A Quick Word About Digestion

From – http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_self_healing_digestion.html

Many people suffer from poor digestion. In fact, you might say that most people aren’t able to absorb the nutrients they swallow, so they remain in a state of nutritional starvation even though they’re taking supplements that would otherwise be quite helpful.

These people tend to scratch their heads, wondering why all the nutrients they’re swallowing aren’t having the positive effects they had hoped for. The answer to this conundrum is found in enhancing the absorption of those nutrients.

Strong stomach acid is good for you

Pharmaceutical pill pushers have convinced many people that stomach acid is bad for your health. By promoting diseases like “acid reflux” or GERD, they misinform consumers into believing that heartburn and stomach pain are caused by too much stomach acid. But the truth is that in most (but not all) cases people actually suffer from weak stomach acid and they need stronger stomach acid to properly digest foods.

It’s easy to test this by swallowing a teaspoon (or so) of vinegar with your meal and asking yourself whether it feels better or worse. For a surprisingly large percentage of people, the extra vinegar halts the pain they might normally feel after such a meal. This is a strong indication that they lack proper stomach acid production and could benefit from stronger acid. Vinegar is acidic, you see. Not as acidic as stomach acid, but far more acidic than most foods or beverages.

Consumers have been persuaded by drug advertising to swallow over-the-counter antacid tablets — products that are actually very alkaline and therefore lower the acidity (i.e. raise the pH) of the liquids in your stomach.

What most people don’t realize is that minerals require an acidic digestive environment to be properly digested and absorbed. If you lack proper stomach acid, you won’t be able to properly absorb minerals even if you swallow them! And this can lead to mineral deficiencies that promote the development of diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, arthritis and even heart problems (among other things).

So how do you encourage the production of healthy stomach acid? In my experience, drinking fresh vegetable juices each day — especially celery and cabbage juices — greatly boosts stomach health, ultimately supporting healthy stomach acid production.

Digestive enzymes from living foods

Digestion is a complex process. It requires biochemical and physical processes to break down ingested substances into their nutritional components. This process is significantly aided by digestive enzymes which exist naturally in living foods (fresh, raw vegetable and fruit juices, for example).

Heating foods (cooking them) destroys all digestive enzymes. This is one reason why cooked foods steal life away from people while raw, living foods impart life. Living foods usually come with their own digestive enzymes, aiding your digestive processes in breaking down and absorbing nutrients.

Dead foods — which include anything pasteurized — stress your liver, pancreas and gallbladder by requiring these organs to produce extra digestive enzymes that are missing from the foods themselves. Because many people suffer from poor digestive organ function, they have difficulties absorbing the nutrients they’ve swallowed.