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May 17 - June 2, 2020
Their gut then sends signals to the part of the brain that processes negative feelings, although they have done nothing bad. Such patients feel uneasy but have no idea why.
The considerations of our sphincter may not sound worthy of a Nobel Prize, but in fact they are concerned with some of the most basic questions of human existence: how important to us is our inner world, and what compromises should we make to get by in the external world?
The heart and the lungs sit on top of the stomach. This explains why we find it more difficult to breathe deeply after eating a lot.
So, all our body’s organs use up energy, but it is from the small intestine that we start to get some energy back. That explains why eating is such a pleasant pastime.
Incidentally, our body has to work much harder to restore a healthy balance if a sugar onrush comes suddenly.
Glycogen reserves are soon used up—just about the time during your run when you notice the exercise is suddenly much harder work.
The villi are not inflamed or damaged, but eating too much bread still appears to have an unpleasant effect on the immune system.
They simply move on down the line, into the large intestine, where they become food for the gas-producing bacteria there. Consider the resulting flatulence and other unpleasant symptoms as votes of thanks from extremely satisfied, overfed microbes. Although the results can be unpleasant, lactose intolerance is far less harmful to health than undiagnosed celiac disease.
Most people have enough lactose-splitting enzymes in their gut. It is just that their activity is somewhat reduced—down to about 10 to 15 percent of their initial level,
a food intolerance may in fact be nothing more than the reaction of a healthy body as it tries to adapt within a single generation to a food situation that was completely unknown during the millions of years of our evolution.
Studies have shown that this syrup can suppress leptin, the hormone that makes us feel full, even in people who are not fructose intolerant.
While our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate up to five hundred different local roots, herbs, and other plants in a year, a typical modern diet includes seventeen different agricultural plant crops at most. It is not surprising that our gut has a few problems with a dietary change of that scale.
In that process, the red pigment they contain is first turned green, then yellow. You can see the same process in the various stages of a bruise on your skin.
If the connection between the enteric nervous system and the brain is severed, the digestive tract carries blithely on as if nothing has happened.
Meals rich in carbohydrates may perk us up more quickly, but they do not keep us feeling full for as long as meaty or fatty meals.
Our bellies don’t rumble when we’re hungry, but when there is a long enough break between meals to finally get some cleaning done!
Vomiting is not a stomach stumble: it happens according to a precise plan.
The feeling of nausea is the body’s way of telling us that the food we have eaten is not good for us.
His theory is that the only reason for having a brain is to enable movement.
Movement is the most extraordinary thing ever developed by living creatures.
We humans have known since time immemorial something that science is only now discovering: our gut feeling is responsible in no small measure for how we feel.
A gut that does not feel good might now subtly affect our mood, and a healthy, well-nourished gut can discreetly improve our sense of well-being.
If the vagus nerve wants to deliver information to the extremely important locations in the brain, it must get them past the doorman, so to speak.
Experiments like the one with the balloon show that feeling unwell and negative emotions can arise via the gut–brain axis when the gut’s threshold is lowered or when the brain insists on having information it would not normally receive.
Stress is thought to be among the most important stimuli discussed by the brain and the gut.
Periods of stress mean the brain borrows energy, and, as any housekeeper knows, good budgeting is always better than running up too many debts.
mealtimes, for example, which should be enjoyed without pressure, at a leisurely pace.
After this age, we find it more difficult to deal with sudden change, but the payback is a more stable, calmer disposition.
Sometimes, the gut has a perfect right to be unhappy—if it is dealing with an undetected food intolerance, for example.
One of the main purposes of movement is to shift us constantly toward a healthy equilibrium—from cold to warm, from sad to happy, or from tired to alert, for example.
WE FACE POTENTIAL death every day. We could get cancer, get eaten away by bacteria, or get infected with a deadly virus. And several times a day, our lives are saved. Strangely mutated cells are destroyed, fungal spores are eliminated, bacteria are peppered with holes, and viruses are sliced in two.
If we say a microorganism is particularly suited to our gut, we mean it appreciates the architecture of our gut cells, copes well with the climate, and likes the food on the menu. All three of these factors vary from person to person.
Children born by cesarean section take months or even longer to develop a normal population of gut bacteria.
We are our flora’s weather and its seasons.
They were only able to evolve from their carnivorous wasp ancestors because they picked up new kinds of gut microbes that were able to extract energy from plant pollen. That allowed bees to become vegetarians.
Anything we come into regular contact with carries our microbial signature.
most of all, genes are plans. They are incapable of doing anything unless they are read and implemented.
Classical Chinese medical theory has always divided people into three groups according to how they react to certain medicinal plants, such as ginger.
Predigested milk (yogurt) saves our body some work—we just have to finish off what the bacteria started.
Our microbes are experts in dealing with these substances. We provide them with somewhere to live and the undigested remains of our food—and they keep busy dealing with the stuff that’s too complicated for us to do.
Salmonella bacteria are not part of a chicken’s natural gut flora, but they are a common pathogen.
Cleanliness in our gut is something akin to cleanliness in a forest. Even the most conscientious of cleaners would not dream of taking a mop to the forest floor. A wood is clean if the beneficial plants it contains are in healthy equilibrium.
The more sterile a household is, the more its members will suffer from allergies and autoimmune diseases.
Disinfectants have no place in a normal household. They are appropriate only if a family member is sick or the dog poops on the carpet.
The aim of cleaning, then, should be to reduce bacteria numbers—but not to zero. Even harmful bacteria can be good for us when the immune system uses them for training.
cleaning does not mean annihilating all bacteria. Cleanliness is a healthy balance of sufficient good bacteria and a few bad ones.
Choose organically farmed meat. Drug resistances differ from country to country. It is shocking to see how often these resistances correspond to the antibiotics used in large-scale animal farming.
Pharmacies sell concentrated plant antibiotics to treat developing cold symptoms, urinary infections, and inflammations in the mouth and throat. Some products contain mustard seed or radish seed oil, for example, or chamomile and sage extract.
The places they leave vacant should be colonized by the best candidates possible—probiotics, for example. They help the gut to return to a state of healthy equilibrium after danger has been averted.
The South Pole is so cold and germ-free that the infants simply did not get the bacteria they needed to survive.
