Proper Digestive Function

The day has come! I’m required to do a “community service project” to complete my certification to become a Nutritional Therapy Consultant, and since YOU ARE my community, here it is:

Proper Digestive Function!

My NTC course is coming to a close and while there has been one fascinating thing after another that I have learned about health, nutrition, and the way the human body works, at the top of the list is the importance of proper digestive function.

With all the complicated health conditions out there including gout, I am just amazed at how many things can be improved or corrected by supporting the digestive system. What I didn’t realize prior to my nutrition course is that – healthy gout diet or not – even if we are eating really high quality foods, if we’re not digesting well, the nutrition to fuel our cells is not getting delivered.

Years of cheap foods, polluted air, bad water, and untested toxic chemicals in contact with our skin eventually compromises our health in any number of ways and the result is gout, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and more. So much of how the body deals with this toxic bombardment has to do with how well the digestive system is working.

My Video About Digestion

Once again, I did this video about how digestion is supposed to work to fulfill my NTC community project, but I also wanted to do it because in helping you and the rest of the world to understand more about how to kill gout, this is an important piece of the puzzle – check it out:

What is especially curious to me about how digestion works in regards to gout has to do with how well we digest proteins. Since proteins are often the culprit in why some of us get gout, the idea is:

• If we were breaking those proteins down much better than we probably are, would we be getting gout less often?

From my perspective it is a resounding YES!

Proteins and Purines

Anybody that’s ever gotten gout has heard that high purine foods are what bring on the gout. Usually that demonizes red meat and shellfish. But if you’ve followed along with any of my stuff, I think that too much red meat and shellfish are only partially responsible. I point the finger more often at processed foods full of toxic hydrogenated trans fats and cheap forms of sugar.

Why is this?

This is because a diet that is heavy with all those types of foods, screws up digestion, clogs up the liver, and sometimes really messes with the kidneys! That just throws a monkey wrench in the normal and natural way our bodies create, use, and deal with uric acid. So, we get a gout attack…hmmm, imagine that.

All that aside, if the protein that we do eat does not get broken down, digested, and assimilated correctly, those purines from the proteins are going to generate excessive amounts of uric acid and . . . we get a gout attack – hmmm, imagine that.

Hello There Bert,

I really appreciate every thing you are doing in helping gout sufferers understand and treat their condition.  Like your self I to have gone through the mill with really painful gout attacks and watching gouty tophi lumps sprout up all over the place leading to the surgical removal of large gouty tophi lumps from my elbows.  Despite becoming a vegetarian ten years ago, meaning my protein and purine intake is pretty low, I still suffer from (though not as severe ) gout attacks.  The tophi lumps are returning in my elbows and I now cannot clench my fist completely on my left hand which is worrying.  I stopped taking allopathic medicine, i.e. alopurinol and diclofenac a few years ago, opting for more natural treatments like apple cider vinegar and cherry juice , baking soda, etc .  These I find are useful in treating the symptoms and halting the onset of a full gout attack.  You have stated it is important to try to discover the causative factor and in my efforts to do this, I have come to the conclusions that I may have a fungal problem, and also that my kidneys are not filtering as they should be.
I think this is causing my lymphatic system to back up, leading to a condition of high acidosis.  I am beginning a program of herbs for the elimination of fungal issues and parasites, and a raw food and juice fast to try and deal with the acidosis.  I will let you know the results.  Once again your website and YouTube sites are a real companion for me while I am on this path to beating this condition.

Keep up the great work,
Dave

What To Do About Digestion

There are a whole bunch of things that can be done to help your digestion work better, but here are two things you can do to start with:

1. Take the time to stop, sit down, and be grateful for your food and where it came from – this puts your autonomic nervous system in a parasympathetic state (never mind what that is, just make sure you’re relaxed when you eat)
2. Chew your food really, REALLY, really well

Something else – a really good something else – you can do is read this book: Why Stomach Acid Is Good For You. Statistically speaking, 90% of everyone is hypochlorhydric, i.e. we just plain don’t make enough stomach acid. And yes I know, the next time your doc tries to give you another prescription for Prilosec, ask him/her about their training in diet and nutrition.

  ☆ Remember!  Proper digestive function could be the only thing standing between you and a life free from gout!