If digestion is your gateway to health, then its destruction is single handedly the most apocalyptical event that can happen inside your body. Unfortunately, billions of people encounter situations in which their gut health takes one blow after another, until the symptoms become a regular nagging occurrence that ultimately diminishes their quality of life.
The unfortunate part is that your digestion is not sequestered from the other critical functions of your body, so as your digestion goes downhill, eventually your liver, gall bladder, kidneys, pancreas, adrenals, thyroid, heart, and brain health do too. Like a stack of dominoes, once one falls, they all fall.
Knowing what compromises your digestive health in the first place is a good start to turning the tide in your favor. Although that list is long and burdensome, focusing on eliminating these culprits will put you in the driver’s seat and on the highway to health.
Heavy metal accumulation
Heavy metals can accumulate in our physiology in a variety of ways, but the most common way it negatively affects the digestive system is through seafood and dental amalgams, the latter being the more dangerous of the two. How do heavy metals get from your teeth into your digestive tract, and what issues does it create? As explained by Natural News:
“This starts for many in their mouth as the chewing of their food releases salivary enzymes, as it simultaneously stimulates the release of mercury from their fillings. This mercury mixes with your food and travels down to the digestive tract with it.
In the stomach this mercury combines with hydrochloric acid and produces mercuric chloride, which can damage the stomach lining and create ulcers. Not only that, but once this mercury comes into contact with our friendly bacteria in our intestinal system, it can kill them instantly by touching them. Unfortunately, this does not harm the mercury and it continues to destroy other friendly bacteria in its path.”
Using prescriptions
Healthcare has become synonymous with pharmaceuticals, which are now ubiquitous in the North American culture. As people are beginning to figure out, these legal drugs are causing as many if not more problems for people and their health, even though prescriptions like antibiotics are passed off as the consummate approach to digestive infections.
Of course, the dark side is rarely revealed or understood by doctors, but you can get a dose of the truth here. As noted by Healing the Body:
“… Not only do antibiotics kill bad bacteria in your body, they also destroy the good bacteria and leave a chemical residue that decimate the gut micro biome and tax the liver, both which can be very difficult to recover and can create a lifetime of other symptoms due to their compromised function.”
Avoiding prescriptions, especially antibiotics, is a must to keep your digestive system from being massively assaulted. If you need some natural antibiotic solutions, review Natural Antibiotics That Don’t Require A Prescription.
Biological infections
Arguably, many health conditions start in earnest from a biological (bacteria, virus, fungus, parasite) infection that was not recognized or treated appropriately. This allows the foreign invader to live inside your physiology (normally your intestinal tract), causing a multitude of digestive complaints and promoting co-infections that ramp up the toxic byproducts produced by these critters as they reside in your body.
Two very common infections that can occur and leave tell-tale signs are parasitic infections and candida infections. Learn the signs of a parasitic infection and a candida infection, and take immediate action to remove them.
Eating dead food
With the amount of dead food eaten on a daily basis, it’s no wonder so many people suffer from general health and digestive concerns. Dead food would refer to any processed, microwaved, pasteurized, irradiated, or food cooked at high temperatures that results in the removal of delicate nutrients, most notably enzymes. Since enzymes are a critical component in breaking down food in various areas of the digestive process, any shortage immediately creates deficiencies and toxicities inside the body that will manifest as a litany of symptoms. You can see some of the most common enzyme deficiency symptoms, here.
Focus on eating more raw fruits and vegetables, which you can easily get in a good dose with a superfood smoothie or salad. Add in a healthy scoop of Health Ranger’s Fermented Super30 to your smoothie, and you’ve done a great job of nutrient loading.
Consuming alcohol
It’s never popular to question one of the greatest pastimes of society, but alcohol consumption is another habit that will devastate your digestive system. No alcohol is safe from this list, although some are worse than others due to the ingredients inside them, such as beer made from the glutenous grains.
As described by Healing the Body:
“A healthy microbiome is a must-have for a healthy body, and now we’re seeing it’s just as important for mental well-being. The kicker here is that alcohol disrupts microbiota balance and increases gut permeability. Because booze feeds harmful yeasts and bacteria, colonies of unfriendly microbes begin to overpower our microbiome, and keep it from performing its many tasks. That can lead to all sorts of trouble.”
The short answer is abstaining from alcohol is one of the smartest things you can do to aid your digestion.
There are also some other notables that hurt digestion, including fluoride, GMO’s, chronic stress, and food with pesticide residue.
A plan to support your digestion
First of all, taking care of any issues above and alleviating their impact will be very helpful at reducing the pressure placed on your digestive system. Secondly, incorporating more raw foods into your diet such as superfood smoothies, salads, and sauerkraut, could be very helpful to supporting it. To ensure you don’t overload a digestive system with foods that may be difficult to break down appropriately, add in some cooked foods like steamed vegetables, lightly sautéed vegetables, and blended soups.
Supplementally, the focus should be on ensuring the digestive process goes as smooth as possible which means plenty of enzymes, probiotics, and the nutrients that support digestive health.
If the gut is truly the gateway to health, and it certainly is a strong argument, then protecting and supporting your digestion is the most important thing you can do for your body and mind. Having healed 13 chronic disease conditions which included several digestive problems, I know how tricky it can be to squash the symptoms and the source so that you never have to manage them again.
Fortunately, that road map is laid out perfectly for you in the THRIVE Academy, a complete plan on how to knock out digestive problems, for good.
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