(NaturalNews) This article continues part three of the 15-part article series called
Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part two, we explored your innate healing potential and saw how powerful your self-healing abilities really are (
http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_self_healing_immune_system.html). Here in part three, we look at a powerful principle of nutrition:
You aren't what you eat; you are what you ABSORB.Many people suffer from poor digestion. In fact, you might say that
most people aren't able to absorb the
nutrients they swallow, so they remain in a state of nutritional starvation even though they're taking
supplements that would otherwise be quite helpful.
These people tend to scratch their heads, wondering why all the nutrients they're swallowing aren't having the positive effects they had hoped for. The answer to this conundrum is found in enhancing the
absorption of those nutrients.
Strong stomach acid is good for you
Pharmaceutical pill pushers have convinced many people that stomach acid is bad for your
health. By promoting diseases like "acid reflux" or GERD, they misinform
consumers into believing that heartburn and stomach
pain are caused by too much stomach acid. But the truth is that in most (but not all) cases people actually suffer from
weak stomach acid and they need
stronger stomach acid to properly digest
foods.
It's easy to test this by swallowing a teaspoon (or so) of
vinegar with your meal and asking yourself whether it feels
better or
worse. For a surprisingly large percentage of people, the extra vinegar halts the pain they might normally feel after such a meal. This is a strong indication that they lack proper stomach acid production and could benefit from
stronger acid. Vinegar is acidic, you see. Not as acidic as stomach acid, but far more acidic than most foods or beverages.
Consumers have been persuaded by drug advertising to swallow over-the-counter antacid tablets --
products that are actually very alkaline and therefore lower the acidity (i.e. raise the pH) of the liquids in your stomach.
What most people don't realize is that
minerals require an acidic digestive environment to be properly digested and absorbed. If you lack proper stomach acid, you won't be able to properly absorb minerals even if you swallow them! And this can lead to mineral deficiencies that promote the development of diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, arthritis and even heart problems (among other things).
So how do you encourage the production of
healthy stomach acid? In my experience, drinking fresh vegetable juices each day -- especially celery and cabbage juices -- greatly boosts stomach health, ultimately supporting healthy stomach acid production.
Digestion is a complex process. It requires biochemical and physical processes to break down ingested substances into their nutritional components. This process is significantly aided by
digestive enzymes which exist naturally in living foods (fresh, raw vegetable and fruit juices, for example).
Heating foods (cooking them) destroys all digestive
enzymes. This is one reason why cooked foods steal life away from people while raw, living foods impart life. Living foods usually come with their own digestive enzymes, aiding your digestive processes in breaking down and absorbing nutrients.
Dead foods -- which include anything
pasteurized -- stress your liver, pancreas and gallbladder by requiring these organs to produce extra digestive enzymes that are missing from the foods themselves. Because many people suffer from poor digestive organ function, they have difficulties absorbing the nutrients they've swallowed.
Probiotics
Many people suffer from serious
intestinal flora imbalances. Western
medicine, for the most part, remains astonishingly ignorant about the importance of intestinal flora to overall health, but those who study more holistic medicine understand the important role that these "inner
bacteria" play in your health: The bacteria in your
gut actually
digest and
transform nutrients you eat into other nutrients.
They are, in essence,
nutrient transformers that operate inside your body, producing nutrients needed for your health. That's why people who take
antibiotics often suffer serious digestive side effects in the days that follow: They've wiped out all the friendly intestinal bacteria that were providing essential nutrients!
It's easy to remedy this imbalance: Take
probiotic supplements on a regular basis. This will feed your digestive tract the friendly bacteria you need.
And don't fall for the
marketing sham of eating yogurt, thinking it's loaded with
probiotics.
Virtually all store-bought yogurt is pasteurized, and pasteurization kills the friendly bacteria. This makes most "probiotic yogurt" products nothing more than a dishonest marketing gimmick.
By the way, if you want healthy intestinal flora, it's also important to
reduce your consumption of dietary sugars. When you consume more sugars, you alter the bacterial
population in your gut, causing a shift toward bacteria that feed on sugars. As you alter your
diet to exclude refined sugars, the population of bacteria in your gut follows suit, shifting towards a non-sugar bacterial population.
References
Everything I've said here is supported by quotations on the website
www.NaturalPedia.com where I've assembled over one million unique web pages covering tens of thousands of
natural health topics.
For those looking for more specific scientific references, simply use Google.com or Google Scholar to search for the topics described here. You'll even find many of them right here on
NaturalNews if you use the search box at the top of this page.
(I'm often amazed when some people demand references for things that can be easily found with a simple
Google search. The classic use of
article references dates back to the era of library card catalogs when finding
information was a laborious task. But today, not even 20 years later, finding information is virtually effortless on the 'net. If you want to find information about how
eating sugars alters the bacteria in your gut, for example, just search Google for "eating sugars alters the bacteria in your gut".
When I run that search on Google, I get over 70,000 page results...
Coming up next: This "Heal Yourself in 15 Days" article series continues tomorrow, when you'll learn how to change your health by
changing your blood...
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In mid 2010, Adams produced NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted pioneer in the email marketing software industry, having been the first to launch an HTML email newsletter technology that has grown to become a standard in the industry. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known as the 'Health Ranger,' Adams' personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org
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