Have you ever heard that we eat first with our eyes? It’s true! The sight of food activates a series of neurological reflexes and pathways that primes our system for digestion. Unfortunately, just looking at food is not enough to digest it; we actually need to get all those nutrients inside our body. Most people assume that if they chew food and swallow it, they will absorb it, but this is not always the case. To experience abundant, lasting, radi- ant health, we have to make sure our gut is healthy. And in today’s hectic, stressed-out world, most people are lacking in the digestion department.
What we digest, rather than what we put into our mouths, has everything to do with what we absorb. Eating your veggies is a good thing, but making sure they are fully absorbed is something different entirely. These nuances of digestion will become clear when we look at how the stomach actually functions in day-to-day life.
The process of digestion is very complex and requires a lot of energy— more than almost any other function of our body. With the body requiring high energy every day, its digestive system becomes an easy target when we start dealing with long-term health issues. The reason we suffer from poor digestion is because stress, toxins, malnutrition, and lack of bowel movement conspire to interfere with this most important process. And ge- netic imbalances certainly don’t help.
Methylation problems make digestion more difficult for multiple reasons. When genetic pathways that produce energy, DNA, RNA, and antioxidants
aren’t working well, our stomach becomes one of the first organs that shuts down. Why would the body waste energy on producing acids and enzymes to digest food if it doesn’t have enough energy for detoxification, cell repair, and immune defense?
The body is perfect at prioritizing; it will shut down stomach acid produc- tion to save that energy for something it knows is more life-critical at that moment, such as fueling the heart and brain. But that isn’t health—that’s just surviving. And we are interested in thriving!