Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ

by Giulia Enders

all living things are made out of the same basic ingredients: sugar molecules, amino acids, and fats.

After that piece of toast you ate for breakfast has undergone the snipping of the enzyme scissors, the final product is the same number of sugar molecules as a couple of spoonfuls of refined household sugar.

sugar contained in white toast is digested relatively quickly by our enzymes.

With wholegrain bread, everything moves at a much more leisurely pace. Such bread contains particularly complex sugar chains, which have to be broken down bit by bit.

body has to work much harder to restore a healthy balance if a sugar onrush comes suddenly. It pumps out large amounts of various...

feel tired again once this special oper...

used as fuel for our cells—

our body loves sugary sweet treats because they save the body work, since sugar can be taken up more quickly.

sugar can be turned into energy extremely quickly, and our brain rewards us for a rush of rapid energy by making us feel good.

When we eat too much sugar, our body simply stores it away for leaner times. Quite practical, really. One way the body does this is by relinking the molecules to form long, complex chains of a substance called

glycogen, which is then stored in the liver.

Another strategy is to convert the excess sugar into fat and store it in fatty tissue. Sugar is the only substance our body can turn into fat with little effort.

OMFG

The simple reason for this is that human cells adore fat. Fat is the most valuable and efficient of all food particles.

atoms are so cleverly combined that they can concentrate twice as much energy per ounce as carbohydrates or protein.

fat to coat our...

the most important hormones in our body are made out of fat, and every single one of our cells is wrapped in a membrane made largely of fat.

So fat must be absorbed via a different route: the lymphatic system.

Every blood vessel inside the body is accompanied by a lymphatic vessel, even each tiny capillary in the small intestine.

They drain away fluid that is pumped out of our tissue and transport the immune cells, whose job it is to ensure that everything is as it should be throughout the body.

Often, they work just by using gravity. That explains why we sometimes wake up in the morning with swollen eyes.

All the body’s lymph vessels converge in an impressively thick duct, where all the digested fat can gather without the risk of clogging.

Shortly after we eat a fatty meal, there are so many tiny fat droplets in our ductus or thoracic duct that the lymph fluid is no longer transparent but milky white.

When the fat has gathered, the thoracic duct skirts the belly, passes through the diaphragm, and heads straight for the heart.

it all goes straight into the heart—there is no detoxing detour via the liver as there is for everything else we digest.

Detoxification of dangerous, bad fat takes place only after the heart has given the fat-laden fluid a powerful push to pump it through the system and the droplets of fat happen to end up in one of the blood vessels of the liver.

the effects of olive oil, and results show that it can protect against arteriosclerosis, cellular stress, Alzheimer’s, and eye diseases such as macular degeneration. It also appears to have beneficial effects on inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and help in protecting against certain kinds of cancer.

olive oil also has the potential to help get rid of that spare tire. It blocks an enzyme in fatty tissue—known as fatty acid synthase—that likes to create fat out

of spare carbohydrates. And we are not th...

benefit from the properties of olive oil—the good bacteria in our gut also apprec...

Cooking oil or solid fats such as butter or hydrogenated coconut oil should be used for frying. They may be full of the much-frowned-upon saturated fats, but they are much more stable when exposed to heat.

That’s why you should always close the bottle or container of olive oil carefully after use and keep it in the fridge.

IN THE FRIDGE?!

Oils such as rapeseed (canola), linseed, or hempseed oil, on the other hand, contain more of the anti-inflammatory substance alpha-linolenic acid, while olive oil contains a substance with a similar effect called oleocanthal.

similar way to ibuprofen or aspirin, but in much smaller doses.

oils regularly can help those who suffer from inflammatory disease, regular heada...

panacea

Tf is this word?!

Large amounts—of either good or bad fat—are simply too much for the body to deal with.

Nutritional physiologists recommend we get between 25 and a maximum of 30 percent of our daily energy requirement from fat.

of 2 to 2½ ounces (55 to 66 grams) ...

As with carbohydrates, these tiny building blocks are linked in chains. This is what gives them their different taste and a different name—proteins. Digestive enzymes break down these chains in the small intestine and then the gut wall nabs the valuable components. There are twenty of these amino acids and an infinite variety of ways they can be linked to form proteins.

There are plants that do contain all the necessary amino acids in the necessary quantities. Two of these are soy and quinoa, but others include

amaranth,

spirulina, buckwheat, and ...

lymphatic system, embedded in fat droplets, and once there, they attract the attention of ever-vigilant immune cells. When the immune cells discover a tiny particle of peanut in the lymphatic fluid, for example, they naturally attack it as a foreign body.

Grains do not like us to eat them. What plants really want is to reproduce—and then along we come and eat their children. Instead of creating an emotional scene, plants respond by making their seeds slightly poisonous.

But, the more danger a plant senses, the more poisonous it will make

its seeds.

In insects, gluten has the effect of inhibiting an important digestive enzyme.

There, it can slacken the connections between individual cells.

This allows wheat proteins to enter areas they have no business being in.

That, in turn, raises the alarm in our ...