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In the past month's series on nutrition, I explained how the manner in which we eat can affect us as much as our food choices can. We looked at the vital roles that cooking and chewing play in digestion, and the importance of eating slowly and not too much. And I described the digestive tract from the mouth to the stomach. I think it’s important that everyone understands at least the basics of how their organs work, so let's look at the rest of the digestive tract this time.
Although we may have teeth and reality TV, we’re more like worms than we like to think. We’re all just a bunch of cylinders, with a tube of the outside world running through us. Worms put dirt in theirs, we put marshmallows in ours.
After the mouth, esophagus, and stomach, food enters the small intestine, which is about 23 feet long. It's where most nutrient absorption takes place, and all the value of good nutrition hinges on good absorption. At the beginning of the small intestine, a bunch of gastric juice is injected from the pancreas and gallbladder, which neutralizes the acidic food coming from the stomach, and makes the nutrients more absorbable. The pancreas produces a blend of digestive enzymes that break down the different components of food - fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The gallbladder squirts out bile (which is produced in the liver) to make fats absorbable.
The lining of the small intestine is composed of many folds, covered with tiny hair-like protrusions called villi (which are further covered with tinier hairs called microvilli). These greatly increase the surface area of the small intestine to maximize nutrient absorption. Some inflammatory conditions, such as celiac disease (gluten intolerance) and bacterial overgrowth of the small intestine (SIBO) can damage this membrane, leading to malnutrition.
The small intestine is followed by the much shorter but wider large intestine (most of which is called the colon). Food spends a very long time in the large intestine, where water and some remaining nutrients are absorbed, and stool is compacted and waits to be liberated. Finally, the stuff we can’t digest, along with waste products from throughout the body, leaves the rectum as stool. About 60 percent of its dry weight is bacteria.
Where does it come from? Riding along with us in our intestines are about 100 trillion microorganism passengers. There are about 500 different kinds, most of which are bacteria. They’re known as our “gut flora,” and they do all sorts of useful things for us, such as helping us digest things, protecting us from harmful microbes, synthesizing some vitamins, stimulating growth of intestinal cells, and assisting the immune system. We acquire these microscopic pals by eating food that’s contaminated with them or deliberately cultured with them (like yogurt and sauerkraut), and by taking them in supplements known as probiotics.
So, as we’ve seen, our environment (what we select from it based on taste) literally passes through us. We make the outside world into ourselves. It’s a practice worth taking seriously. Besides the healthy eating practices I discussed previously, some of the main factors in good absorption are having enough gastric juice, having healthy gastric membranes, having a strong and healthy population of gut flora, and having a relaxed nervous system.
Cultivating a relaxed nervous system has many additional benefits, so spend time in nature, eat in a calm environment, get massages, meditate, do whatever works for you to become peaceful. As for gastric juice, insufficient enzyme secretion is pretty common. Consider a good digestive enzyme complex, taken at the beginning of a meal. I’ve had at least a hundred patients who have overcome longstanding digestive problems just by supplementing for a while with digestive enzymes. Some people who have trouble digesting fat do well to take a product that also contains ox bile. Finally, promote healthy gut flora by eating live, fermented/cultured foods on a regular basis, and occasionally taking a course of probiotics (especially after using antibiotics).
If you’re interested in learning more about the big picture of eating and nutrition, check out the four week course I developed for The Dragontree, called How to Eat.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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IF WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO EAT ANIMALS, HOW COME THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT?
I saw that line on a bumper sticker when I was about 16, shortly after becoming a vegetarian. I laughed heartily at it; it was a good reminder not to take myself too seriously.
I stopped eating meat mostly because I just didn’t like it. But in the early 1990s I encountered John Robbins’s Diet for a New America, and my reasons for not eating flesh became more numerous. If you aren’t familiar with him, Robbins is the vegan son of the cofounder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, and he left the ice cream business in part because of his opposition to the mistreatment of cows and his emerging belief that humans shouldn’t consume animal products. In Diet for a New America he explores the ethics of factory farms, the environmental impacts of animal production, and the health effects of consuming dairy and meat. It made sense to me and I felt empowered in my position.
But when I began grad school in Chinese Medicine some years later, my Asian professors were perplexed by the high rate of vegetarianism among the students. They asked us, “Why wouldn’t you eat meat if you can afford it?” To them, vegetarianism was an involuntary choice necessitated by poverty. They pointed to our sharp canine teeth and the place of meat in the history of human diets. They weren’t familiar with any of the issues or fads around meat eating and vegetarianism; they only cared about what’s best for human health. So I decided to set aside my biases and earnestly seek the truth.
When I began my clinical internship, I met numerous vegetarian patients – and even more vegans – who were weak and had insufficient immune function. Their pulses, which should have felt something like a jumping piece of spaghetti at the wrist, were often more like a faintly twitching thread. Often, they were under the impression that not eating meat in itself would make them healthy – even if they never gave much thought to what they did eat instead.
In my practice, ethics and preferences began to take a back seat to biological necessity. When these patients began to eat meat – often because I advised them to experiment with it – nearly all of them felt stronger and healthier. I even met some people who thrived on meat, whose bodies seemed to crave meat over anything else and whose only intolerances were to certain plant-based foods. Eventually I started eating a little meat now and then. (I can’t say I noticed much difference in my health from doing so, but I was already eating plenty of animal protein in the form of eggs and yogurt.)
Coincidentally, meat was making a big comeback. When I first moved to Portland, it had a large selection of vegetarian restaurants. Fifteen years later, many of these had been replaced with restaurants that were unapologetically meat-based with barely a flesh-free dish on the menu. Elk burgers, pork bellies, and lard were so hot. With the advent of Paleo diets, people were flocking back to meat as if it they’d been deprived their whole lives.
Meanwhile, I became a father, I became more connected to the earth, I realized I had never really forgotten all those points that Robbins made 30 years ago, and I found it increasingly difficult to be willfully ignorant of the impacts of my choices of consumption. One of those impacts is that meat production – in the prevailing manner and scale – is devastating to the planet.
Thus, I found myself in the middle of the complex intersection of nutrition, industry, environment, ethics, and politics – and I’ve never again had an easy answer to the question of whether people should or shouldn’t eat meat.
We’ll look more closely at the pros and cons of meat consumption next week. I’d love to hear about your experience with – or without – meat in the comments below.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => I often wish I had time in the treatment room to teach my patients about nutrition. Nutrition is an important issue for a few reasons. First, because we’ve greatly reduced the number of deaths from accidents and infections, most people in developed countries now die from conditions that are influenced by long-term eating habits: heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.
Second, we have different nutritional challenges today than ever before. For most of human history, people ate to survive and barely had a choice of what to eat – but it was entirely natural and mostly local. Now our choices are dizzying, much of our food is created or processed in factories, and there are all kinds of new unknowns – such as the influence of pesticides, chemicals used in production and packaging, and nonstick coatings on cookware.
Third, in the nutrition conversation, everyone is yelling at once, and most of the participants have no qualifications to give nutritional advice or interpret scientific studies. Thousands of bloggers, journalists, self-styled “bio-hackers,” and medical professionals have an opinion about what people should and shouldn’t eat, save for a very few places that tell you what's proper for you. There’s so much sensationalism and contradiction.
I believe people need a clear, consistent philosophy on nutrition that doesn’t change with every new study.
This inspired me to create an online course called
How to Eat. It teaches traditional wisdom on nutrition, backed by modern science, in a format that’s easy to digest (I couldn’t resist). It’s designed to give someone an understanding of how and what to eat that makes so much sense that there’s no need to memorize anything.
But I’m realistic about modern attention spans, so I know I’m lucky if I’ve kept you reading even this long, and you probably want to know what that title is all about. If I were to distill my nutrition teachings down to one rule, it would be this: Stay conscious while eating.
I used to say the single most important rule was something I learned from one of my nutrition teachers, Dr. Paul Greenbaum: eat food that’s
whole,
pure, and
natural. I still think this is great advice, but now I know that, even following this rule, it’s still possible to eat in a way that isn’t good for you.
I eat pretty cleanly, but a few months ago I started experiencing abdominal bloating. My belly would get as big and tight as a basketball; I could barely walk and was in agonizing pain. I tried some herbs and supplements and started eating only very simple foods, but it barely made a difference. Finally, I stopped eating entirely and the bloating went away, but of course I knew I couldn’t fast forever.
When I did finally eat again, I ate with all my attention. I chewed well and felt into my body and did nothing else at the same time. I just gave
all of my presence to what I was doing. I noticed that my body wanted only about two-thirds as much food as what I expected and that it wanted to be fed that food at a relatively slow pace. Doing this, I digested everything well. I ate the very same foods as before, but had no bloating. I realized then that I had gotten into the bad habit of eating unconsciously. I had forgotten my own teachings, and was eating while working, while driving, and while walking through the house.
It was all better until yesterday. In the mid-afternoon I started to feel the bloating coming on and I realized I had been eating unconsciously again! Sometimes I like to learn things the hard way.
Now obviously you’re not going completely unconscious while eating (if you are, I highly recommend you don’t eat while driving), but we all let our minds stray while eating. Sometimes we’re just daydreaming. Other times our mind is actively engaged in something else, like having a conversation, or reading the news, or playing on our phone, or watching TV.
There are (at least) three good things that happen when we
stay conscious while eating:
1. The eating process tends to work better. We're relaxed, we consume at a healthier pace, the body assimilates it better, and I believe we probably derive more nutritional value from the food.
2. We notice and can respond to the subtle (or not-so-subtle) messages our body is giving us, such as, “I’m not hungry anymore” or “This food is not compatible with me” or “Slow down.” You can learn virtually everything you need to know about how to best feed yourself – both the specific foods and the ideal time and manner to eat them – just by giving all of your attention to the act of eating.
3. We have an amazing opportunity. Truly. I believe that most people may never experience just how profound the act of eating is. This profundity is only available when we give it our full attention. Then we start to get an inkling of it . . .
. . . the complexity of colors, textures, flavors, and nutrients in the food
. . . the incredible sophistication and intelligence of the human body; its ability to extract what it needs from the food and turn it into energy, blood, muscle, bone, and the capacity to remain conscious and sharp
. . . the whole ecology we’re part of – the sun and the almost magical ability of plant cells to turn its light into biological energy; the constructive roles of soil and water; the human labor and the care that was taken to cultivate this food; and the lineage of thousands of generations of plants and animals that were intentionally chosen for the purpose of nourishing us.
When we have an experience of just how special this is – we see ourselves putting the universe into ourselves and being sustained by it and connected to it in the process – eating is no longer just about making the hungry feeling go away or enjoying pleasant tastes. It could be our spiritual practice. It unites us with our environment. And it compels us to consider the impacts of our choices on this beautiful system.
So, if you do just one thing to intervene in your nutrition routine, I recommend that it’s this. When you eat, give the act all of your attention. If you can’t give it all of your attention, then eat minimally and slowly, or wait until a time when you
can give it your attention. Then tell me what happens.
Love,
Peter
Learn more about the 'How To Eat' online course
[post_title] => The Single Most Important Rule for Good Nutrition
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In the past month's series on nutrition, I explained how the manner in which we eat can affect us as much as our food choices can. We looked at the vital roles that cooking and chewing play in digestion, and the importance of eating slowly and not too much. And I described the digestive tract from the mouth to the stomach. I think it’s important that everyone understands at least the basics of how their organs work, so let's look at the rest of the digestive tract this time.
Although we may have teeth and reality TV, we’re more like worms than we like to think. We’re all just a bunch of cylinders, with a tube of the outside world running through us. Worms put dirt in theirs, we put marshmallows in ours.
After the mouth, esophagus, and stomach, food enters the small intestine, which is about 23 feet long. It's where most nutrient absorption takes place, and all the value of good nutrition hinges on good absorption. At the beginning of the small intestine, a bunch of gastric juice is injected from the pancreas and gallbladder, which neutralizes the acidic food coming from the stomach, and makes the nutrients more absorbable. The pancreas produces a blend of digestive enzymes that break down the different components of food - fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The gallbladder squirts out bile (which is produced in the liver) to make fats absorbable.
The lining of the small intestine is composed of many folds, covered with tiny hair-like protrusions called villi (which are further covered with tinier hairs called microvilli). These greatly increase the surface area of the small intestine to maximize nutrient absorption. Some inflammatory conditions, such as celiac disease (gluten intolerance) and bacterial overgrowth of the small intestine (SIBO) can damage this membrane, leading to malnutrition.
The small intestine is followed by the much shorter but wider large intestine (most of which is called the colon). Food spends a very long time in the large intestine, where water and some remaining nutrients are absorbed, and stool is compacted and waits to be liberated. Finally, the stuff we can’t digest, along with waste products from throughout the body, leaves the rectum as stool. About 60 percent of its dry weight is bacteria.
Where does it come from? Riding along with us in our intestines are about 100 trillion microorganism passengers. There are about 500 different kinds, most of which are bacteria. They’re known as our “gut flora,” and they do all sorts of useful things for us, such as helping us digest things, protecting us from harmful microbes, synthesizing some vitamins, stimulating growth of intestinal cells, and assisting the immune system. We acquire these microscopic pals by eating food that’s contaminated with them or deliberately cultured with them (like yogurt and sauerkraut), and by taking them in supplements known as probiotics.
So, as we’ve seen, our environment (what we select from it based on taste) literally passes through us. We make the outside world into ourselves. It’s a practice worth taking seriously. Besides the healthy eating practices I discussed previously, some of the main factors in good absorption are having enough gastric juice, having healthy gastric membranes, having a strong and healthy population of gut flora, and having a relaxed nervous system.
Cultivating a relaxed nervous system has many additional benefits, so spend time in nature, eat in a calm environment, get massages, meditate, do whatever works for you to become peaceful. As for gastric juice, insufficient enzyme secretion is pretty common. Consider a good digestive enzyme complex, taken at the beginning of a meal. I’ve had at least a hundred patients who have overcome longstanding digestive problems just by supplementing for a while with digestive enzymes. Some people who have trouble digesting fat do well to take a product that also contains ox bile. Finally, promote healthy gut flora by eating live, fermented/cultured foods on a regular basis, and occasionally taking a course of probiotics (especially after using antibiotics).
If you’re interested in learning more about the big picture of eating and nutrition, check out the four week course I developed for The Dragontree, called How to Eat.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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