¿Desnutrición
en un mundo de
abundancia?
Contradicción o consecuencia… veamos algunos puntos al respecto.
When studying the digestive system, I have been amazed by its perfection, both physically and chemically. The details are incredible and worth telling, although it does not seem like a topic for an article.
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I do not intend to bore you with the biological study of the digestive process, but I do intend to talk a little about how it works and the many diseases that we could prevent if we paid attention to this.
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The act of eating today has almost no importance in the daily lives of most people.
It has become a mere act to satisfy a seemingly trivial need and we are also not aware of whether or not we go to the bathroom to defecate with due regularity.
What is its importance? Health in the digestive system represents 80 percent of our immune system, which is why it is important, since it guarantees our well-being. Also, the digestive system has a direct line of communication with the brain and spinal cord, and has a very strong impact on mood.
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So, to have a healthy life we ​​have to understand what it means to maintain the health of our digestive system.
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By digesting food, our body can obtain important nutrients that will make all our organs function correctly, giving each of its cells the energy and substances they need to function.
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But, it must be mentioned that the food we currently eat does not always provide the nutrients that the body requires. And even most people do not know what those nutrients are and do not know what foods can provide them.
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So, it's not about eating, it's about what to eat. But, since lifestyle also greatly affects digestive health, how we live and what we eat goes hand in hand.
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We cannot obtain a single formula that tells us the solution to this conflict because it depends on many variables such as, for example, how we are physically, where we live, how we live, what we like to eat, what we can buy to eat, etc.
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What seems crucial to me in order to find or develop our personal nutritional formula is to assume the information that reveals to us the importance of consuming foods that nourish us in the correct way and this information also allows us to become aware that we are running out of control. life or we protect it, in the act of eating day by day, because our immune system depends on this.
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To discover what to eat, I began by visualizing the process that the digestive system creates to obtain the nutrients it needs for the functions of the body's cells. An incredible chemical process: the body uses sugars, amino acids, fatty acids and glycerol to develop the substances necessary for energy, growth and repair of all cells.
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It is very interesting to see the journey of food, which after being processed in the mouth by the teeth and the saliva enzyme amylase (which breaks down starches), passes through the pharynx or throat towards the esophagus, where muscular movements make it reach the stomach.
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The muscles of the stomach remove food by mixing it with digestive juices that contain acids and enzymes, to break it into much smaller, more digestible pieces. Everything is transformed into a thick liquid called chyme. A valve located at the exit of the stomach prevents chyme from leaving the stomach before it acquires the proper consistency to enter the small intestine.
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It is in the small intestine that most nutrients from food are absorbed and with the help of special cells, the nutrients cross the walls of the intestine to reach the bloodstream.
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The blood carries simple sugars, amino acids, glycerol, and some vitamins and salts to the liver. The liver stores, processes and distributes nutrients to the rest of the body when needed.
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The liver, gallbladder and pancreas are not part of the alimentary canal, but they are essential organs for digestion.
MAYRA Salvador
The liver makes bile, which helps the body absorb fats. Bile is stored in the gallbladder until it is needed. The pancreas makes enzymes that help digest proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Also, it manufactures a substance that neutralizes stomach acids. These enzymes and bile are transported through special channels to the small intestine, where they help break down food.
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Then, food that was not digested in the small intestine passes to the large intestine, where the nutrient absorption process is almost complete. In this part of the intestine, water is removed from undigested matter to form solid waste to be excreted, finishing the digestion process.
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Another very interesting fact is that this entire process is intervened jointly by hormones and nerves, with signals that flow from the gastrointestinal tract, back and forth, to the brain.
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These hormones are produced and released by the cells that line the stomach and small intestine and control the functioning of the digestive system. Hormones tell the body when to produce digestive juices and send signals to the brain indicating whether a person is hungry or full. The pancreas also produces hormones that are important for digestion.
The body has nerves that connect the central nervous system with the digestive system, controlling some digestive functions, such as when a person sees or smells food, the brain sends a signal that makes the salivary glands prepare to eat.
The body also has an enteric nervous system (ENS), which is made up of nerves within the walls of the gastrointestinal tract. When food stretches the walls of the gastrointestinal tract, the nerves in the ENS release many different substances that speed up or slow down the mobilization of food and the production of digestive juices. Also, nerves send signals to control the actions of the intestinal muscles to contract and relax in order to push food through the intestines.
Up to this point, it is wonderful to visualize all this incredible mechanism of processes that allow cellular nutrition of the body. But when we know that the digestive system is dominated by some 100 trillion bacteria, from 500 to 1000 different species, which function as another organ in the body, the extraordinary excites me.
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These bacteria are called microbiota and have a close interdependence between them. The vast majority of the organisms of this microbiota always remain in the intestine, while a part temporarily lives in the body, because they are ingested through food and drinks. The stomach and duodenum are the parts of the intestine with the fewest microorganisms, especially because the acid secretion of the stomach and bile destroys a large part of the bacteria. It is in the colon where there is the highest population density of bacteria.
The interaction between the microorganisms that make up the intestinal microbiota produces energy, vitamins B and K that the human body is not able to synthesize, helps absorb calcium and iron from the colon, prevents the colonization of other pathogenic organisms, and its presence stimulates the system. immune.
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The imbalance in the relationship between the immune system and the intestinal microbiota can initiate a pathological process and trigger certain autoimmune diseases because an inflammatory response is produced. Other diseases, such as metabolic syndrome and obesity, can also be related to problems with the intestinal microbiota.
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We can observe that a type of imbalance with respect to the intestinal microbiota could have been triggered since the 19th century, with health improvements that implied the reduction of our exposure to the microbes that ancestrally coexisted in symbiosis with humans.
Added to this is the excessive use of antibiotics, which has caused the emergence of resistant bacteria and a negative impact on the microbiome. Epidemiological and experimental studies have shown a positive correlation between exposure to antibiotics from an early age and the development of many modern diseases, whose epidemic outbreak dates back to the 1940s, just when the widespread use of antibiotics began. Here it is worth including that, currently, the consumption of meat and sausages increases our intake of antibiotics, since their use is indiscriminate in livestock and free-range animals.
There is now a wide list of inflammatory, autoimmune, metabolic and neoplastic diseases and even behavioral disorders, which are directly related to the alteration (dysbiosis) of the intestinal microbiota. The Disbiome® database (https://disbiome.ugent.be) collects studies on the microbiota-disease relationship formore than 300 different diseases.
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If you have come this far, I think you will be able to understand the importance of knowing the digestive system, its functioning and its relationship with almost all current diseases when it is imbalanced, whether due to a poor diet or an imbalance in your microbiota.
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There is a lot of scientific evidence that indicates that our habits play a fundamental role, both in the prevention of diseases and in the success of any treatment. Food and lifestyle habits are essential for there to be a correct balance in our microbiota and to provide the necessary nutrients to our body for optimal cellular functioning.
