posted June 29, 2005 06:49 PM         

This chapter is available on Audio CD

This chapter has a few specific applications:

1. for those who have reached that certain crest between self-loathing and self esteem where they can no longer endure the condition of their body and are prepared to do whatever it takes to reverse the tide

2. for those who have begun a nutrition or supplement program with no results, or else may have reached a plateau in their progress.

3. for those with long term allergies which years of shots and pills have not cured

4. for those who suspect that they're not eliminating normally

5. for those who have been diagnosed with one of the following dead-end labels:

Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Spastic Colon
Crohn's Disease
Chronic Colitis
Leaky Gut Syndrome
Regional Ileitis
Esophageal Reflux
Malabsorption Syndrome
Candida albicans
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

This is not a discussion for the improvement of the above conditions. We're talking about resolution: the return to normal operation of the systems. If 1-4 above apply to you, and you grasp the principles cited in the medical sources at the end of this chapter, your problems may well be over.

Many doctors have noted the pivotal importance of the colon in the body's health, from the ancients to the moderns. Physicians from ancient Rome and Greece felt that "death begins in the colon." (Hippocrates) These healers regarded the colon as a life-center of the body - one of its most important organs.

The colon's importance seems often to be glossed over and patronized by today's mainstream approach, in which the colon is thought of simply as the body's sewer, without regard for its many critical, dynamic biologic functions. Consequently, rates of death from colon cancer are at an all time high in our country's history. Colon cancer is now the #3 cancer in the U.S.

The above list of "diseases" are experienced today in epidemic proportions, and with standard treatment are almost never cured.

The irony is that to return to a normal state is simplicity itself. The biggest obstacle seems to be finding that out.

Let's begin with some

BASIC PLUMBING

The digestive tract can be thought of as a long tube from one end to the other. Food goes in one end; waste exits the other. The tube is divided into sections we know:

Mouth
Throat
Esophagus
Stomach
Small intestine
Large intestine

The large intestine is also called the colon.

That's the whole tube, top to bottom. It's important to remember one odd fact: the inside of the tube is still considered the outside of the body. No misprint. The food sitting there in your intestines is still outside the body. Reason: it hasn't been absorbed into the bloodstream yet.

Let's follow a grape through the tube.

You pop the grape into your mouth. Chewing releases the grape's enzymes, which are going to help break it down into its component parts.

You swallow the chewed grape. It goes down the esophagus and ends up in the stomach. There the grape gets churned around some more, and has some of the body's digestive juices break it down further. After about an hour of this, the stomach spits the chewed grape particles into the next section of the tube, the small intestine.

The small intestine is about 22' long. After more enzymes are added, this is when the grape particles first get inside the body. Happens like this: the inside of the small intestine is lined with a velvety layer of tiny fingerlike projections called microvilli. It's kinda like a microscopic version of one of those pieces of mattress foam rubber with the bumps on it. The microvilli increase the absorptive surface area of the colon to the size of a football field. Absorption of the nutrients contained in the grape particles happens through the microvilli. The nutrients are passing from the inside of the small intestine through the intestine wall, into the bloodstream.

After several hours of giving the small intestine enough chance to absorb all nutrients, the undigested waste, whatever's left over of the grape that wasn't absorbed, gets moved along and propelled into the final section of the tube: the colon.

The colon is a muscular tube about six feet long. All along the walls are infoldings called haustrae, which mark off sections of the colon.

By the end of adolescence, the passage through the colon should be about two inches in diameter. Adolescents should have little trouble eliminating, because the process of undigested layers of waste sticking to the lining of the colon wall is not that advanced. With an unrestricted diet high in rancid fats and excess protein, the inside passageway gradually becomes smaller and smaller, requiring more force to push everything through. Straining at stool is an obvious sign of a blocked colon and is not normal.

Elimination should be effortless, no matter what the person's age. Producing rabbit pellets with great effort is a sign of serious obstruction, as well as a toxifying lifestyle. Adolescents who are educated to eat lots of raw live foods may never experience the buildup of sludge layers at all. Here we see the distinction between average and normal.

The average American teenager has a bad diet and little dietary advice, eating about 125 grams of protein a day with only about 25 grams being sufficient. The normal American teenager likely has been shown what to eat for optimum health, and knows the indigestibility of and absence of nutrients in most foods available in the cafeteria.

There are three primary reasons for rotting food persisting in the digestive tract:

1. We kill our friendly bacteria
2. Acidification of the body decreases enzyme production
3. Mucoid plaque in the intestinal lining halts peristalsis

Let's do them one at a time.

1. FRIENDLY BACTERIA

Wrongly described as the body's sewer, the colon is actually buzzing with life activity. Millions of friendly bacteria are hard at work in the colon. Their job is the final stage of digestion, leaving only what is absolutely of no use to the body to be eliminated. The friendly bacteria, weighing as much as three pounds in the normal colon, more than 400 species, also function to keep bad bacteria in check. (Shahani) It seems that most bacteria in the world and in the body are actually beneficial to our health. Bacteria are the janitors of the world, disposing of decaying and diseased cells. Think of a beach with no bacteria. What would happen to all those dead fish that wash up there? Wouldn't be much of a Club Med spot, that's certain.

How do the friendly bacteria, called probiotics, keep the bad bacteria in check? Well, think of a crowded theatre. You walk in, and there's no place to sit; all the seats are taken. So you can't stay. Same thing with bacteria. There's only a certain number of "seats" in the colon. If they're all taken by friendly bacteria, then there's no chance for the bad bacteria to set up shop and start to duplicate themselves. According to most researchers, like Simon Martin, normal probiotics should be more numerous than the cells of the intestinal lining itself.

Here's why probiotics are so important. Normal people generally have some cancer cells, Candida yeast, E. coli, staphylococcus, strep, and any number of other potentially bad organisms you can think of in their tract most of the time. But they don't get any disease. Researchers know, for example, that 50% of men over age 75 actually have prostate cancer, found on autopsy, but only 2% die from it. Why? The body encapsulated the cancer: limited and controlled its growth, walled it off. The discoverer of the HIV virus himself, Dr. Luc Montagnier, said that HIV alone cannot cause AIDS. (The Coming Plague) Depressed immune environment is also necessary. Same with Candida or most other bacteria; normally they'll be held in check by sufficient friendly bacteria. E. coli is actually a probiotic when held in check by normal friendly flora. It's only when the friendly probiotic bacteria get killed off that the potentially bad organisms get a chance to get a foothold and take over. The bad bugs are then called opportunists.

So probiotics (friendly bacteria) are extremely important. The whole key is balance. Problem is, our friendly bacteria are constantly being killed off. How? Same culprits as cited in the ALLERGIES chapter:

antibiotics we take

antibiotics given to the animals whose meat we eat

antacids, like Zantac, Tagamet, Prilosec, etc.

NSAIDs, like Advil, Tylenol, Excedrin, Motrin, etc.

other prescription and over the counter medications

white sugar

carbonated drinks

antihistamines

chlorinated water

fluoridated water

coffee

Without friendly probiotics, the final stage of digestion can't take place in the colon. Debris rots in there. Opportunistic bacteria and Candida albicans start taking over. Bernard Jensen, on the relation between the bad bacteria and the undigested food:

"...bacteria and viruses, which are cell scavengers, are not there for lack of something better to do. They're there because there is malnourished, enzyme-depleted, diseased, and necrotic tissue. Functioning as nature's biological sanitation department, they must break down and eliminate the sick tissue to prevent further poisoning of the body. If you stop their action, you allow continuous poisoning by the decaying tissue "
- Empty Harvest p 113

Jensen makes a point here that should not be missed. He's talking about rotting food in the colon as well as diseased living cells of the colon itself, both attracting bacteria. It's an identical situation in the two separate instances:

Undigested food in the colon

Bacterial infection in a diseased organ of the body (the colon)

In neither case are the bacteria causing illness. They are trying to prevent illness by breaking down the dying tissue. Whether it's rotting yogurt in a blocked colon, a dead coyote in the forest, or infected liver cells in the body of an alcoholic, bacteria are just doing what they do best: cleaning up. When the bacteria are "diagnosed" as the cause of the illness, rather than a sign of the illness, the medical approach is to try and kill them. But that's like killing the garbagemen. The garbage remains. Understanding such a simple concept is pivotal in arriving at a holistic outlook toward health.

Chronically undigested food is often present in quantities too great for any bacteria to scavenge. The debris then becomes plastered onto the inside lining of the colon, eventually making it smooth and shiny, like the inside of a new shotgun barrel. When this happens, absorption is blocked. (Rogers)

2. ACIDIFICATION OF THE BODY

This is a bit technical, so don't feel bad about skipping it. It involves pH. That means acid/base balance. You know, like soap is basic or alkaline, and oranges are acidic. Now in the body certain places only operate correctly if they're at exactly the right pH. The stomach lining for example has to be alkaline in order to counteract the acidic digestive enzymes. Otherwise we'd constantly be burning holes in the stomach lining. All phases of digestion are totally dependent upon a delicate acid/base balance.

The problem is, most foods in the Standard American Diet - Big Mac, fries, coke, pizza, etc. are acid-forming. That means they lower the pH of the body: too acid. The balance is disrupted: many enzymes can't operate. Digestion is inhibited: food sits there and rots.

A sixteen ounce bottle of Coke has a pH around 2. Very acidic. To bring the pH back up to our normal 7.3, we would have to dilute the Coke with about ten gallons of water. But we don't usually drink ten gallons of water after every Coke. So how does it work?

The blood must maintain a pH between 7.3 and 7.45. (Guyton). If not, we die. With all the acid foods we keep eating, the body tries desperately to keep its pH within the range. The first things it tries are buffering with bicarbonates in the blood and lungs. (Guyton, p 392) Next, the body begins to sweep the extra acids into the tissues, especially muscles and joints. That's what lactic acid buildup comes from. If that's still not enough, as a final effort to keep from acidifying, the body will actually precipitate acids out of solution, in the form of solid crystals and salts. This is the exact mechanism of gallstones, kidneys stones, uric acid crystals, plaque, and cholesterol crystals. A built-in protection for self preservation. We think of these stones as major medical problems, but in reality it's just a sign that the body's systems are functioning as they should. Otherwise we'd be dead of acidosis.

So what happens to the colon from an over-acid diet? In a word, enzymes. Or rather, lack of enzymes. Enzymes are necessary to break down and digest food. If the environment is too acid, the enzymes in the stomach and small intestine don't work very well. By the time it gets to the colon, everything that was supposed to be digested should have already had it happen. But it hasn't. So the undigested food gets dumped into the colon. There are no digestive enzymes in the colon. So the food just sits there and rots.

Now, minerals can only be absorbed at a certain pH. And minerals are a necessary component of enzyme formation. So it's a vicious circle: acidification of the body causes decreased minerals, which cause decreased enzyme production, which causes the food to rot in the tract. Which further blocks absorption of water, nutrients, and minerals. Downward spiral.

Absorption. Another critical job of the colon is electrolyte reabsorption and water reclamation back into the bloodstream, so we're not constantly losing them. Electrolytes are important minerals, like sodium and potassium which conduct electrical charge through the body. They are necessary for normal cell function. The idea is for the body to maintain as much water, sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium as possible, for maximum conservation. Remember, we're almost 70% water. The colon is the logical place for this reabsorption to happen since it's the last portion of the tube.

In the sick human, the colon is blocked. Water and electrolytes don't get reabsorbed. Where do they go? Out. The body loses water, general dehydration, cell death, premature aging, kidney destruction, spilling of electrolytes, blood thickening, the whole enchilada of downward health then follows. Blocked absorption alone is enough to slowly kill you.