Chewing your food properly can help your digestion!

We always hear the old saying, “You are what you eat”. Have you ever paused to considered that you are HOW you eat is just as important?

Digestion


Dr. Owen Wiseman, ND
@@drowenwiseman


29 May 2018

What’s in a mouth?

There are 32 teeth in a healthy adult mouth, but it may surprise you to learn that they have different jobs based on their shape, size, and position. To start, we have our incisors that allow us to initially bite into our food and get a grip. The canines are the more pointed, fang-like teeth that perform a tearing function. The pre-molars crush while the molars themselves grind.

What’s the point of all of these different jobs?

In addition to making sure you don’t choke by swallowing food whole, the major purpose of all of this grinding and tearing is to break the food down into smaller particles. While the food is in the mouth, three major salivary gland pairs – the parotid, sublingual, and submandibular glands - release their product into the mouth. The saliva contains lysozymes, a family of enzymes that provide an immunological boost through their bacteria killing effect. The saliva is constantly produced at a rate of 7 milliliters per minute. This is to ensure that enough saliva constantly coats the teeth to provide a bactericidal shield so bacteria can’t accumulate and cause dental concerns. Interestingly enough, saliva can actually thicken when the body gets dehydrated and leads to salivary gland stones that may require surgical removal.

The salivary glands also release amylase, an enzyme responsible for the breakdown of starch into more simple sugars. Starch is a polymeric carbohydrate made up of multiple glucose molecules joined together and is found in many common foods such as potatoes and rice. The many units of glucose are joined together by glycosidic bonds, and the role of amylase as you may have guessed is to break these bonds. This releases the glucose allowing for its absorption further down the digestive assembly line.

Now entering Digestive County. Welcome!

While the mouth sounds very efficient, the food spends a very small amount of time in the mouth before it’s swallowed. It enters the stomach where the stomach acid can continue breaking down the food. Again though, the body likes to keep things moving and the food slushy now known as chyme, is pushed along into the small intestine. Glucose is far from the only sugar consumed and the small intestine contains a variety of agents that can break down all of these specific sugars such as maltose, fructose, and sucrose.

This sounds like a lot of work…what’s the point?

From the moment you see the food and bite into it with your incisors to its absorption in the gut, the purpose of digestion is to break everything down into monosaccharides – otherwise known as simple sugars. Imagine a dog picks up a big stick, carefully weaving from side to side with the weight of it, and tries to carry it into the house only to bounce off the borders of the door because it’s simply too big! However, if the furry friend runs in with a twig, there’s no resistance and you’re left figuring out where this random stick in their bed came from.

Simple sugars can pass the membrane of the cells to provide fuel while complex, polysaccharides are simply too big to be of use. Even if they did somehow manage to enter the cell, the cell lacks the enzymes to break it down, so these complex sugars would build up and cause the cell to burst.

So we’ve established that chewing your food can make digestion more effective, but what are the consequences if we don’t?

The major condition that could result is known as metabolic syndrome – a cluster of symptoms (abdominal/central obesity, dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia, high blood pressure) that increases your risk of all-cause mortality. Researchers looked at the number of chews and meal duration and their impact on how quickly the body burned calories.

The study results were significant, and those taking the time to slow down their meal and chew their food showed an increase in diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) and splanchnic circulation, the blood flow serving the gastrointestinal tract. DIT has been shown to be reduced in obese patients, so increasing this state could help you avoid obesity. In addition, an increased splanchnic circulation influences how quickly blood is returned to the heart, increases heart rate, and by extension, how quickly the body burns calories.

How can I avoid these conditions? Change your habits!

Many hard-working individuals engage in mindless eating, where the food goes from plate to stomach without much thought. This most often happens when we stay at our desk during lunch to squeeze in a few more emails. As we know, slower eating allows our digestive enzymes more time to work, and this type of mindful eating is also associated with eating socially. Eating with others encourages slower eating as you engage in conversation and a sense of what you’re consuming as you see the meals of others.

Eating alone was associated with a 45% increased risk of becoming obese and a 64% risk of metabolic syndrome in men, and a 29% increased risk of metabolic syndrome in women.

At home, this means no TV during meals so you can engage with your family or friends, an option that 6/10 Canadian families choose four or more times per week.

Researchers also looked at habit based changes and the associated weight loss experienced during the course of the program. These included putting your utensil down between bites (- 2.48lbs), having a glass of water with every meal and snack (- 1.23lbs), placing a snack into a bowl instead of eating it from the package (- 0.66lbs), and eating from a smaller plate (- 0.35lbs).

Herbal remedies can boost digestion as well.

Digestive Aid Complex – Boldocynara is a complex of artichoke, milk thistle, boldo, and dandelion. Milk thistle has been shown to be a potent liver protector, the responsibilities of which include metabolism of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, activation of certain enzymes, and other critical functions.

Artichoke has been shown to improve how well the body tolerates glucose, a simple sugar responsible for nourishing many of the cells throughout the body. Boldo has traditionally been used for complaints of the gastrointestinal tract and helps digestion by inducing bile secretion from the gallbladder. Bile helps to breakdown fats into smaller droplets that are easier to digest by the intestinal cells.

Finally, dandelion intake showed a decrease in ‘bad’ fats present throughout the body as well as increasing ‘good’ fats. Taken together in a mix like Boldocynara is an easy way to achieve these powerful benefits.

References:
https://journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/Citation/2018/02000/Associations_Between_Early_Family_Meal_Environment.6.aspx
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2606852/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3799612/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4746997/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15677798
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18474761
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23219989
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23246736
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26785346
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28647180
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29563362
https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-7075-1-5
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871403X17300960
http://www.thejpd.org/article/S0022-3913(01)54032-9/pdf

Digestive Aid Complex – Boldocynara
Artichoke • Milk Thistle

A.Vogel Boldocynara® Complex

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This formula is a combination of Artichoke, Milk thistle, Boldo and Dandelion. Ideal for digestive …
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