The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss Is Already in Your Gut by Spector Tim

Author:Spector, Tim [Spector, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MED060000, Self Help, Science, SCI000000, Health
ISBN: 9781468312843
Amazon: B07P6B6D5G
Goodreads: 44222990
Publisher: Abrams Press
Published: 2015-09-08T07:00:00+00:00

Chewing or sipping your carbs?

Our whole digestive system is set up as a planned sequence of events that trigger, then manage, the digestive process. It starts with the brain just thinking about food so as to get the gastric juices and the hormones flowing, as well as producing the amylase enzyme in saliva. Then comes chewing. The body expects us to chew and swallow our food slowly. Up to forty chews is believed to be optimal to break down tough meats and vegetables and to prepare the whole digestive system. Compared to our ancestors, nowadays we rarely use our chewing powers and jaw muscles to the full, as shown by the lack of growth of our jaws and the subsequent modern epidemic of impacted wisdom teeth resulting from a mismatch of jaw sizes.

Normally the well-chewed and broken-down food passes downwards, releasing hormones in the gut lining, the liver, the pancreas and the gall bladder that aided its breakdown. At the same time signals of fullness are sent back to the brain. The pancreas releases insulin so that any glucose released into the bloodstream can be quickly dealt with. The gall bladder releases bile salts which in turn send signals to the microbes further down the gut, in the colon, to get ready to digest the expected food.

So when you drink a large sugary drink with, say, a bowl of refined-carbohydrate pasta that requires minimal chewing, your body has no time to send the right signals. As the high-sugar load hits the stomach it passes rapidly into the small intestine, where most of the sugar is absorbed. This produces an abnormal and mistimed insulin response, altering the breakdown of glucose; the released bile salts now have the wrong mix for the unexpected sugars, and the normal gut microbes are replaced by unhealthy species that feed off the sugar scraps. These unusual microbes send out new messages to alter the hormonal signals and the bile salts. The result is a very disturbed system. The microbes expecting nutrients from the empty-calorie food send out signals to the brain to keep sending more sugar their way, while the glucose is being stored away as fat, often of the internal (visceral) kind.

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