Your Digestion Is Your Health Or Disease

By Jagatjit Virk

This book on human digestion explains the basic processes of the digestive system. You will know that most of the challenging symptoms of critical diseases are healed with proper digestion. The dramatic stomach pain, severe cramps, bloating, frequent diarrhoea, and many more symptoms, for which many types of diets, medications, supplements, therapies and/or hypnosis were tried. None gave relief from the chronic symptoms. If we go to the root cause of the problem and very simple solution can marvellously cure the problem within no time. 

Roles of dietary fibre, gluten, lactose, fructose and pre and probiotics in digestive diseases are fully well explained. SIBO and IBS, and their impact on the digestive system and how to cure these with lifestyle modifications have been explained.

You can discover the secrets of your digestive system and relations of gluten to your overall health, lactose intolerance, gut affecting obesity, connections of the gut with mental health and its microbiome. 

You can know why there is acid reflux and dysbiosis? Role of the microbiome in psychobiotics and their psychological effects on the brain.

Are you experiencing all those autoimmune diseases? Even though you don't have gut symptoms, you also can greatly benefit from the improvement of your gut health?

Modern medicine and haphazard use of antibiotics have made our gut more vulnerable to many chronic diseases including these autoimmune diseases that can be cured with the improvement of gut health and when we strike at the root cause of the problem.

This book on human digestion explains the basic processes of the digestive system. You will know that most of the challenging symptoms of critical diseases are healed with proper digestion. The dramatic stomach pain, severe cramps, bloating, frequent diarrhoea, and many more symptoms, for which many types of diets, medications, supplements, therapies and/or hypnosis were tried. None gave relief from the chronic symptoms. If we go to the root cause of the problem and very simple solution can marvellously cure the problem within no time. 

Roles of dietary fibre, gluten, lactose, fructose and pre and probiotics in digestive diseases are fully well explained. SIBO and IBS, and their impact on the digestive system and how to cure these with lifestyle modifications have been explained.

You can discover the secrets of your digestive system and relations of gluten to your overall health, lactose intolerance, gut affecting obesity, connections of the gut with mental health and its microbiome. 

You can know why there is acid reflux and dysbiosis? Role of the microbiome in psychobiotics and their psychological effects on the brain.

Are you experiencing all those autoimmune diseases? Even though you don't have gut symptoms, you also can greatly benefit from the improvement of your gut health?

Modern medicine and haphazard use of antibiotics have made our gut more vulnerable to many chronic diseases including these autoimmune diseases that can be cured with the improvement of gut health and when we strike at the root cause of the problem.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jagatjit Virk
• Release date: Jul 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201197032

Book preview

YOUR DIGESTION IS YOUR HEALTH OR DISEASE

DR JAGATJIT SINGH VIRK

Text Copyright © 2021

Dr Jagatjit Singh Virk

All Rights Reserved

Dedicated To

My Wife and Kids (Pushwaz and Parwaz) for Their Love and Support

PREFACE

This book I have written to impress upon my patients, how important their gut health is, for their overall health. There is a great saying by the father of modern medicine Hippocrates, he says that all disease begins in the gut. These words are fully apt these days also. We see regularly at our clinic’s patients with chronic diseases having most of the gut symptoms along with. These days there is more prevalence of autoimmune diseases and patients may not be having any of the gut syndromes but again if we improve the gut health, we can heal the underlying chronic autoimmune diseases with it. Most mental health patients may not have gut symptoms but as we know the gut can be the root cause of any mental illness, by improving gut health we can treat long-standing mental health.

There is also the role of gut microbiota on the patients having obesity problems. When a particular type of bug is present in the gut there are different metabolic functions to make oneself obese. The reader will learn more about the normal digestion processes and how our food can affect our digestion and health. Our food can be a miraculous medicine and can be a toxic poison at the same time if taken carelessly. To make our food act like our medicine is our digestive system to which we should give proper care and our mind.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 Digestion to Boost your Defence

CHAPTER 2. Digestive System Your Defence

CHAPTER 3. Food Sensitivities, Allergies and Tolerances

CHAPTER 4. YOUR STOMACH

CHAPTER 5. Small Intestine, Pancreas and Large Intestine

CHAPTER 6. Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)

CHAPTER 7. The Intestinal Permeability (Leaky Gut)

CHAPTER 8. Gut Microbiome

CHAPTER 9. G.I.T. Microbiota Dysbiosis

CHAPTER 10. Inflammatory Bowel Disease (I B D)

CHAPTER 11. The LIVER

CHAPTER 12. The Gallbladder and the Gall-Stones

CHAPTER 13. HAEMORRHOIDS (PILES)

CHAPTER 14. Anal Fissures and Fistula

CHAPTER 15. CONSTIPATION

CHAPTER 16. Foods For Gut Repair

CHAPTER 17. Restrictive Diet for Healing

CHAPTER 18. Summary, General Knowledge (Q & A of Digestion)

CHAPTER 1 Digestion to Boost your Defence

INTRODUCTION

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

-Jean Jacques Rousseau

Every machine in this world needs energy and fuel to run. This fuel is converted into energy to work in a system in the machines. Our body is also a machine just like any other machine but this machine is very sophisticated and unique in its creation and work. This machine works as well as repairs itself. This machine produces energy and repairs itself 24/7 without our knowledge, involuntarily. The fuel in the machine is like petrol, diesel, electricity or solar energy etc. our body gets its fuel from whatever we put in our mouth as our food. This food is in a crude form and our body makes it worth using, in a system. This system of utilising our fuel as food is called the Digestive System. This system breaks down the food into smaller particles and absorbs these particles in our blood and makes it usable to produce energy to run our body smoothly. Our main sources of energy in our food are carbohydrates, proteins and fats. These energy sources are very large molecules and our body is not capable of absorbing and utilising these, in this form, these molecules are broken down to smaller molecules to be absorbed and used for energy production. With these primary sources of energy our body also needs additional nutrients to run it smoothly. These nutrients are vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and fibres along with water. The carbohydrates are broken down to glucose and fructose mainly, the protein is broken down to individual amino acids or small peptides, the fats are broken down to fatty acids and glycerol. These small molecules help, absorption of these nutrients easy and effective. The main organs of digestion are our mouth, teeth, tongue. palate, oesophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, gallbladder and pancreas. All these organs work together to give this precious body its vibrant health. After using the nutrients, the waste material from the food is thrown out by this system is called defecation.

Our gut is one of the big ecosystems. It contains 500 species of bacteria that amount to about 3.5 to 4.5 pounds of your total weight of your body.

This system is also resident of trillions of microbes which help in digesting our food and producing important nutrients for the body. It is estimated that these microbes are ten times the number of our whole- body cells and their genes are about hundred times more than our own human genes. Seventy to eighty percent of our immune system is in our digestive system due to the presence of these microbes. Together with their genes these are called microbiomes. Moreover, with its relation with most of the neurotransmitters which are produced in the gut, it is sometimes called our second brain. It has more neurons than our spinal cord. Ninety percent of our serotonin and fifty percent of our dopamine is produced in the gut. There are other neurotransmitters also which are produced here. Many hormones are also produced in the gut. These regulate the many bodily functions along with digestion. It is also a major organ of detoxification. The solid waste material is thrown out from the gut. Now we will see the different organs of this system and know their functions in detail.

Mouth

It is the first entry point of the system. It contains our teeth, tongue and salivary glands. Food first enters here which we call ingestion of food. The food here is chewed, masticated, and liquefied. It is in the form of a liquid when juices from the salivary glands with their enzymes mix with the food. The saliva from the salivary glands softens food, begins dissolving soluble components and helps keep the mouth, teeth clean. Saliva contains an enzyme called salivary amylase, which splits carbohydrates. Also contains protease which split proteins and salivary lipase to split fats in the food.

Some starches are digested in the mouth but continue for another hour in the stomach and until the stomach acid deactivates the enzyme. Lipases become activated once reaching the stomach and beginning the process of fat digestion.

Saliva also contains other factors, these help to buffer acids and allows us to swallow and protect our teeth, oral mucosa and oesophagus. Saliva reabsorbs the nitrates from food we take in the form of green vegetables and beets. These nitrates are converted into nitrites by the bacteria on our tongue, concentrating thousand times