Immunity and The Digestive System

You will hear that the body digests food matter, this is not correct, it is the micro organisms contained within the body that do the job. The good bacteria and some of the bad guys too.

The body is an environmental package for bacteria to proliferate. The food we consume will determine the kind of bacteria that will grow or be destroyed. A balance of the correct foods, water and heat will keep the acid and alkaline situation balanced so that the digestive system works efficiently without giving its host any problems. The good and bad guys are aided by the body’s own chemicals, fat disolvers and digestive enzymes which they cannot produce, but they are very good in the job they do in there. These microforms are called the friendly bacteria, they multiply through digestion of nutrients. These guys help, along with our enzymes, to breakdown the foods we eat into vitamins, minerals, amino acids (proteins), carbohydrates, fatty acids, etc., this is why when there is poor digestion or gut dysbiosis, this cannot happen, therefore malnutrition and all the symptoms of ill health mentioned earlier would be present.

But what about the bad guys, the unfriendly bacteria, they like the same environment as the good guys but when these unfriendly bacteria breed they cause fermentation or putrefaction which gives off a different chemical composition causing toxins to be present, the bi-product of the bad guys. This is when you get a bloated abdomen and other symptoms such as foggy thinking, spacey heads, headaches, nausea and so on, which will lead on to the other health issues mentioned earlier.

There should be a massive 80% of good bacteria to a 20% of bad for the digestive system to work efficiently. Most people have spent a long time eating the foods which love to increase the bad guys ending up with the balance the other way round.

Which foods cause us to increase the good bacteria ? fresh raw vegetables, fruits in the correct combination, if you refer to my “hunter/gatherer” idea then you will see that our complex digestive system was designed to work with these foods.

Foods that are high in what is termed as simple sugars or fast release carbohydrates which means taken up in the body very quickly i.e. white sugar, honey maltose, lactose etc will encourage fermentation, even some fruits such as melon and bananas and dried fruits will cause fermentation, particularly where there is already a problem with too many of the bad guys (bacteria) The high protein foods such as meat etc will encourage putrefaction. The organisation of food types, if kept simple will assist digestion, the more complex food combining will lead to a massive fight inside the body causing in-digestion. Certain chemical/enzymatic changes take place in the process of digestion, under normal circumstances. Each part of the digestive tract has a job to do in order for delivery of the correct nutrients in their broken down state to be delivered to the necessary systems, if this does not happen you end up with a toxic system due to the bi-products of the waste/purtrefication.