Digestive Health

Symptoms Associated With Poor Digestive and Colon Health

Excessive and Foul Smelling Gas
Bloating • Heartburn
Acid Reflux/Chest Spasms
Sharp Pain Below Shoulder Blades
Chronic Constipation
Chronic Diarrhea
Sudden Changes in Stool
Hard Stool, Light Color Stool
Foul Smelling Stools
Bad Breath
Chronic Headaches
Skin Eruptions; Eczema, Hives, etc.
Acne
Excessive Weight
Inability to Lose Weight
Malnutrition
Fatigue

Poor Overall Health May Be Due To A “Gut Feeling.”

If you want to know what ails America all you have to do is watch daytime TV or network prime time for two hours. During that 120 minutes you will be exposed to up to 30 minutes of commercials in which perky actors representing the every man, dramatically get heartburn at their favorite trendy restaurant or having chronic indigestion that makes having that bowl of chili at the local greasy spoon a tragedy; we see them sitting up in the middle of the night with “acid reflux” or squirming in their cars in traffic due to constipation or diarrhea. All of these harrowing experiences are quickly remedied, we soon find out, by taking one pill or another. There are antacids that last up to 12 hours so you can go on having the food your body is rebelling against. There are other pills you can pop to make you “regular” or to stuff you up when your body is giving you the runs. What this kind of advertising programming is telling us is that the pharmaceutical companies know a huge market when they see it.

People in America are having problems with everyday digestion of their foods and the elimination of their waste and pharmaceutical companies are trying to tell you is that this is NORMAL. They are saying, “HEY, THIS IS HAPPENING TO ALL OF US. NO BIG DEAL! JUST TAKE A PILL AND IT WILL ALL GO AWAY!These symptoms may be common, but they are not normal nor should they be acceptable. Poor indigestion and poor bowel health and elimination are the time bomb of current and future poor health. The annoying symptoms that we like to erase with our antacids and laxatives are your stomach and bowel are saying “Help! Something is not right.” Modern pharmaceutical medicine treats this issue by killing the messenger. In other words, “if these symptoms are are telling me something is wrong, well, let’s just suppress the symptoms and we’ll be fine!”

I’m afraid it’s not so simple. My first nutrition professor taught us that no matter what the disease, start with cleaning up the bowel and digestion before anything and you will be more than half-way to recovery.Why is digestive health and bowel health so important? Our digestive system is responsible for delivering nutrition to our body. If that system is not operating at 100% then your organs, cells, blood, bones, nerves and muscles are not receiving 100% of the nutrition they need to function optimally.

So what does that mean? It means that POOR DIGESTION AND NUTRIENT ASSIMILATION CAN BE THE UNDERLYING CAUSE OF CHRONIC FATIGUE, POOR MUSCLE TONE, BAD SKIN, ALLERGIES, HEADACHES, HEART DISEASE, AND MANY, IF NOT ALL DISEASES AND DYSFUNCTIONS OF THE BODY. Your body should be able to digest foods quickly and with a minimum of gas. Heartburn and excessive gas is not normal, in fact these symptoms may be telling you that you are allergic to the foods that cause this discomfort.

Recommended elimination is a bowel movement AT LEAST once a day, and a healthy person eating a high fiber, low processed food diet can have up to three bowel movements a day. Did you ever notice that your pets have a bowel movement almost directly after each meal? That is called healthy “transit time”, the time it takes for food to be consumed, digested and eliminated. Well, normal human transit time should be less than 12 hours, but due to poor diets with low fiber content and years of eating and eliminating improperly, many people have transit times of 2-3 days or more. I had one patient that told me she was “regular” because every Sunday night she took a laxative and then she had a bowel movement regularly every Monday! It is no wonder that when we got her to have a bowel movement every day, through a protocol of herbs and supplements and some dietary changes, her chronic headaches, fatigue, indigestion and chronic sinus infections “miraculously” cleared up. Not to mention the fact that she lost 10 pounds over a two month period!

Here’s an experiment: Eat a good portion corn on the cob, or beets. Then check your bowel movements for the next 24-48 hours. Do you see corn kernels in your stool or is your stool red in color from the beets? How long did it take for this evidence of your meal to appear in your stool? If it took longer than 24 hours you may want to consider a program to help cleanse and rehabilitate your digestive and elimination systems. Read about my Clean Sweep Cleanse, a 21-day guided digestive and organ clease and weight loss program. Waste that stays in your system for long periods of time is a toxic waste dump of health problems present and future. You wouldn’t want to live in near a garbage dump, so don’t harbor one inside your body!

Antacids May Help Suppress Symptoms But Damage Health

Many of the commonly used antacids on the market today were once prescription drugs that were prescribed for serious stomach issues like ulcers. Now, some of these powerful RXs are available over the counter and are being prescribed for simple heartburn, and taken without a thought given to the long-term side-effects.

Antacids significantly reduce the amount of acid you have and with that your ability to properly digest food and absorb nutrition. Reduction of acid in the stomach also diminishes your primary defense mechanism for food borne infections and will increase your risk of food poisoning. Neutralizing the acid in your stomach blocks mineral absorbtion and long-term mineral depletion can lead to serious consequences. The irony is that many antacids today boast “added calcium” as a selling point but that added mineral cannot even be absorbed by the body once the antacid does what it is supposed to do! Like any drug, antacids are toxic to the body and carry side-effects as perplexing as nausea, vomiting and ulcers (strange for drugs that are supposed to help stomach problems!) to those as serious as permanent neurological damage. When being told to take any drug, you should educate yourself to the benefits and drawbacks (See the Wellness 101 Library and purchase a a reference book like The Pill Book or the laymen’s version of the Physician’s Desk Reference, PDR, that describes RX drug side-effects and uses) and ask yourself whether or not a natural approach could solve the problem first.

It is hard for us to believe that our medical and pharmacuetical industry does not have our best interest at heart, but it is, let’s remember, economically driven. A drug, like Prilosec, the best selling antacid on the Rx market today is the top selling prescription drug in the world! It earns Astra Zeneca, it’s maker, 6 billion dollars per year according to a report by Business Week in 2001. Imagine what that figure is now!The bottom line is that antacids can give you immediate relief from symptoms but the underlying causes, bad food choices, stress, poor adrenal function, low thyroid, food allergies and other possible issues should be addressed so that you can live a symptom free life, enjoying a variety of foods and avoiding toxic drugs whenever possible. Antacids can leave you depleted nutritionally and leave you open to serious infection and illness, should your malnutrition become chronic.

When you order nutritional support products from this site, rest assured that you will also receive detailed recommendations for taking them, and dietary and lifestyle suggestions for your optimal health.

Click here to order a safe, natural product that will get you moving your bowels daily.

Click here to order a Comprehensive Food Allergy Test so you can learn what foods may be irritating your digestive track and stressing out your immune system too.