DIGESTION RULES #4
Janelle Klein MSN, ARNP
Last month we saw how our stomach keeps from digesting itself. Now we will look at factors affecting the exit of food from the stomach.
The stomach is engineered to slowly release its contents as digestion proceeds. If the food exits too rapidly, a large amount of sugar gets absorbed into the blood stream all at once. Initially this can give a surge of energy. But, then bloating, cramping, diarrhea, dizziness, fatigue, nausea and vomiting can occur. On the flip side, if digestion is slowed and food is held for hours in the stomach, fermentation and bacterial overgrowth can occur causing bloating and sluggishness as well.
Many factors affect how the stomach prepares and sends food to our intestines. Two of those factors are when we eat and what we eat.
First, lets look at WHEN we eat. When it comes to digestion, routine really helps. Based on the meal timing of prior days, your brain signals the digestive system to begin secreting enzymes and acids before your next meal. If you eat every morning at 7 am and suddenly your schedule requires you to eat at 5 am, your stomach is not prepared. If your meal times are always erratic, you lose the benefit of a prepared and ready digestive system. Digestion still occurs, but not as effectively as it would if you ate at the same time every day.
Another issue, affecting digestion time, is snacking. If a glass of juice, a candy bar or a soft drink is added to the stomach an hour after you finish your meal, the stomach must start all over again. If this practice is continued every few hours through out the day, the stomach never gets rest. It may take until the wee hours of morning to finish its work. While weight, age and personal individuality affect how often we need to eat, the body does best with routine meal times which allow the stomach to finish its work before starting again.
Secondly, WHAT we eat affects how long our food stays in the stomach. Protein and fat generally spend more time in the stomach than carbohydrates. Eating food with fiber in it prevents sugars from being dumped out of the stomach too quickly. A glass of juice will move through the stomach rapidly, causing a fast rise in blood glucose. A serving of apple sauce will take a bit longer because there is more fiber in it. But the whole apple, skin included, will give the ideal exit time: not too fast, not all at once and not too slow.
Recent studies in physiology show that receptors in the stomach alert the brain to how full the stomach is and what is in the stomach. The brain uses this information to signal a feeling of satisfied fullness.
The signal of fullness is a conditioned response. If you were brought up eating large, high fat, spicy or sugary meals for supper, you will continue to feel unsatisfied until that criteria is detected. Keep in mind that the brain is not telling you what is healthy. It is craving what it has been conditioned to receive.
A person who is accustomed to drinking a glass of orange juice and a piece of white toast with jelly on it for breakfast will feel just as satisfied as the person who is accustomed to eating excessive amounts of protein or fat for breakfast. Both feel well fed and neither feels good on the other's diet. They are eating what they have been trained to eat by their family or society. Unfortunately, despite how satisfied these people feel, neither has a diet which promotes health.
The good news is that we don't have to be slaves to our gut feelings. The brain can be retrained to signal the satisfied feeling with a health promoting diet. It may take weeks or months of consistent and gradual retraining, but the body will eventually respond positively to our new health choices.
Finally another thing that can help digestion, is to limit the variety at any one meal. A common characteristic of pre-packaged foods is that the ingredient list can be 10-40+ ingredients long. For example, if you want a meal with potatoes, you can buy a potato for 50 cents or you can buy a processed potato product, containing 9 additional ingredients, in a crinkly bag for $2.99. Compounding the complexity, some of those 9 ingredients may contain multiple more ingredients. Each additional ingredient can make your digestive system do something extra to prepare the substance for use or elimination.
How's a body to deal with all those different combinations? Who could know? The point is, a meal with a dozen whole food ingredients, is much easier to digest than a meal, with hundreds of assorted ingredients from pre-prepared bags, boxes and cans.
In the next article, Digestion Rules #5, I will discuss what happens to our fuel once it reaches our intestines.