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Last time we talked about the role of the hands in digestion.  Today we are going to discuss several aspects of digestion that occur in the mouth. The first aspect of digestion is mastication, or chewing.

Chewing

Once food actually enters the mouth, by whatever means, chewing begins. I should say that chewing should begin because many people do not chew their food. Somehow people have acquired the notion that as long as food is chewed into pieces small enough to swallow without choking, that is sufficient. In reality, chewing is a process that breaks the particles into their smallest form while mixing those pieces with saliva. I have watched people eat rice as though it were pudding (swallow it without chewing), and I have seen a person actually chew liquid, but a medium between these is a good place. People have tried to place numbers on the amount of times you should chew each bite, and it amounts to about 40 chews for a bite that includes meat and works its way down until you are drinking and don’t have to chew at all. Realistically, food should be chewed until it can be easily swallowed. Because so many have become accustomed to swallowing without chewing anyway, this concept may not help. I have noticed that most people with weakness of the stomach or people who are overweight do not chew their food enough.

Teeth

Chewing is considered mechanical digestion. There are many opinions as to how many times a person should chew and, while I think it varies a little with each person, a minimum of 40 chews per bite of food is good. This would not hold true with any bite because Jello obviously needs less chew time than meat, but I have seen people swallow rice whole. Chewing is two-fold. First, it breaks food into smaller pieces. If you don’t break food into small enough pieces, the stomach will not be able to digest it, and it will end up passing into the colon as waste. As a rule of thumb, people who constantly struggle with weight problems do not chew their food. The second reason for chewing is because saliva must mix with the food. The mouth releases amylase, an enzyme used for digesting carbohydrates, and most of the foods we swallow without chewing are carbohydrates. Rice, tapioca, pudding, etc. – these are all carbohydrates that really need that amylase to begin digestion. If you don’t feel like you can chew a food because it seems foolish, do it for the sake of getting the saliva mixed in with it.

Do the teeth have any other function other than to break food up (mechanical digestion)? Well, as long as you are asking, the teeth actually release a small electrical current every time you chew. One of the reasons you release saliva when you eat is so that it can act as a conductor for the currents released by the teeth. Each tooth is electromagnetically connected to an organ or gland. When that organ or gland becomes deficient in a nutrient, it sends the message to the mouth via the teeth. When you begin chewing the food, the tooth is supposed to send microcharges into the foods almost as if giving the food a signal so the nutrients will know where to go when they reach the blood stream. When your teeth are filled with amalgam fillings, you corrupt the signal and, of course, get a slow accumulation of mercury poisoning in your body. If you have a root canal, a pulled tooth, or anything that is not a healthy tooth, that charge is either missing or disrupted. The charge is not absolutely essential to being healthy, but if the food is not charged before it reaches the blood, the body must use energy from other sources to signal it. The body has many ways to conserve energy if we will help it out. Most of you probably know that enzyme production is very stressed in the body and charged particles of food because of hand use and that action of the teeth help relieve the enzyme needs. So the less your teeth do their job, the harder it is on the rest of the digestive system.

NOTE: The Actinomyces, Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus bacteria cling to teeth and release acids that decay the teeth (cause cavities). These bacteria are the reason we must brush our teeth. These bacteria feed on sugar, primarily refined forms of it. While it has become common to coat the teeth with a sealant that is supposed to prevent the acids from reaching the teeth and make the surface of the tooth less prone to the clinging bacteria, this ‘sealing’ process can be very negative. First of all, the teeth need to breath. Teeth have pores in them and little ridges and these are what become sealed with these treatments. While the initial logic of sealing teeth makes sense, did you ever wonder what the pores and ridges were there for? Kind of makes you think, huh? God designed the body perfectly; the teeth are not rotting because the ridges allow bacteria to become harbored – they are rotting because your diet is horrible and you are not nutritionally balanced enough to maintain strong teeth. Your diet and lifestyle are creating a good host condition for the bacteria. Did God create toothbrushes for us or did He provide a diet that would not feed these acid-forming bacteria?

Because we do not have good sources for foods that are high quality and our digestive system is weakened already, we are forced to brush our teeth, so don’t think I discourage it. The best thing to brush the teeth with is baking soda though, not toothpaste. Put a box where you would normally keep your toothpaste and dip the bristles of your toothbrush in it before brushing your teeth. Your teeth will feel nice and clean when you are done, and plaque will not build up nearly as fast. Symbolically, plaque on the teeth indicate the amount of plaque you are accumulating in your arteries. If you accumulate plaque on your teeth easily, your arteries are in danger. Also notice that some foods tend to make your teeth really grimy feeling and you want to go brush them or scrape them with your finger nail; these foods are really hazardous to your arteries. Chinese food does it to me every time. You will notice that it is generally a cooked fat or oil that gives this grimy feeling on the teeth. Toothpaste, even the natural kinds, contain ingredients that actually trap bacteria on your teeth, so don’t be impressed by the Listerine commercials. Listerine can kill some bacteria, but there are other ingredients in the paste that work against it. Don’t trust what the average dentist tells you about toothpaste; they were taught by the people who produce the toothpaste. The teeth actually reveal the overall health of the bones, so if you have a lot of cavities and weak teeth, you need to find out what to do for your bones. Your teeth are nothing more than an extension of your bones. NOTE: You will never have to worry about gum disease or rotting teeth if you keep the flora and the pH in the intestine balanced.

Cephalic action

One of the first stages of digestion is cephalic action, not chewing. This is when the nose smells the food and receptors in the brain begin to automatically release saliva. The release of saliva is controlled by parasympathetic response. Vice versa, if you smell something you don’t like or your brain does not feel it would be of benefit to your body, sympathetic response withholds salivary release. After food has been chewed and thoroughly mixed with saliva, food is swallowed. It first passes into the pharynx, then down the esophagus, penetrating the diaphragm muscle through the esophageal hiatus and finally past the lower esophageal sphincter (cardiac sphincter) into the stomach.

One of the first stages in digestion is the role the hands play in bringing the food to your mouth. How was food intended to get to your mouth? Forks and spoons are part of the new civilized world, but how was it created to be in the beginning? Were we not made with hands to bring the food to our mouths? A dipper or bowl of sorts was used to get soup and liquids to the mouth, but fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and even meats had no way of getting to the mouth unless the hands were used to get them there.

The hands are one of the four most electrical parts of the human body. The first is the brain, the second is the tongue, the third is the groin and the fourth is the hands. The hands actually emit an electromagnetic current that can be measured (Praywell by Walter Weston). It is no mistake that the hands were to be used to deliver food to the mouth because the electricity emitting from the hands actually charge the particles in the food. Each one of us has a slight variation in our electromagnetic fields, and food particles will digest much more easily if the elements in them are converted to your particular field pattern before they enter the mouth. This process can be so powerful that food poisoning can be neutralized before it enters the mouth. The hands don’t kill it as much as they change the spin of the cells so that the body recognizes it, sets up a defense against it and eliminates it as quickly as possible. NOTE: It is interesting that God put Gideon’s men through a test that included picking water up in their hands instead of stooping to drink with their mouths.

Don’t worry, I am not an advocator of eating with your hands. I realize we must live in the world without appearing like cavemen.  But there is a way to get the same effect without actually touching your food. As food sits on your plate, you can place your hands on the side of the plate almost as if you were warming your hands on the warm food. Bend the hands a little, don’t hold them straight and rigid. Your hands should be in such a manner as if you were going to scoop the plate up. With your hands around the food, your cup of juice, or any item, you are creating an electromagnetic sphere that will literally charge the particles in the food and make them more acceptable. It can actually change a candy bar into an almost neutral item rather than the toxic, chemical-filled junk food that it is. Again, it is not making the food item good for you, but it changes the rotation of the current so that the molecular configuration is a less harmful. The item can interact with more harmony as digestion and your intestines do what they must with it much more easily. I know it sounds crazy, but I had to tell you about it. After all, if I don’t tell you, who will?

Dr. Dehaan’s goal at Get Well Stay Well at Home is to educate our clients, followers, and readers on how to stay well and healthy without the use of drugs and surgeries.  Based on data we are collecting we believe there is a need to educate on an often overlooked topic, Digestion, Assimilation, and Metabolism!

We believe that most people don’t think about these things.  I’m eating well, taking supplements, eliminating, cleansing and detoxing. I’m good!!  But healthy foods and supplements don’t do the body much good if the body can’t turn them into energy and other elements needed to support the cells and tissues that create all the actions and functions in the body.

We are traditionally taught that enzymes need to be supplemented and as much as 80% of our diet needs to be in the form of raw fruits and vegetables if enough enzymes are to become available for normal digestion to occur. While this information cannot be argued, these practices can only assure us healthy digestion at best. It plays a very small role in the assimilative or metabolic function. In other words, most people are focusing on the fact that the intestine must digest the food you eat (which is true), but digestion is only the first stage of what must occur before the elements can actually be used by your cells. So you can digest all day long but if you don’t assimilate the nutrients and then metabolize them, the enzymes haven’t helped you much. Assimilation requires a healthy small intestine and metabolism requires healthy cellular functions. And so digestion, assimilation and metabolism are the second part of the Get Well, Stay Well program.

Over the next few weeks we are going to post more blogs to educate you on digestion, assimilation, and metabolism.  Stay tuned!

Call me nuts but I knew I was on the right track! Three Brazil nuts meet the vitamin E and selenium daily need…but I take selenium anyhow…it is so short in our soil and food. I mix a daily afternoon smoothie with three Brazilian nuts, a tablespoon of cashews, and a few walnuts.

Slash your risk for premature death with a simple snack switch

If I told you that making one small change to your snacking habits could literally add YEARS to your life, you’d probably call me nuts, right? But if you did you’d have to eat your words because a new study proves it’s true.

It turns out cracking open some nuts could help you add candles to your birthday cake, because according to new research people who eat nuts live longer than those who don’t.

Over the 10-year study period, nut eaters had a 23 percent lower risk of death from any cause when compared to folks who didn’t eat nuts. Remarkably, regularly eating nuts was shown to slash the risk of death from neurodegenerative disease by 45 percent, respiratory disease by 39 percent and diabetes by 30 percent.

Nuts also cut the risk of everything from heart disease to stroke to cancer, according to the study in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

If this were the first and only study of its kind, I’d call it interesting — but I’d also admit that it might be a little nutty to believe it so quickly.

But it’s far from the first.

Earlier this year, a completely unrelated study also found that a nut habit could cut the risk of a premature death by 20 percent. In 2013, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine also found that eating nuts will slash the risk of death by 20 percent.

It’s a remarkably consistent number that keeps popping up in study after study.

That said, there are of course a few catches to a healthy nut habit.

First, the newest study didn’t find a benefit for peanut butter. The researchers believe it may be because peanut butter can have added salt and vegetable oil, but I suspect the fact that it’s often eaten on white bread and with jelly also plays a role.

Second, the protections come from eating a very small amount of nuts a day about 10-15 grams, or a handful and no more. Since nuts are high in calories, it can be easy to eat too much.

And third, while eating REAL nuts pays off tossing back the honey-roasted, flavor-coated, over-salted processed nuts most people snack on will backfire on you.

Choose to snack on the real deal, and resist the temptation to overeat, and nuts are an excellent snack option that very well could add years to your life, and there’s NOTHING nutty about that.

God bless,

Dr. Mark Stengler

Photo by Gabriela Ramirez Galindo for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).