The Connection Between The Gut & Disease

A great line that the father of medicine Hippocrates said over, over 2000 years ago. And he said that all diseases begin in the gut. Now we are understanding what Hippocrates meant because we have enough evidence to show that actually all health begins in the gut. Let’s take a joy ride through the gut. And as you can see in the depiction, it’s a long tube. When you look at the gut, firstly, you’ll see that is divided into different pH ranges. That’s interesting. So the stomach starts at a pH of two to three. Two to three. Do you know how acidic that is? That’s so acidic that if I put a pH liquid of two to three on my hand, it put a hole in it. But it’s not putting a hole in your stomach. Why? Because the stomach has a layer around it called mucin. It’s a mucus layer that protects it from that acid. But then you get asked the other question, why is the stomach so acidic? It’s acidic to be able to break down proteins. It’s acidic to be able to destroy microorganisms. And it’s acidic to be able to produce a protein called intrinsic factor, which allows the absorption of B12. Isn’t that interesting? So imagine when we agonize the stomach, when we add antacid to it, changes that. So does that change everything else as we go down into the small intestine, the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ium, the pH down there is about five to six. And then when we go to the colon, the peach of the colon is seven. So the difference between the peach of the colon and the peach of the stomach is five points. But you know what that means? Because pH is logarithmic. That means that the stomach is 100,000, 100,000 times more acidic than the colon. That’s remarkable. And when we look at these pH ranges, there’s something else that comes to to play that the more alkaline the environment, the more bacteria. So in the stomach we have little to no bacteria in the colon, we have tremendous amounts of bacteria because that’s what they like to be in a peach around seven. So we eat food, we have our lunch. And so what happens though? The food goes into your stomach. What happens in the stomach acid is secreted peach. Of what? Peach. Two to three. Then after about 45 minutes to an hour, that food bolus is gonna move into the duo. The first part of your small intestine. And there surprisingly enzymes from your pancreas are secreted. They’re shot into the stomach. These are Proteases. Guess what? They break down? Amylases. Guess what? They break down carbohydrates Lipases. Guess what? They break down lipids, fats. They mix in breaking down those particles of foods. And then what happens is the gallbladder squeezes and the liver pushes diluted bile into the duodenum to mix with the food particles. And what, what is the function of bile? The function of bile is to allow the absorption of fats into the bloodstream. Then after two hours, it’s gonna enter the major part of my small intestine, which is the jejunum, the jejunum and the ileum. And at that particular moment, right at that two hours, something kicks in that very few people know about, it’s called the migrating motor complex. Remember that the MMC migrating motor complex. And what is that? That is what I call a vacuum cleaner. And it sucks up bacteria in the jejunum and ileum and throws them into the colon. So it kind of cleans it up. Now food enters the major part of my small intestine. The digestive processes continue. Nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream. And this goes on for about three to four hours. At the end of the three to four hours, what’s left is the liquid soup, a soup. And that soup goes into the colon. And the job of the colon is to pull water out of that soup to hydrate the body and create stool. The inability of the colon to pull water out is what diarrhea is. Now I’m gonna go back now again to the two hours. Okay? So the food is ready to enter the major part of my small intestine, but guess what? The vacuum cleaner, the migrating mortal complex is not working for whatever reason. Maybe because you ate again. Because if you eat it shuts it down. So the vacuum cleaners are working. So what happens? Bacteria remain in the page. Bottom, my small intestine food enters. And what are the bacteria gonna do when they see the food? They’re gonna start eating it and they’re going to love the carbohydrates. And so what happens when they start eating it? They produce gases. What gases? Methane and hydrogen. So what do you what? What happens? You’re gonna start bloating. You are gonna feel the bloating. You may, if you have too much hydrogen gas being produced, you’re gonna get diarrhea. If you have too much methane gas being produced, you’re gonna get constipation. If you have both, you’re gonna get both. Constipation and diarrhea aren’t, isn’t that interesting? ’cause those are the symptoms of IBS. Can we make adjustments to this? And what have we learned? Well, 25, 30 years ago, we’re telling everybody you need every two hours. But now we’re saying, Hey, you need a break between meals because if you eat every two hours, you’re gonna shut down the migrating motor complex. You’re gonna shut down the vacuum cleaner. So you need not to eat every two hours. You need to give yourself breaks in between meals for this process of digestion to occur naturally and properly. The foundational principles of Father of medicine who said that all diseases begin in the gut. By improving gastrointestinal metabolism and physiology, we are gonna create a healthy gut, which creates a healthy body.