How your digestive system works. A machine with many parts.

So that you can understand what's wrong with you and how to correct your health, it's important to know your body and how your digestive system works. Once you understand the digestive system and all its parts, it will make you more conscious about what you eat, your lifestyle and your stress levels. You will get to know how these things affect the tubes in your tummy. You may start to think twice about tins and packets of processed food.

When I was 18 years old I went to live with an Indonesian family in Bali for a short time. What amazed me was they had never seen a packet or tin of processed food, not even a can of soft drink. The mother went to the market nearly every day to buy fresh food and there was no fridge or freezer for storage. There was a well in the small back yard for water and camping type stoves for cooking. Yet these people ate the finest food, not because they could but because that was all that was available. Each meal consisted of fresh vegetables, rice, fresh herbs and meat or fish.

They were poor but vital, youthful and healthy. Their digestive system was not overloaded with toxins and they didn't have problems with elimination; they had a relaxed lifestyle. Even the teenagers were healthy as there were no fast food venues; alcohol wasn't part of the culture as it was just too expensive. The only thing some of them did now and then was to buy cigarettes from street stalls but they could only afford to buy 2 at a time for a treat. It was all so different from a western teenage lifestyle.

A more luxurious life in the west has bought with it chemicals, toxins and unhealthy attitudes and it's not always easy to step away from what's around you.

If you can make a difference to your digestion at a young age or give your kids a healthy start then there's a lot less unravelling to do when you are older. However, digestive woes can be completely reversed if you're prepared to help yourself. By working your way through this book and following the advice within you will start to see big shifts and improvements in your health. The digestive system is a long complex system with many parts. If you look after your nutrition and eliminate wastes effectively you are on your way to great health. You are what you eat, assimilate and eliminate. The problem is that most of us either have inadequate nutrition to feed our cells effectively or we are not getting rid of our waste products sufficiently.

So what's underneath all that soft flesh on your tummy and how does it all work?

The digestive system is the most important system in your body as it feeds and nourishes the rest of your body and acts as a rubbish dump to carry away debris. The digestive system is also known as the gastrointestinal system. It consists of hollow tubes and supportive digestive organs that connect alongside it to help your body break down food. This includes the mouth, oesophagus which connects to the throat and the stomach, the stomach, liver, intestines, gall bladder and pancreas.

There are several words for the digestive system

Gastrointestinal and gut refer to the whole digestive tract. Intestines= large intestines= colon= bowel. Small intestines= small bowel. The stomach sits above the intestines.

The gut usually means the stomach and intestine but can refer to either.

Stools= faeces=poo!

The bowel

There are two parts to the intestines known as the colon/large intestine/bowel and small intestine or the variables above.

The small intestine joins the stomach and consists of the duodenum, jejunum and ileum. It then joins the large intestine via a valve called the ileocecal valve and can be a massive 7 metres long but half the width of the large intestine.

The large intestine/colon consists of the cecum, appendix, ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon, sigmoid colon, houston valve, rectum and anus and is 1.5 metres long. In total the intestines are the width of a tennis court and when spread out cover the size of a double tennis court!

Throughout the digestive tract is a lining called the mucosa. In the mouth, stomach and small intestine your mucosa has small glands that produce juices to help digest food. The intestines have a layer of smooth muscle that with the juices helps break down your food and move it along so it can be absorbed and excreted.

Valves

There are two important valves, the ileocecal valve which joins the small and large intestine near the cecum. The other one, the houston valve, is in the rectum above the anus. It consists of 3 large folds that support the weight of faecal matter and prevent its urging toward the anus, which would produce a strong urge to defecate. Both of these can be damaged though constipation, inflammation stress and other means.

Digestive Organs

Two really important organs for digestion are the liver and pancreas. They produce essential juices for digestion. Between meals, the gall bladder stores juices from the liver and are known as bile. When the small intestine needs these juices the gall bladder squirts bile through ducts into the small intestine. Bile is green in colour and it is what makes the final colour of your stools (poo) brown. Bile is particularly needed to break down fat and helps dissolve it; rather like using a cleaning product to get grease off your oven. After fat is dissolved it is then digested by enzymes (an enzyme is a substance that speeds up chemical reactions in the body) from the pancreas and lining of the small intestine. Of course you also need a good blood supply and healthy functioning nerves to keep your digestive system healthy.

What happens when you eat?

Firstly your saliva produces enzymes that start breaking down food in your mouth; so chewing is very important. You don't want to swallow big chunks of food as it puts a lot of strain on the stomach and makes it difficult to break down your food to a soup-like substance called chyme.

There was a case of people stranded on an island with nothing to eat but poisonous berries. They ate the berries thinking they were healthy. Only one survived and it happened that this man had savoured them for so long in his mouth with lots of chewing that the saliva actually neutralised the poison.

The stomach lining...