Bowel Basics Comprehensive Integrative Medical program for Bowel Health Integrative medicine combines ancient and modern wisdom. Every Ancient and Indigenous Medical system stresses the importance of bowel health with therapeutic strategies to address its problems. At NIHA, our comprehensive program can combine the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda Medicine with/or holistic, modern protocols for bowel restoration. Patient individuality and choices are important to achieve our shared goal – a healthy bowel in a healthy body.. This monograph outlines our comprehensive bowel program with its multiple choices. You and your doctor(s) will implement and monitor the best for you. The bowel is the most important part of any healing and health program. Consider: 1. Naturopathic and all Indigenous Medical systems have considered the bowel and its health to be the most important part of their healing strategies. Life and death begins in the bowel – it’s our interface with the world. 2. Dr. Ali, the President of Capital University of Integrative Medicine, considers the bowel- liver- and blood the primary “ecosystem” and the starting place in addressing all health disorders. (We do too!) This is the working philosophy of the faculty and curriculum at CUIM. 3. It has been our experience that 11 out 10 of our patients - whether healthy or not, have some degree of bowel disorder. 4. The bowel is your primary source of toxicity and chronic infections. Without optimizing bowel function and detoxifying the bowel detoxification of heavy metals, chronic infections and toxic chemicals cannot efficiently proceed. The bowel is the reservoir of chronic infections. 5. The immune system is largely driven by bowel function/dysfunction. Whether you have immune over-reaction (autoimmune syndromes) or under performance (most chronic disorders) – bowel problems are one of the root causes. 6. Bowel health is long term management not a short term fix. The Bowel is the largest immune organ, and the most important barrier to toxins: immune modulation including allergy treatment and all detoxification is not possible without aggressive bowel therapeutics. Bowel maintenance is a lifelong project. Dr. Ali’s bowel therapeutics is referred as: weed, seed and feed Dr. Bland’s same bowel strategies are the 4R’s 1 Remove (the bad bugs, allergenic foods) Replace (the digestive enzymes) Restore (the friendly bacteria) Regenerate/Repair (the bowel mucosa) I. Introduction What can go wrong with your bowel? What you need to understand about your bowel, to be a participant in your bowel health. 1. Digestion or breaking down the food into digestible components begins with: A. the mouth - mechanical chewing and digestive enzymes of the mouth (saliva); B. the stomach – mixing the food with Hydrochloric Acid and some enzymes (and killing bacteria); C. the upper part of the intestines where the pancreas and liver secrete – the pancreas secretes the majority of the enzymes the gall bladder the bile. Inadequate chewing, lack or not enough HCl, digestive enzymes and bile salts results in inadequate breakdown (digestion) of food. These problems in the beginning of the GI tract have the following potential consequences in the middle and lower bowel: • Reduced uptake of vitamins, minerals, fats and amino acids- the basic building blocks of health, energy and repair. • Undigested foods support the proliferation (by selectively feeding) of the bad bugs and pathologic critters in the bowel (i.e. Candida, parasites, virus and dysbiotic bacteria). Conversely, the beneficial bacteria will proliferate when foods are fully digested, so feed the bugs you wish to grow in your bowel. • When the terrain and food sources in the bowel favors the bad bugs, fungus overgrowth (Candida) and parasites physically penetrate the GI mucosa causing the well known “leaky gut syndrome”. 2. In the lower bowel, the colon and small intestine, leaky gut barriers and dysbiotic overgrowth of the bugs and their toxic by-products internally poison the body. The liver detoxifies the bowel and blood, the immune system surrounding the bowel is the largest accumulation of immune cells in the body. When the bowel toxic load is too long- too much, the detoxification capacity of the liver and the immune system is stressed or compromised. When the liver can’t clean the bowel toxins adequately, the toxic bowel debris spill into the blood. Now the entire body is affected by the increased level of toxicity - the brain fogs, the hormones and metabolic glands dysfunction, the muscles and joints become sore. In addition, the tissues become more acidic- reducing the oxygen capacity and utilization, causing blood and lymph thickening (coagulopathy), and the immune capacity becomes compromised. Because of these generalized health conditions, (increased toxic load, reduced oxygen utilization, acidosis, coagulopathy, and immune compromise) the chronic infections are able to gain a foot-hold in the blood and the tissues. This condition can be assessed and monitored simply by examining a drop of the peripheral blood under a high resolution microscope. 2 All the above conditions, (i.e. leaky bowel barrier, undigested foods being absorbed, proliferation of toxins and the bad bugs themselves, acidifying and blood and tissues, reducing the oxygen to the tissues, and the thickening/ stagnation of the blood) causes the immune system, part of our defense system, to over-react (allergy or autoimmune) or under-react (chronic disease/ dysfunction/ aging/ cancer/ blood vessel disease…) 3. Allergy or hypersensitivity is an exaggerated response to a commonly occurring substance (with a neurological and sometimes an immunological component). Allergies can affect every bodily system and cause or contribute to any symptom. Allergies occur as a protective, programmed stress response from the Psycho-Neuro- Immunological system. Allergies, especially food hypersensitivities need to be identified and controlled, if bowel restoration, healing and symptom reduction is to take place. Some foods like gluten for the celiac disease patient need to be avoided, but most foods can be successfully treated through neurological and immunological reprogramming. 4. Water therapy is the most overlooked and simplest. “I prescribe water therapy for every patient…the most basic reason… is the dilution effect. It carries the excess oxidizing substances as well as the toxic acids into the urine. In the bowel, water in the single most important laxative. In the blood, water is the single most important functional anti-oxidant. Without water none of the anti-oxidant enzyme systems of the blood can function. The same is true for the liver eco-system.” Ali – Water and Chronic Dehydration. 5. Bowel movements, transit time and stools – the signs and symptoms of a healthy bowel: With 90% of the fecal mass being the bacteria, the frequency, color, character and odor of the stools are important signs regarding the bowel health. Constipation in any degree is a problem that needs immediate attention. Food needs to be in the bowel for at least 12 hours for proper digestion, but not longer that 24. Healthy elimination parameters are 12 to 18 hours transit time, 1 to 3 times per day (average of two). Chlorella, corn or other stool identification markers can help you determine your transit time, an important sign of health. Vitamin B-5, critical for the adrenal stress, hormones is also critical for peristaltic movement of the bowel. Without ample B-5, this intestinal movement is critically impaired; is it a wonder that prolonged hyper-vigilance and stress causes bowel problems? Healthy stools should be sausage shaped, corn cob size in diameter, defecated with minimal exertion, light brown in color, sinkers with no stench and one should need to uses one wipe with paper (with very little residue). The stool size and shape indicates the health of the colon lumen or the degree of fecal matter impacted on the colon walls. If the stools are thin and like ribbons, the colon wall is likely impacted with dried stagnant feces (with their growing population of dysbiotic bacteria, parasites and other less-than-optimal critters). If your poop stinks, you have an overgrowth of the bad bugs. If your feces is hard, water is surely one of your issues. If your feces floats, consider fat digestion problems. Your feces should have a healthy coat of mucus secreted by colon, 3 which helps your poop to be evacuated easily well formed and with little tissue soiling. The beneficial bacteria of the gut attach to the GI mucosa affording another layer of GI protection. The bad bugs are usually non-attaching residents of the lumen and GI folds. However when Candida proliferate and the beneficial bacteria (Lactobacillus acidolophus primarily in the small intestine, and Bifidobacterum in the large intestine) are not in adequate supply, the fungus not only attach to the Bowel mucosa but penetrate or root as all fungi and molds normally do. Constipation or fecal stagnation favors the proliferation of these bad bugs, as well as undigested foods. In addition, prebiotics or food for these beneficial bacteria is crucial for a healthy bowel. Feed the bugs you want to grow, which is non-digestible plant sugars or Fructooligosaccharides -FOS that pass through the small intestine and ferment in the colon. This increases the fecal mass, lowers the Ph, increases the production of short chain fatty acids, which helps with fatty acid metabolism and detoxification- all good outcomes. Gums and insoluble fiber in fruits and vegetables are full of FOS. 6. The bowel surface (mucosa) is a very active barrier, one cell layer thick continually reshaping and producing new cells while sloughing off the old ones. The amount of surface area of the bowel determines its digestive and nutrient absorption capacity. The larger the bowel surface, the better the bowel function (i.e. absorbing nutrients); therefore the gut has many folds and creases (called villi) to enhance its surface area. The dynamic gut mucosa reacts quickly to adverse conditions by shrinking its surface area (villi) and therefore nutrient absorption.