Healthy Eating

Love your Gallbladder!

Love your Gallbladder!

Healthy Eating, Nutrition, Spectrum Blog

by  Lydia Irving

How often do you think about your gallbladder when deciding what to eat? Do you still even have your gallbladder?

So many adults and even young adults today suffer from gallstones and inflamed gallbladders resulting in the whole thing having to be removed. Even if it is not as drastic as that, gallbladder malfunction can be as subtle as simply feeling nauseous after eating fats or finding it hard to lose weight.

The gallbladder is tucked up inside the liver and is most famous for storing bile and breaking down fats. Read my third installment of guide to good gut health to find out more about the gallbladder.

There is a huge link between having an undernourished gallbladder and a sluggish “metabolism”. If you eat barely anything and still find it hard to lose weight, this may be your Achilles heel (so to speak).

So what are the best foods for your gallbladder?
BITTER FOODS! The foods that make your nose crinkle and stimulate saliva in your mouth.

The most common sentence I hear in clinic is “No, I don’t like that food!” and therefore, it is not eaten. Before I go into a list of some of the best bitter foods to start including in your diet, I would like to first challenge you. How often would you voluntarily eat something that you don’t like the taste of?

This is how we are trained as children “Do you like the taste of this?” Based on the answer, this food is then added or removed from the menu.

I am sorry to say, that being driven by your taste buds alone, when it comes to food choices, does not end well! Of course, we all love the taste of sugar, salt and fat! It’s delicious, moreish and available everywhere you go (in excess)! I am not saying don’t enjoy your food. What I am saying is look for other flavors in foods, don’t just expect the flavour to find you! Sit with discomfort of bitter foods and find a different kind of enjoyment from this food. The enjoyment of nourishing your health, stimulating your gallbladder and supporting your detoxification pathways!

Okay now that I have challenged you, here we go with some of my favorite BITTER FOODS:

Watercress – this can be made into a soup or as a salad.

Spices are the spice of life! Ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cassia, caraway…Wow, I didn’t realize how many spice names started with the letter C. It’s important to cook with these spice and make yummy teas and elixirs!

Grapefruit – remember the grapefruit diet of the early 2000s? Eat a grapefruit every morning and you’ll lose weight?! Well, this is kind of true in that it supports your gallbladder to process food efficiency!

Angostura bitters – didn’t see this one coming did you? If you HAVE to drink over the silly season go for gin and bitters with lime. I would of course prefer you make the bitters yourself (orange peel and some of the above mentioned spices in liquor).

Sunflower Lecithin – contains appropriate levels of the gallbladder food choline. Choline  is also found in eggshells, but we tend to avoid eating these in most recipes. Soy lecithin also contains choline and is a common ingredient in most processed foods, even the “healthy” ones. I tend to prefer recommending Sunflower Lecithin for therapeutic use as soy is a high allergen.

 

I have one last point before you run away, if you are still avoiding fat and seeking low fat foods this is not helping your gallbladder. Bile is formed in response to a need, the more good fats (basically most fats except form trans-fats!) you consume the healthier your gallbladder can be. Some good fat ideas are hemp oil, pine nut oil and toasted sesame oil, these can be used to dress your salads or added to smoothie!

P.S If you have had your gallbladder removed, you must focus on increasing your stomach acid and supporting your liver.

Here is an article on the gallbladder, pancreas and liver https://spectrumchiropractic.com.au/a-guide-to-good-digestion-part-3-the-liver-gallbladder-and-pancreas/

 

A Guide to good Digestion Part 3: The Liver, Gallbladder and Pancreas

A Guide to good Digestion Part 3: The Liver, Gallbladder and Pancreas

Healthy Eating, Nutrition, Spectrum Blog , , , , , ,

By Lydia Irving

How exciting to make it this far down the digestive tract! We are almost halfway. By the completion of these articles I hope you feel much more connected and appreciative of the journey your food goes on after it disappears down your gob, and thankful to your guts for all the hard work they put it completely unbeknown to you. They only harass you when treated without thought and care. Love Your Guts!

So, let’s get into it: The Liver, Gallbladder and Pancreas. These three organs I am grouping, because they all work together to assist in the breaking down of macronutrients and the activating of micronutrients. This article will focus on Macronutrients. These are Lipids (fats), Carbohydrates (sugars) and Protein, and the trio of pancreas, gallbladder and liver plays in processing them into small, absorbable nutrients. These three “accessory organs” collaborate at the top of the small intestine, just after the stomach. This is called the duodenum and the jejunum section of the small intestine and this is where most of the absorption occurs in the small intestine.

Now let’s zoom our focus onto chemical digestion. The liver, gallbladder and pancreas all release digestive enzymes and acids and to break down these large molecules chemically (rather than mechanical methods as previously mentioned in Part 2: The Stomach). I will present the different way each organ breaks down fat, sugar and protein.

 

 

Liver & Gallbladder

The Liver is a huge organ (1.5 kg in weight) which takes up most of the upper abdominal space. Triangular in shape, the liver is so multifactorial and essential to our existence it is a part of its own body system – The Hepatobiliary System- which also encompasses the gallbladder. Without being too biased, I want to spend a bit of time on the liver as I feel it does not get enough street credit. Most people I talk to solely think of drug and alcohol consumption and the role the liver plays in detoxing these from the body. However, the liver does so much more! In particular the liver’s role in digesting and absorbing nutrients into the bloodstream is hugely important. Now, I can’t talk about this without including the gallbladder. The gallbladder is tucked up and nestles into the bottom of the liver (CUTE!) and is infamous mostly for housing painful gallstones. But the gallbladder should be more famous for storing and releasing bile salt to break down fats.

The liver interacts with macronutrients in many different ways. Firstly: by chemically breaking down and digesting macronutrients into micronutrients (using enzymes) that can be absorbed in the small intestine. Secondly: the newly micronutrient rich food that enters the bloodstream from the digestive tract then all has to go to the liver to be sorted. The liver decides if the molecule needs to be converted into a form that will allow it to be absorbed or detoxified (and leave the body because it is toxic).

 

Fats

A diet high in good fat food is highly recommended these days for many reasons, namely brain health and balancing blood sugar levels. However, when increasing fats in the diet it is the liver and gallbladder that cop the extra workload. This means you must ensure both organs are being supported nutritionally to do their job.  The gallbladder’s job is to release stored bile, that is made in the liver, to prepare fats to be transported in the blood. To put simply, bile does not digest fats but rather emulsifies fats so they then can be digested by enzymes in the small intestine. The liver allows the body to absorb fat soluble vitamins such as Vitamin A, D and E through an activation process. These are vitamins that are needed for healthy skin and hormone production and if deficient in the body may cause depression.

 

Sugars (carbohydrates)

The main aim of the game here is to turn sugar molecules into glucose and then to convert glucose into glycogen which can be used for… ENERGY! The liver metabolizes carbohydrates through a process called gluconeogenesis. This entails long/complex sugars such as fructose and galactose being broken down to be a small and simple sugar called glucose. The liver then does the fancy conversion of glucose into glycogen (hopefully) which is stored in the liver, this is called glycogenolysis. I say hopefully because in many cases when we eat too much sugar (or have hormonal imbalances) instead of converting into glycogen, glucose is turned into triglycerides and stored as body fat as a protective mechanism. This is a reason why when trying to achieve a lower body fat percentage it is important to make sure your liver is functioning optimally.

 

Proteins

Proteins need to be broken down into amino acid for the body to be able to use them. Amino acids are essentially building blocks of the body everything from nervous system support (to make us happy) to making big strong muscles. The liver assists in making amino acids out of proteins but when this happens toxic by-products are made, such as ammonia. To put simply, the liver makes protein less toxic for the body. The gallbladder and liver also denature proteins to then pass onto the pancreas to finish the job.

 

The Pancreas

The pancreas contains a liquid or “pancreatic juice” made up of digestive enzymes these include pancreatic amylase, maltase, trypsin, elastase, dipeptidases and so on. The Pancreas is located just across the road (small intestine) from the liver and beneath the stomach. It is bumpy and elongated in shape, in text books it’s often green in color, in real life… not so much. The pancreas usually gets a lot of attention in the media for the role it plays in diabetes because it releases insulin which is necessary for glucose to get into cells. However, 90% of its job is making pancreatic juice to digest fats and proteins (don’t forget, most of the carbohydrates are digested and absorbed before even making it to the small intestine)! The pancreas needs the bile from the gallbladder to be effective at snipping up nutrient chains. Teamwork!

I hope you have made your way safely down past your “accessory organs” and are all warmed up and excited for your small intestine.

Here is another article on the gallbladder https://spectrumchiropractic.com.au/love-your-gallbladder/

A Guide to Good Digestion Part 2: The Stomach.

A Guide to Good Digestion Part 2: The Stomach.

Digestion, Healthy Eating, Nutrition, Spectrum Blog , , , , , , ,

By Lydia Irving

Welcome to the second part of my introductory guide to digestion. In Part One, we learned all about the mouth and the important role of saliva and chewing in starting the process of digestion.

After the mouth, food makes its way to the stomach. The stomach is an organ located in the upper left of your abdominal area, protected by the bottom of your rib cage and below your left lung. The stomach is shaped like a rounded sack, and fits neatly between your oesophagus and duodenum. Put simply, the stomach stores food and continues the process of converting food into chains of absorbable nutrients. Just like the mouth, it breaks down food through both mechanical and chemical breakdown processes. While the mouth uses chewing and saliva as the key mechanical and chemical processes (respectively) for breaking down food, the stomach uses different – but just as interesting – processes!

 

Mechanical:

While chewing is a pretty straightforward mechanism – teeth grind food into smaller parts – the stomach has a more complex mechanical method to break down food. The outer lining of the stomach comprises a series of muscles, known as bundle muscles, which are capable of contracting in multiple directions and angles. These contractions turn the stomach into a sort of washing machine motion, where food is tossed around the stomach from wall to wall! As the food gets thrown about, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, ready for eventual entry into the small intestine.

Because food needs to be totally broken down by this process, and through chemicals in the stomach I’ll talk about in a moment, the stomach has to hold the food for one or two hours while the process happens! The inner lining of the stomach helps with this, because wrinkled folds called rugae are capable of stretching the stomach into a size large enough to hold and move around all the food.

 

Chemical:

Your stomach is one of the scariest organs in the body, because it contains some very powerful chemicals! If you think of the stomach as a ‘hot pot’, it would be something of a horror-movie-death-acid-cooking-pot. If you dipped your hand inside that pot of chemicals, you would quickly be eaten by acids right through to the bone. Luckily, the rest of the body is protected from the powerful chemicals within the stomach by a thick protective lining the inside of the stomach. What a relief!

The reason that the stomach contains such strong chemicals is that the stomach has to break down all of the foods we eat, from thick steaks to fibers, before they reach the delicate small intestine. To do this, the stomach is strongly acidic, with a pH ranging between 1.3-3.5 (where 7 is neutral and anything higher than 7 is basic or alkaline). The most important acid in the stomach is Hydrochloric Acid. To maintain a healthy digestive system, we should aim to keep our stomach very acidic, so the hydrochloric acid is strong and capable of breaking down foods before they reach the small intestine. If we fail to do this, pathogens can enter the small intestine, damaging the organ and stopping the body from absorbing vital nutrients.

Another crucial reason to take care of stomach acidity levels is to control acid reflux. At the top of the stomach is a sphincter that opens up to the oesophagus. It’s called the oesophageal sphincter (makes sense, doesn’t it?). When the stomach is strongly acidic (a pH level of 1-2), it indicates to the sphincter that the stomach is functioning properly, and the sphincter closes the pathway between stomach and oesophagus. If our stomach isn’t acidic enough, or that ‘hot pot’ isn’t burning strongly enough, then the sphincter can remain open, allowing the contents of the stomach (food and acid) to enter the oesophagus. This causes the horrible sensation of acid reflux, which is actually the acid from the stomach burning the oesophagus. Ouch!

Sadly, most treatments for acid reflux (like anti-acids or protein pump inhibitors) don’t actually help the stomach to return to a pH of 1-2, but just try and block the acid from rising into the oesophagus. So don’t just reach for those medications to treat reflux, but investigate why you have reflux, and work on a nutritional plan to keep the stomach acidic!

To sum up so far: our stomach is a stretchy washing machine full of strong acid, which breaks down food over an hour or two. If the stomach isn’t acidic enough, we can get acid reflux.

 

Enzymes:

Another crucial chemical process to break food down happens through digestive enzymes. There are many different enzymes in the stomach and throughout the whole digestive tract. They have unique skills and have many specific roles! Typically, enzymes in the stomach help to convert foods into nutrient chains, such as amino acid chains or fatty acid chains. For example, one of the most important enzymes in the stomach is pepsinogen, which breaks down protein. Another is called intrinsic factor, which helps to unlock B12 vitamins within food.

Enzymes are produced in the lining of the digestive tract, and we can stimulate their production by eating specific foods. With a varied and healthy diet, we will produce a wide range of enzymes which can ensure that we are getting the most out of our food! However, if our diet isn’t varied enough, then production of specific enzymes will slow down.

Also, if we eat too much of a specific food, then the particular enzymes required to break down that food can struggle to keep up, causing problems. One example of this is lactose, the type of sugar found in dairy products. Breaking down lactose requires the enzyme lactase, which many of us don’t produce enough of! We call this problem of not having the enzyme required to break down a specific food an intolerance. Some of the symptoms caused by having insufficient digestive enzymes include bloating, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. If left untreated, food intolerances can cause a whole range of serious health concerns, from migraines to joint pain and eczema! These may be a result of undigested foods reaching the small intestine. The good news is that there is highly specialized testing available for intolerances, which can test up to 350 different foods to figure out exactly what you’re intolerant to! With a healthy nutritional plan, and taking care of our stomach acid and enzymes, we can help our digestive system to function optimally maintaining balance and therefore health in our bodies!

 

Check out these articles

On how the mouth aids digestion https://spectrumchiropractic.com.au/a-guide-to-good-digestion-part-1-digestion-begins-at-the-mouth/

On the mysterious workings of the stomach https://spectrumchiropractic.com.au/how-to-love-your-guts/

 

 

A Guide to Good Digestion Part 1: Digestion begins at the mouth

A Guide to Good Digestion Part 1: Digestion begins at the mouth

Digestion, Healthy Eating, Nutrition, Spectrum Blog , ,

By Lydia Irving

A healthy gut is essential for wellbeing. Duh, right? It’s only something we’ve known about for 2,000 years! As the ‘Father of Medicine’, Hippocrates, famously said “All disease begins in the gut”. The opposite is also true: good health also starts with the gut.

To understand our gut better, we have to learn about the individual stages of our digestive system. Over the next five newsletters, I’m going to break down the digestive system into its key stages. I’ll discuss what happens at each stage of digestion, and why it all matters (yes, even the appendix). The aim: to help you understand how your gut works, and how to keep it healthy!

The 5 Stages of Digestion are:

  1. First up, the Mouth
  2. The Stomach
  3. The Liver, Gallbladder, and Pancreas
  4. The Small Intestine
  5. The Large Intestine and Appendix.

 

Digestion:

Before we jump into how digestion happens, let’s just remind ourselves of exactly WHAT digestion is. The purpose of digestion is to turn foods into nutrients that the body can use as fuel. Digestion breaks food down into its simplest forms so that it can enter the bloodstream. Digestion performs optimally when the body activates the Parasympathetic Nervous System known as “Rest and Digest”. So, how does it happen?

 

The Mouth:

Our mouths have a lot of uses, but we mostly focus on the talking aspect. Well, I do at least! It runs in my family: you’d often catch my grandmother talking at length to some poor shopkeeper about the details of her 6ft2 granddaughter who was always disappointing at basketball (that’s me)!

You sometimes hear people say that drooling over food is impolite or in bad taste. In fact, to drool (or salivate) before eating, is the greatest gift you can give to the rest of your digestive tract! When you salivate over food your saliva contains an enzyme called Salivary Amylase. Enzymes are essential chemicals that exist all throughout the body that are released to break down chemicals (nutrients included) into their active form – to take action in the body! In this case, the enzymes in your saliva chemically breaks down carbohydrates so that they can be quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. So don’t worry about a bit of drool, because saliva is actually an important part of your digestive process!

While saliva creates a chemical process to help digestion, the mouth also helps digest food mechanically.

The mechanical digestion of the mouth is, of course, chewing! But if we’re too busy talking while eating or swigging down a smoothie on the run, this may not happen as effectively as the gut would like. Us nutritionists like you to “Chew your drink & drink you food”. What does this mean? Chew your food until it is unidentifiable as food – a paste! And if you are drinking anything that has nutrients – a smoothie or juice CHEW IT! Chewing tells the stomach “Something is coming, release acids!”.

We do not want any thing to make its way through the digestive tract undigested!

Now, unfortunately, a lot of what is eaten in today’s world is not “food” as the body would recognize it. But, just sitting down, taking a long breath in and out to activate “rest and digest” and chewing everything you place in your mouth is a great place to start.

The more time and energy you put into chewing and salivating, the easier the rest of your gut will have it. The stomach is the next to receive this food and to mechanically and chemically break its contents down into nutrients. Look forward to my next article to continue the journey…

Check out this article on how to love your guts https://spectrumchiropractic.com.au/how-to-love-your-guts/

 

Image by Roy Buri from Pixabay