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

by Giulia Enders

The villi are not inflamed or damaged, but eating too much bread still appears to have an unpleasant effect on the immune system.

The gut can also become porous for a short time after a course of antibiotics, after a heavy bout of drinking alcohol, or as a result of stress.

LACTOSE INTOLERANCE is not an allergy or a real intolerance at all, but a deficiency.

results from a failure to break down certain nutrients completely into their

component...

two sugar molecules that are linked together by chemical bonds. The body requires a digestive enzyme to break that bond, but, unlike other enzymes,...

Lactose breaks down when it comes into contact with the enzyme on the gut wall, and the resulting singl...

In 75 percent of the world’s population, the gene for digesting lactose slowly begins to switch off as they get older.

“Ate cherries, drank water, got tummy ache, went to hospital!”

LOL!

common food intolerance in the Western hemisphere is trouble digesting the fruit sugar fructose, with about 40 percent of the population affected.

The cells of people with hereditary fructose intolerance contain fewer fructose-processing enzymes.

later in life is thought to be caused by a reduced ability of the gut to absorb fruit sugars.

Sugar helps the body absorb many other nutrients into the bloodstream.

The amino acid tryptophan likes to latch on to fructose during digestion,

When there is so much fructose in our gut that most of it cannot be absorbed into the blood and we lose that sugar, we also lose the tryptophan attached to it. Tryptophan, for its ...

Serotonin not only puts us in a good mood, it is also responsible for making us feel pleasantly full after a meal.

Snack attacks or constant grazing on snacks may be a side effect of fructose intolerance if they are accompanied by other symptoms, such as stomachaches. This is also an interesting hint for

same amount of calories but with a homemade vinaigrette or yogurt dressing will keep you feeling full for longer.

The most powerful muscles in our body are the jaw muscles; the body’s most flexible striated (not smooth) muscle is the tongue.

Tooth enamel is the hardest substance produced by the human body.

jaws can exert a pressure of up to 180 pounds (80 kilos) on each of our molars—or approximately the weight of a grown man!

The tongue rounds up about half an ounce (20 milliliters) of cake mush and presses it against the palate, the stage curtain of the esophagus. It works like a light switch: when the tongue presses against it, the swallowing reflex starts automatically. We close our mouth, since breathing must stop for swallowing to take place.

This movement is so powerful that it can be heard down the corridor and round the corner—that popping sound in the ear that often accompanies a powerful swallow. The vocal cords are silenced and have to be closed.

As adults, we swallow somewhere between six hundred and two thousand times a day.

And each act of swallowing involves more than twenty pairs of muscles.

This explains why we often fancy a sweet dessert after eating meat or fatty, fried foods. Our blood sugar levels are impatient and want to rise quickly, and dessert provides a quick blood sugar fix.

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

This is why many doctors recommend a high-fiber diet to encourage digestion: indigestible fiber presses against the gut wall, which becomes intrigued and presses back.

It is the rumbling belly, which, contrary to popular belief, does not come mainly from the stomach, but from the small intestine.

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!

Reflux is the regurgitation of gastric acid and digestive enzymes into the pharyngeal area; in the case of heartburn, those juices travel no farther than the end of the esophagus, causing a burning sensation in the chest.

it’s all down to the nerves.

When the nerves of our digestive system receive incorrect information, they fail to keep our gastric juices where they belong and allow them to start moving in the wrong direction.

The crux of the matter is that two different nervous systems have to work together in the esophagus and stomach area—the nervous system of the brain and that of the gut.

The presence of bile can seriously confuse the cells of the esophagus. Suddenly, they are no longer sure where they are, thinking, “Am I really an esophagus cell? I keep sensing bile! Perhaps I’ve really been a small intestine cell all these years without realizing it . . . Silly me!” Anxious to do the right thing, they change from esophagus cells into gastrointestinal cells.

Mutating cells can make mistakes in their own programing and no longer grow in a controlled way like other cells.

This saliva is meant to protect our teeth from the corrosive effects of the gastric acid they are about to come into contact with.

Sudden vomiting that comes in a violent surge almost without warning is likely to be caused by a gastrointestinal virus.

This is due to the fact that the sensors count how many pathogens they encounter and when they decide the numbers have got out of hand, they slam on the emergency

br...

The feeling of nausea is the body’s way of telling us that the food we have eaten is not good for us.

when the information sent to the brain from the eyes is at odds with that sent by the ears, the brain cannot understand what is going on and slams on every emergency brake at its disposal.

When the brain is stressed, vomiting expels partly digested food in order to save the energy required to complete the digestive process.

When the gut is stressed, partly digested food is ejected either because it is toxic or because the gut is currently not in a position to digest it properly.

Constipation results from a disconnect between the nerves and the muscles of the gut when they are no longer working toward quite the same goal.

end of the large intestine that disagreement arises as to whether the contents need to be expelled right away or not.

longer the feces stay in the gut, the more time the body has to extract fluid from them, making the business ever harder.

Probiotics and prebiotics—living, beneficial bacteria and their favorite

food—

The same principle helps to revive wilting lettuce—simply soak the sad salad in water and half an hour later your greens will be crispy again.