Did you know that your digestion begins to work at the very thought of food? Your salivary glands begin secreting amylase, an enzyme for breaking down starches, at the very thought of eating a meal. Amylase production is the first place things can go wrong with your digestion. Not producing enough of this enzyme here will interfere with digestion further down your digestive tract.
When you finally take your first bite, your food mixes with amylase, and the act of chewing breaks your food down into easily digestible particles. If you are eating quickly and not mindfully, you may gulp down your food. Gulping down food means you probably aren’t chewing effectively. This could leave food particles too large for easy digestion. Large, undigested particles cause big problems further down your digestive tract.
To make things worse, unmindful eating can keep us in a fight or flight response, rather than letting our bodies rest and digest. Eating on the run, while working, or in a hurry causes stress, which keeps our digestive tract inflamed.
As your food heads down to the stomach, the muscles in your esophagus (food pipe) ripple to help move your food down. If you are relaxed, this is an easy process. The more stressed you are, the more constricted your esophagus can become, making it more difficult to get the food down.
Once your food makes it to the stomach, it is met by hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid not only continues the food breakdown process (with the help of more enzymes, if all is working well), but it also kills many, if not all, harmful pathogens. If you are not producing enough hydrochloric acid, you won’t break food down as well and you will let in harmful pathogens like bacteria and fungi. This is when things begin to go really haywire.
This is the end of part 1. Please join me in the next post for part 2.
I know this is very simplified. It’s done to just give you a quick overview and not overwhelm you trying to figure out how all the parts work in and out of digestion.
Just from this little bit about your upper digestive tract, do you think you may be having problems with any of the parts I’ve listed so far? I’d love to see your questions in the comments below.
Don’t forget to grab your Immunity Booster checklist here.
To your health,
Jennifer
