Many doctors agree: Better health starts in the digestive tract. But why? Just what role does digestion play, and why is it the cornerstone to better health?
Simply put, when you eat good food and digest it well, you build good blood. As if by magic, digestive enzymes inside your belly break down the food you eat into nutrients your body can utilize. Once these nutrients are broken down and absorbed into your blood, they are fed to your vital organs.
Therefore, the better your digestion, the better your blood, the better your organs, and the better your health.
Digestion isn’t easy.
In fact, digestion is a metabolic monster consuming up to 60 percent of your daily metabolism. Since it’s such an energy hog, you have to pay close attention to it.
Ayurvedic medicine is one of the great ancient medical systems still thriving in the world today. Ancient ayurvedic practitioners knew how important and difficult digestion really was, so they approached their digestion with awe, wonder, and a sense of the sacred. The Hindu god of fire, lightning, and the sun, Agni, was also the god of digestion. While we don’t suggest you worship Agni in order to heal your digestion, we do recommend a healthy respect for digestive organs.
By the incredible feat of digestion, when you eat an apple, it becomes a part of your body. And whether the apple is hot or cold, acidic or basic, sugary or bitter, your digestion neutralizes these qualities and transforms them into the building blocks of living human flesh. That’s pretty amazing, right? But that’s not all, good digestion brings you clarity, lightness, energy, vitality, and resilience to disease. Good digestion brings joy and enthusiasm. Finally, good digestion confers beauty and a fragrant aroma.
Indigestion Causes Disease
The opposite is also true. Without good food and digestion, you can’t build good blood. If you make poor food choices, can’t produce the right enzymes, or can’t absorb nutrients properly, you will not be able to build good blood.
Some argue that good digestion is even more important than good nutrition. That’s because when you can’t digest your food, you can’t extract the nutrients from it. Either way, when you’re not digesting your food correctly, you simply can’t build the best blood, and your health suffers.
More insidiously, when your digestion is weak, bacteria proliferate in the unabsorbed food. They multiply rapidly in your intestines, leading to a process of fermentation, gas, and bloating.
Ever wonder why flatulence smells? It smells because of the waste products of these bacteria—literally bacterial feces and urine. These waste products are highly toxic and smelly, turning your digestive tract into a veritable sewer. Those who are mindful of health will take precautions to prevent indigestion not only because it leads to nutrient deficiency, but because it cascades into this rapid buildup of poisons.
Undigested food tends to sit, stagnant in the intestines.
As bacteria turn the food in your gut rotten, your immune system has to fight these bacteria to prevent them from infesting your body. Your immune system must also break down the poisons in your gut. This both exhausts and overstimulates your immune system, leaving you prone to disease, food allergies, and autoimmune disorders.
Bacteria aren’t the only organisms that thrive when digestion is weak. Parasites love indigestion. When your digestion is strong, your enzymes, especially the acids in your stomach, naturally kill ingested parasites. But if your digestion is weak, these parasites survive and infest the small intestine.
Ayurveda has a special name called ama for the poisons produced by critters in your gut. Whether you are suffering from chronic skin issues, mood disorders, or even aches and pains, poisonous ama is often the silent cause. Muscle tissue and nerve tissue are among the most sensitive tissues to ama.
When I had poor digestion from years of traveling overseas, I developed heart palpitations due to ama. Once I healed my digestion with ayurveda, the heart palpitations went away.
When you have indigestion, you also feel emotionally disturbed from the buildup of ama. A mild buildup of ama causes simple dissatisfaction with your life, as well as anger and anxiety. A medium buildup causes general discomfort and malaise as well. In advanced conditions, like mine was, you may get heart palpitations as well.
Digestion Is an Opportunity to Heal
As awe inspiring as digestion is, it isn’t beyond your influence. In fact, your influence over your own food choices and digestive capacity is one of the greatest opportunities you have to influence your blood chemistry, and therefore your health.
Anytime you take medicine, the first interaction of your body with the medicine happens in the digestive tract. The most profound way your body interacts with your environment is by eating it.
Food and digestion are where your body meets nature in the most profound way, a fact you can harness to your advantage.
In short, your influence over your digestion can be a determining factor in your state of health and wellness. The benefits of good digestion and the evils of indigestion make digestion relevant to everyone. That’s why, for more than 5,000 years, ayurveda has believed that diet and digestion is the first step to health.
