addition to these, we usually always take Astaxanthin and turmeric—very powerful antioxidants with amazing general and specific anti-ageing health benefits, and also sometimes take a whole-foods-multi—basically dehydrated vegetables and berries made into a powder and compressed into a pill for extra micronutrients. (You can read about all of these supplements on Wikipedia or any other page you will find by doing an internet search.)

I tend to buy our supplements from Dr Joseph Mercola, (whose website also provides a lot of info about these and other supplements, as well as about a multitude of other health-related issues and conditions), because I trust that his are among if not the best on the market: there’s really no point in buying cheap supplements at the pharmacy, and risking doing yourself more harm than good, as would happen with a rancid omega-3 supplement, or a synthetic Vitamin D, for example.

Staying healthy and lucid is, in reality, quite easy and simple. Unfortunately, most of us, including, and maybe especially our medical doctors, just don’t know how. And so, medical diagnostic and high-tech treatment technologies continue to improve and develop, and medical expenditures continue to rise throughout the modern world, but we are sicker than ever: more obesity, more diabetes, more strokes, more heart attacks, more cancers, more Alzheimer’s, more leaky guts, more ulcers, more liver failures, more kidney failures, and on and on. There is more disease, more pain, more suffering and more premature deaths. And all of it is completely unnecessary and avoidable by such simple and inexpensive means as those outlined herein. The only critical point is that only you can do it; nobody else can do it for you.

Probiotics, chlorella and psyllium husks

Posted on February 15, 2012 by G. Belanger

Essential for building and maintaining a healthy digestive system, it is best to take probiotics and chlorella on an empty stomach, once to several times per day, to maximise the bacterial flora replenishing from the probiotics, and the prebiotic as well as cleansing and heavy metal chelating effects of the chlorella. This way, there is minimal potential damage to the probiotics by acidic gastric juices secreted into the stomach when protein is present.

Psyllium are also good to take on an empty stomach or with foods that are not mineral-rich (as in a coconut milk pudding, for example), in order to maximise their intestinal cleaning and minimise their possible interference with mineral absorption. It is most important for the psyllium husks to be completely saturated with water before taking them to avoid causing cork-like condensations of psyllium husks in the gut.

All supplements should be of the highest quality. I buy probiotics from Prescript-Assist, chlorella from Dr. Mercola, and psyllium husks either whole or powdered but organically grown without pesticides or herbicides from Frontier.

If you have not taken these supplements, then your digestive system will be in dire need of them. It would be best, in addition to the morning probiotics, chlorella and psyllium husks, to take probiotics and chlorella with 500 ml about 30-45 minutes before eating at lunchtime, and again before dinner. After even 1 week, you will feel much better. After about 1 month, you can reduce the frequency to twice per day, and eventually you can take your probiotic only in the morning.

For the chlorella, it’s important to not take too much at first because the detox could be too fast, and this would stress the body unnecessarily and make you feel unwell as well as make your stools runny. Once you have past the initial detox phase, you can and should take chlorella as often and as much as you want depending both on the circumstances and on your needs.

I, for example, sometimes take at 15 little pellets (3 grams) per day in two or three doses, 30 minutes before meals. But on my weekly, 24-hour fast, (usually on Mondays), during which I only take water and herbal teas, unrefined sea salt and chlorella from Sunday evening after dinner, until Monday evening before dinner, I take at least 30 little pellets (6 grams) of chlorella over the course of the day, and sometimes more. This not only gives the body easily digestible essential amino acids, but also supplies a lot of essential minerals, chlorophyl, and detox power, which is, after all, the main purpose of the fast.

The quantity of the psyllium husks should be 1 teaspoon per day for the first week. Then 2 teaspoons, and eventually 3 teaspoons per day, but not more: it’s not necessary and this much fibre may stress your digestive system, which is obviously not what you are trying to do. After a month, you should reduce the quantity of psyllium to one teaspoon per day, and see if you can reduce it further to every other day, depending on the effects on your digestion. I personally usually take 1 teaspoon almost every day to maintain perfect intestinal transit and stools (regular, easy to pass, and almost nothing to wipe). In any case, you can not do yourself harm by taking psyllium husks with plenty of water on a regular basis (unless you are allergic to it, which is very rare); instead it will be of great benefit.

The best way to know how much and how often you need to take is by carefully monitoring the smell of your breath—it should be fresh and odourless throughout the day and night; the smell of your sweat—it should also be light, not acidic smelling, and basically odourless, even if you don’t shower for a couple of days without using deodorant or perfume; and finally, the regularity, consistency and smell of your solid eliminations—they should not be too hard nor too soft, voluminous, easy to pass, and easy to wipe. Ideal stools pass easily and do not need any wiping. This is what we should strive for by making adjustment to our water intake, cooked versus raw food intake, psyllium and vegetable fibre intake, paying particular attention to the timing of these with respect to one another.

Doing these simple things you will very quickly feel much better, and also begin to notice and understand much more about the natural detox functions of your own body, with its daily cycles as well as with its particularities. In physiological function, we are all basically the same with small individual differences that must be first identified and then tended to with care, patience and attention, being especially mindful of their evolution in time and depending on the changing circumstances. Only we ourselves can really learn how to do this, and so we must if we want to achieve and then maintain optimal health throughout our life, as we age and mature.

Water, ageing, and disease

Posted on October 9, 2011 by G. Belanger

Thinning skin, drying hair, wrinkles, brown spots here and there, patches of discolouration. Sagging eye lids, sagging cheeks, sagging skin all over the body. Loss of bone mass, loss of muscle mass. Stiffening joints, stiffening muscles, stiffening tendons and ligaments, stiffening veins and arteries. Weakness, tiredness, aching. Loss of memory, loss of concentration, loss of intellectual capacity, dullness. Metabolic syndrome, diabetes, senility, dementia, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, elevated cholesterol, atherosclerosis, stroke, kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, cancer.

Are all these symptoms, these conditions, independent from one another? Are they different? Do they arise spontaneously and develop on their own? Do they just fall upon us unpredictably as rain does? Or are they consequences of more basic factors that elude most of us.

If we could ask the late Dr. Batmanghelidj (1931-2004), M.D., about ageing and disease, he would surely say that its primary cause is the cumulative effects of chronic dehydration on the body, and the plethora of consequences that this brings about. This chronic dehydration that only increases in severity with time, gives rise to so many problems.

But independently of anyone’s opinion, it is an observational fact is that when we are born, the body is 90% water, but when we die, it is only 50% water. Doesn’t this tell us something? Doesn’t this tell us that ageing and dying could be considered as a process of gradual dehydration?

The main way in which we provide water to the body is by drinking. And all of the nutrients required to sustain the body come from the foods we eat. Therefore, the digestive system is truly at the root of it all. As I explained in this previous post on the important of water in the digestive system, the direct consequences of not drinking adequately on an empty stomach long enough before eating, are the poor digestion of food, and the damage caused to the lining of the stomach and intestines that eventually lead to ulcers and leaky gut syndrome.

But poor digestion of food means improper break down of protein into amino acids, and the deficiency in the full range of these essential compounds necessary for so many functions in the brain and in every cell of the body. Poor digestion of food means improper break down of fats into their constituent fatty acids that provide not only the primary source of energy, but also the very building blocks of the membrane of every single cell in the body. Poor digestion of food means improper absorption of minerals and the complex molecules we call vitamins, that together with the proteins and fats are used not only in building all the tissues in the body, but also in every single chemical reaction, transport and communication between cells and tissues. Over time, poor digestion and damage to the digestive organs leads to the permanent loss of the ability to absorb certain minerals and vitamins. There is no doubt that this leads to complications that will manifest in various complex ways.

The lack of water in the digestive system leads to a lack of water in the bloodstream. The blood gradually thickens, its volume decreases, and its viscosity increases. This increases the friction between the blood and the walls of the blood vessels, and therefore the resistance in the flow. The heart is now under severe stress as it attempts to pump this thick, viscous, sticky blood to all parts of the body, and through all the vessels from the largest arteries to the narrowest almost microscopic veins. But this intense efforts by the heart also stressed the vessels themselves. Stress on the vessels leads to lesions. Lesions lead to plaques whose purpose is to patch up and heal the damaged tissues. The accumulation of such plaques, whose spontaneous bursting causes strokes, leads to atherosclerosis that eventually leads to heart failure. Pretty grim picture, isn’t it? But far from being complete yet.

The lack of sufficient amounts of water in the bloodstream obviously means that every organ and every cell of the body gradually becomes more and more dehydrated over time. For the cell, water is by far the most important substance, it is the context in which absolutely everything takes place, and on which everything depends. In order to maintain as much of this precious water as is possible, every single cell starts to produce more cholesterol to seal its membrane a well as possible and keep and protect its water. This is why dehydration leads to the appearance of excessive amounts of cholesterol, which in this case is the cell’s essential water preservation mechanism.

The lack of sufficient amounts of water in the bloodstream is particularly detrimental to the articulations. The joints of the body, all those areas where out limbs bend, are a complex assemblage of tissues whose primary component is cartilage. Cartilage is a kind of a simple matrix that holds water. It is the water content of the cartilage that gives it its suppleness and flexibility, allowing it to protect the bones from rubbing against each other in the joints when we move. It is well known that as we age, all of our joints and cartilage dries out, and we develop what we call arthritis. But is this because we are getting older, or is it because we are getting more and more dehydrated with every passing day? Is arthritis a disease of ageing or is it a consequence of chronic dehydration?

The amazing thing is that the only way to bring water to the cartilage in the joints to maintain their flexibility and prevent their degradation is through the porous ends of the bones to which the cartilage is attached. And the only way to bring water to the end of the bone is through its marrow. And the only way to bring water to the marrow is by way of the blood. Therefore, to prevent the gradual dehydration and subsequent breaking down of the cartilage in the joints, the blood must be well hydrated: thin, easy flowing and full of water.

And what does all this mean for the rest of the body? By weight, the muscles are 75% water; the blood is 82% water; the lungs are 90% water; the brain, the primary element of the central nervous system, is 78% water; even the bones are 25% water. So, it’s pretty simple: as dehydration increases over time, all organs, all tissues and all cells suffer, shrink, weaken, and succumb ever more easily to disease, whatever form it may take.

Dr. Batmanghelidj presents a convincing line of arguments linking breathing and lung disorders like asthma and allergies to chronic dehydration, and also believes that the dehydration of brain and nerve cells whose composition is also mostly water, leads to disorders of the central nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease.

And the skin? Think about any fruit or vegetable that you place on a shelf in the fridge, like an apple, a carrot or a radish, and leave there for a long time. It will gradually soften, then start to wrinkle, and with time continue to soften and wrinkle more and more until it is nothing but a tiny dried out little thing. Moreover, you may also have noticed that if you take a partly dehydrated carrot, radish, or celery stick, for example, cut them and place them in water for a while, they will re-hydrate by refilling the cells with water, and in so doing become hard and crunchy once again. But if you wait too long, then no matter how much time you leave them in water, the cells will not re-hydrate. Logically, since our water content is similar to a fruit or vegetable, what happens to the body is probably very similar, and hence gradual the softening, wrinkling, weakening, and overall degradation of the bodymind at the days and years go by.

Obviously, this does not mean that by drinking enough pure water—no other liquids can be substituted for water—to ensure that the bodymind is well hydrated, we will not age. Of course not. But at least, we will ensure that ageing and all the consequences associated with ageing are not accelerated by dehydration. The last thing we want is to accelerate our rate of ageing and our susceptibility to disease.

The truth is that for most living beings on Earth, water is life. There is no question about this. We and most terrestrial animals are constituted of about 60-70% water and 30-40% minerals—by mass. But in fact, in terms of the number of molecules in our bodies, we are 99% water! Can we grasp the significance of this? Can we now realise what dire consequences the slightest dehydration can cause to every cell, every tissue, every organ, and every system of the body? It is hard to quantify, but it is huge. And coming back to our initial question: are ageing and disease different? Are they related? What do you think?

Although chronic dehydration is so common that it is generalised, avoiding dehydration is very simple: drink water, unsweetened herbal teas, and light green tea. Don’t drink sweet drinks, juices or sodas: these are full of sugar, including large amounts of fructose, that totally disrupt both the hormonal system and the metabolism, promoting hormonal imbalances and insulin resistance. Don’t drink milk: this is a food that contains fats, proteins and carbohydrates, and trigger all the required digestive processes that further exacerbate the problems associates with chronic dehydration. Just drink water.

At the very least, drink half a litre when you get up in the morning (7:00), half a litre mid-morning (10:30), half a litre 30 minutes before lunch (12:30), half a litre in the late afternoon (16:30), and half a litre 30 minutes before dinner (18:30). And make sure you have plenty of unrefined sea salt with your meals. If you are fasting, take a pinch of salt on at least some of the occasions when you drink to reach a total of 1 to 2 teaspoons over the course of the day (including the salt eaten with meals). In this way, you will provide your body a good amount of water and salt to ensure proper hydration and excretion of acids through the urine.

Why we should drink water before meals

Posted on September 14, 2011 by G. Belanger

We all need to drink at least about two litres of water every day. Not juice, not sodas, not coffee, not tea: plain water. None of these other liquids have the properties of water, nor do they have the desirable effects of water on the body. Most of us don’t however, and so we are chronically dehydrated. Whether it is 75% or as high as 90%, it is evident that a very large portion of the population is chronically dehydrated.

The digestive system can be viewed as the most fundamental because everything used to sustain life in the body goes through it. In a very real sense, we are a digestive system, supplemented by a central nervous system and refined sense organs to allow us to devise ways to get food (and avoid being eaten), coupled to a refined locomotor system to allow us to gather the food (and run away when it is needed). Since every component of every cell in the body is made from the nutrients in our food, it is obvious that everything in the body depends on the digestive system. And for the digestive system, the single-most important element is the presence of ample amounts of water.

cropped-glass-of-water

As soon as we even think about eating, the digestive system starts to get ready. The pancreas secretes a little jolt of insulin just in case carbohydrates come in, and the stomach starts to produce the highly acidic digestive gastric juice (pH of 1-2). This gastric juice is composed of only a little bit (0.5%) of hydrochloric acid (HCl) and a lot of salt, both sodium chloride (NaCl) and potassium chloride (KCl). The stomach has sensor cells to know exactly how much protein, fat and carbohydrates are present at any given time, and thus can adjust the production and composition of the gastric juice.

Although present in very small amounts, the hydrochloric acid is the essential compound for activating the enzymes responsible for breaking down protein, which is its main purpose because both fats and carbohydrates are mostly broken down in the intestine. But to make it to the stomach without causing any damage along the way, the two constituents of this highly corrosive acid, the hydrogen (H) and the chlorine ions (Cl), are produced separately and transported to the inside of the stomach where they combine to form the acid.

The delicate lining of the stomach with all its different kinds of highly specialised cells, is protected from the acidic gastric juice by an alkaline layer of mucus. This mucus is between 90 and 98% water, with some binding molecules and a few other components. It can be regarded as a blanket of water whose primary role in the stomach is to protect its lining from the gastric acid. The very thin mucosa that produces and maintains the mucus layer, also secretes sodium bicarbonate that sits in it, and neutralises the acid upon contact when it penetrates the layer, leaving only sodium chloride (salt), water and carbon dioxide. The neutralisation reaction is simple: HCl + NaHCO3 -> NaCl + H2O + CO2.

As we get progressively more dehydrated, not only are the stomach cells incapable of releasing adequate amounts of water into the stomach in order to allow for the proper mixing of the food and acid into chyme with the optimal consistency, but the thickness of the protective mucus layer decreases, thus allowing the acidic contents to damage the fragile lining. This is what eventually leads to stomach ulcers, according to a well known specialist in the matter, Dr Batmanghelidj, author of Your Body’s Many Cries for Water.

The contents of the stomach are churned and blended between one and three hours depending on the amount and composition, until the chyme is liquified and smooth, at which point it is poured into the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. It is in the small intestine that the real work of the break down and absorption of nutrients into the bloodstream takes place over a period of about 24 hours. The sensor cells in the duodenum will immediately determine the pH and composition of the chyme in order to send the messenger hormones to the pancreas to secrete the right amount of the alkaline, watery sodium bicarbonate solution necessary to neutralize the acid, and to the liver to secrete the right amount of bile needed for the breakdown of fats.

And even though the pancreas is known primarily for its role in producing and secreting insulin needed to clear the bloodstream of sugar, it is arguably its role in secreting this alkaline solution that is the most important. Indeed, as the duodenum does not have a protective layer of mucus as the stomach, it is this sodium bicarbonate solution that protects it and the rest of the small intestine from the devastating effects that the highly acidic chyme can have on it.

However, just as even partial dehydration causes the protective mucus layer in the stomach to dry out and shrink, making it permeable to the gastric acid that eats away at the delicate soft tissues, dehydration also causes the pancreas to be unable to secrete as much of the watery sodium bicarbonate solution as is required to fully neutralise the acidic chyme that, therefore, also damages the intestine. In fact, that there are several times more cases of duodenal as there are stomach ulcers attests to the reality that the lining of the intestine is all that much more fragile as it is unprotected and thus directly exposed to the excessively acidic chyme.

Therefore, water is of the utmost importance in protecting the lining of the stomach and intestine from the acid required for the break down of proteins into amino acids. Water is of the utmost importance for proper digestion and absorption of the nutrients in the food. And hence, water is of the utmost importance in maintaining a healthy digestive system meal after meal, day after day, and year after year throughout our life.

We must make sure that the body and digestive system are properly hydrated before eating. And for this, all we need to do is drink half a litre of plain water 30 minutes before meals, and not drink during nor after the meal for two to four hours.

Drinking during or soon after a meal will only dilute the chyme, making it excessively watery. This will not lower the pH, because water does not neutralise acid. It is best to ensure proper hydration prior to the start of the digestive process, providing the water necessary for the mucosa and pancreas to function optimally, and allow the stomach to adjust the water content of the chyme on its own. I personally usually wait two hours after a snack or small meal, and at least three to four hours after a large meal.

The time needed for the chyme to leave the stomach through the pyloric sphincter and enter the duodenum depends on its amount and composition. For example, fruit or any other food consisting mostly of simple sugars eaten on an empty stomach will make it into the intestine, and the sugar into the blood, in a matter of minutes: Since there is no protein, no acid is required for its breakdown in the stomach; and since there is no fat, no bile is required to break it down in the intestine.

Naturally, the time needed for the stomach to process a small meal will be less than that needed to process a large meal of more or less equal composition. In fact, given that our stomach is a very small pouch with an empty volume of about 50 ml, and a full volume of about 1 litre (up to a max of 2-3 litres when it is really extended), the time needed for large meals increases substantially and disproportionately compared to smaller meals.

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Tag Archives: Digestion

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First the Anatomy

And then the physiology

Your gallbladder and why it’s important

Why every undigested protein is an allergen

Every undigested protein is an allergen

Understanding digestion

Detoxification

Healthy and lucid from childhood to old age

Probiotics, chlorella and psyllium husks

Water, ageing, and disease

Why we should drink water before meals

First the Anatomy

And then the physiology

Your gallbladder and why it’s important

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