Go on, Love on your liver

In our last post we talked about how important a healthy mouth and stomach are to proper digestion.  Now I want to talk about two organs that play an important role in digestion as well. Your liver and your kidneys.

There are entire sub-specialties in Western Medicine that focus on each of these two organs individually, so I’m not going to pretend to even scratch the surface of what each of these organs do.  Just the liver produces and controls literally 10s of thousands of enzymatic pathways associated with thousands of processes in the body.

One of the liver’s main roles is to produce and deliver food enzymes to the small intestine.

The liver filters our entire blood volume multiple times an hour.  It removes toxins and by products of metabolism, and dumps those into the small intestine to be excreted with the food waste.

The kidneys play a similar role with filtering the blood.   It excretes waste through the bladder. The kidneys play a key role in electrolyte balance.  Electrolytes play a key role in heart, brain, and muscle function.  Did you know your entire digestive system is lined with muscle?  Smooth muscle needs the same things striated (or skeletal) muscle does.

Both systems can become overloaded and bogged down with the toxin load, if we are careless about how we feed and nourish our body, and if we are careless with what we expose our bodies to environmentally(i.e. what we use in, on, or around our body).

For the purposes of simplicity I will focus on the liver.  An overloaded liver can cause a massive back up in your whole digestive system.   It can lead to obesity, constipation, and some would say will ultimately cause chronic illnesses like Fibromyalgia, Lupus, or chronic fatigue.

So how can an overloaded liver lead to these?

When the liver filters out a toxin, it has to put it somewhere.   Ideally, it will push the toxin out the intestines to be excreted with the rest of the waste.  However, if it is overloaded the toxin may not be removed and is then stored elsewhere in the body to be removed later.   This is when damage can happen to the body that may lead to disease.

One of the ways the liver attempts to protect the body is by storing toxins in fat cells.  Fat cells are relatively low in blood supply, and so they become a safe place for the liver to store a toxin that it can’t process, and that may lead to obesity.   The liver may push toxins into fat cells, it may push toxins into joints, or even into other organs until it is caught up and can deal with the backed up toxins.

Obviously toxins are TOXIC and they need to be removed from the body, not stored elsewhere.

Decreasing your toxin load is one of the best things you can do for your health.

So how do we help support our liver and decrease the toxin load?

First, you MUST move your Bowels! Yep I did just say that! You must eliminate the waste the liver delivers to the intestines as soon as possible. A healthy elimination cycle is eliminating at least twice a day or about 12-18 hrs from meal to movement.  Second, look for ways to decrease the toxins your liver has to process each day. It is EASY in this day and age to decrease your toxin load! You have so many choices!

• Decrease/Eliminate processed foods.  A simple change here is to only shop the outer perimeter of your grocery store.  Don’t walk down the aisles. Stop and think about that. What do you put in your cart that comes from walking down the aisles? Yep…..all the processed, chemical laden, toxic, dead food.  The stores put things with a short shelf life that aren’t overly processed in coolers on the perimeter. This is where you want to shop!  Try a whole grocery shopping trip with no trips down the aisles! I dare you!Change to toxin free personal care, Young Living offers fabulous options here, or if you are a go getter, you can easily make products at home and add in essential oils to boost the aroma and healthy cellular regeneration factors.   I’ve included my favorite moisturizing blend that I DIY.

• Throw out your personal care products that contain synthetic chemicals and perfume-grade essential oils.  Check out Young Living's personal care line.

• Move your bowels! IF you don’t go, your gut will re-absorb what the liver has processed and it will have to re-process those toxins all over again!  I’ve been hearing rave reviews on the squatty potty….may be a great $25 to invest in your gut health.

• Try some liver supporting Young Living products.  Use JuvaFlex oil, take
  
  JuvaTone, and Detoxzyme daily as recommended.   “ JuvaTone® is a powerful herbal complex designed to promote healthy liver function.*  It is an excellent source of choline, a nutrient that is vital for proper liver function and necessary for those with high protein diets.  JuvaTone also contains inositol and dl-methionine, which help with the body's normal excretion functions.*  Methionine also helps recycle glutathione, a natural antioxidant crucial for normal liver function.*  Other ingredients include Oregon grape root, a source of the liver-supporting compound berberine, and therapeutic-grade essential oils to enhance overall effectiveness.*”

• You always want to make sure you are eliminating efficiently before starting a cleanse.  You can confirm this by eating the healthy beet salad shared below and monitoring your intestine’s transit time.  Comfortone, ICP, and Digize Vitality taken as suggested internally support healthy digestion 

It's hard to Beat this Beet Salad for taste and an efficiency check of your gut:)

-Cooked beets, cubed—1-2 beets per person

-¼ cup fresh mayo per beet (google how to make if you don’t already!)

-Horseradish to taste

-Young Living Lemon Vitality oil—diffuse 1 drop oil in 4 Tbsp organic coconut oil and add to taste.


Boil peeled beets for 30-45 minutes (wear rubber gloves if you don’t want Smurf hands!) Mix all ingredients after beets have cooled and toss with Lemon Vitality oil infusion before serving. Can be served with fresh greens and goat cheese or any number of combos.

Enjoy!

Dental Health and your Stomach

In the last blog we talked briefly about the digestive system.

Now I would like to break down that system a bit more and add in a few more details, as well as discuss a few common health issues associated with this system.

Let’s start at the top: Your Mouth

Did your mom ever scold you and tell you to not swallow your food whole?  Well, she was right…. Chewing is one of the first acts of the digestive process.  If it hurts to chew chances are you aren’t going to want to chew much, so dental health is an important part of digestive health.

I have an opportunity to get on a soap box here…however, I don’t want to give you the fish, I want you to go fishing and decide for yourself.  I want to encourage you to explore the different options you have regarding dental care.  YES!!!! You have options!  You have choices!  You have opportunity!

3 things to think about:

• Amalgam (which are more than 50% Mercury) fillings vs Tooth colored fillings
• Flouride toothpaste vs fluoride free
• Oil Pulling(adding in essential oils to boost the flavor factor and germ fighting)

Now let’s move down the pipeline a bit(LOL yes pun intended).

Your stomach.  Your stomach is a muscle, shaped like a kidney bean balloon with an entry and an exit point.  Remember we talked about Nexium last time.  Well, one of the main complaints in our American world is acid reflux.  Did you know this can come from actually not having ENOUGH acid?

We talked a lot about enzymes last time.  But I didn’t tell you this bit of information.  Enzymes in your stomach are activated only at a certain pH.  So if your acid level isn’t high enough, the enzymes won’t activate, and vis-versa, if it is too high, they won’t activate either.  Both will lead to undigested food, gas formation, pressure build up and acid reflux.  So once again we see the need for enzymes but now we add in the need for proper pH.

Nexium depresses acid formation in your stomach.  Now for someone who has an over production of acid, that might be the right choice.  However, for someone who has acid reflux that stems from poor food digestion, linked to improper enzyme activity, due to low acid…this just makes the pattern worse, and worsens the nutrition depletion in the body from lack of digestion.

So how can you support these two key areas of your digestive system?

Mouth:

•  Consider changes in your dental care.  Add in an essential oil infused toothpaste.  You could even make your own.  Or do as some do, brush with a drop of Thieves EO or try YL's Toothpaste.

• Do Oil Pulling a couple of times a week if you struggle with gum health.  Google this one.  Its pretty cool!

• Floss!  I only recently started this on a regular basis.  I’ve been told for years that it is important, but I didn’t listen.  So here is a challenge, floss everyday once a day for 10 days.  See how your teeth and gums feel.  Bet they will feel better!

• Chew your food!  Chew chew chew chew!  Your stomach will thank you.

Stomach:

• Chew your food!  Give your stomach a head start by giving it properly chewed food!

•  Eat some raw food, or living food at each meal, or take a digestive enzyme.

• If this is an area you really struggle in, you might consider intermittent fasting for a while to give your gut a break.  Try to go 12-17 hrs without eating once a week(some do this every day), or replace a meal with fresh green juice.  Ningxia Red is a great way to get a powerhouse of nutrients while not making your stomach work for it.

• Exercise!  Yes, this can help in many ways.  Stress can cause an over production of acid.  Find an activity that helps reduce the emotional stress load.  Productive exercise is the best!  

Finally, for those of you ready to make some major changes, we will start talking about the ‘leaky gut’ phenomenon and cleansing the digestive system in the next post.

Hiking is a great productive exercise for this time of year.  Not only are fewer people on the trail, the underbrush is idle too.  It's an aerobic activity that can be an exercise in thought too.  Tolkein said, "All who wander are not lost".  Each bend and hill promises new challenges and rewards--just like each day.  I love the feel of a well balanced and properly fitted pack on my back while the miles pass under my boots.  Hiking with the family is a fun afternoon memory to make too, enjoying Creation together.

What are your thoughts or experiences with fasting?

Gut Health and why it drives Nutritional Health

It has been said, “You are what you eat.”  A more accurate statement is, "you are what you digest, absorb, and assimilate".

Did you know digestion starts before you ever take the first bite?  Ever walked past a plate of cookies on the counter and your mouth began to water?  That friend, is your body getting ready to digest.  You see saliva contains loads of enzymes.

Want to see this at work?  Take a small bowl of oatmeal that you have prepared, and then add about a teaspoon of saliva.  WATCH it work!  It is amazing!!!  Within minutes that bowl of cereal will be completely liquefied.

That is what enzymes do in our digestive tract.  They break down the food we eat into a liquid and break down the proteins, carbohydrates and fats into absorbable size particles.  Those are then used by the body to run all aspects of our physical health.

So what is the big deal about enzymes—do they deserve all this talk?

Well, the enzymes found in saliva aren’t enough to complete all the break down that has to happen to get food from your fork to your muscles and organs.  In fact there are dozens if not hundreds of steps where different enzymes are needed at different places along your digestive tract.

Ever so briefly here is a quick description of what the major players of the tract do:

• Mouth: grinds the food into hopefully a paste

• Stomach: churns the food into a liquid called chyme

• Small intestine: absorbs most of the nutrients

• Large intestine: reabsorbs the water from the liquid 

• Rectum: holds waste until eliminated

Well, this post is about enzymes right?  So where do enzymes come from?  Well, they can come from a number of places.  Your saliva, gallbladder, pancrease, liver, the good bacteria in our intestines even produce enzymes…but honestly a lot of enzymes are supposed to come from our food. 

The unfortunate thing is the Standard American Diet(aka the SAD diet) is so processed, preserved, frozen, and cooked, that no enzymes are present.  So, often times supplementation of these enzymes can alleviate many digestive discomforts that millions of Americans experience--and medicate--for on a daily basis.

A publication of the top 200 drugs sold in 2010 listed here(http://www.drugs.com/top200.html) puts the top drug sold in 2010 as Nexium.  To the tune of 5.3 BILLION dollars.  Aside from masking the symptoms of digestive discomfort, Nexium does little to fix anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a time and a place for meds, but wouldn’t it be smart to explore other alternatives first?  I mean if you look at the serious side effects of Nexium(google it), I would rather go a more natural route first.

So what does ABNORMAL (digestive enzyme deficiency) look like?

• Stomach pain/discomfort

• Skin problems (eczema, acne, rashes, etc.)

• 'Brain Fog'

• Mood swings

• Chronic Fatigue

Some simple ways to support healthy digestion:

• Add raw food to your diet

• Add lacto-feremented food to your diet
• like homemade sauerkraut
• homemade yogurt(super simple to make in a crockpot) 
• homemade ginger ale
• or lacto-fermented pickles.                

• Add lacto-fermented drinks to your diet
• Apple Cider Vinegar(with the mother)
• Kombucha
• Kefir  

All these are loaded with great bacteria that will nourish your gut’s healthy bacterial levels.  Google it and make your own!  It’s not hard.  It makes a fun family science project that tastes great.

Now if you are like most Americans and the thought of making any major diet changes terrifies you and makes you not even want to try, that is ok.  We all start somewhere.  A simple first step might be to add a supplemental food enzyme to begin with.  Then as you begin to make small diet changes you can begin to add in a few of those foods.

Change is challenging!  I’m right there with you!  It is easier to open a bag of prefab meatballs than to make my own.  However the long term health effects of that, if that is my everyday habit can be extremely bad.

I’m an 80/20 kinda momma.  80% straight and narrow, 20% convenience/comfort. 

Sometimes the enzyme pill is way easier than a serving of homemade lacto-fermented pickles. 

Young Living has many great enzyme options.  KidScents® MightyZyme is an all-natural, vegetarian product in the form of chewable tablets designed to help children combat the negative effects of enzyme depletion.  MightyZyme chewables address each of the digestive needs of growing bodies and assist normal digestion of all foods, including proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.  Allerzyme is great if you know you have a high number of food sensitivities.  Detoxzyme is a good choice if your diet has been loaded with preservative and chemicals for a LONG time and you are just getting going on turning your battleship around to actively pursue better health naturally.  The Essentialzyme and Essentialzyme-4 each have a specific set of enzymes in them, read up on those and see if one is right for you.

The bottom line…Enzymes are vital to your ability to break down and absorb what you are eating.  You could eat a completely raw, organic diet and absorb none of it if you don’t have the enzymes to digest the nutrients.  The other main culprit commonly seen is an inefficient, damaged small intestine (aka leaky gut) that does not absorb the good things you are putting in.  We’ll look at ways to address this as we go.  A great resource if you can get your hands on it is Renew Your Life  by Brenda Watson.

Ginger Ale...an old favorite with lots of enzymes and other beneficial microbes that is trending again thanks to the home-brew and micro-brew movement.  The following recipe is recounted in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

"Makes 2 qts

3/4 cup ginger, peeled and finely chopped/grated

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

1/4-1/2 cup Rapadura (we like Grade B maple syrup)

2 tsp Sea Salt

1/4 cup  Whey (see our previous post for how to make)

2 qts- filtered water

Place all ingredients in 2qt Mason jar or jug.  Stir well and cover tightly.  Leave at room temp for 2-3 days before transferring to the refrigerator.  Keeps several months well chilled.  Ginger ale may be mixed with carbonated water and is best sipped warm rather than gulped down cold."

Need a productive exercise to stave off cabin fever?  Winter is the perfect time to cut wood.  The most efficient fire wood is ‘well seasoned’, meaning it has dried out, this usually takes about 6 months to a year depending on humidity and local weather.  Right now sap levels are at their lowest.  Weeds, snakes, and poison oak/ivy are more dormant.  You don’t have to break out a chainsaw either.  Hand saws and axes still do the job and provide more stress relief without a fume/noise induced headache.  Eye protection and substantial foot gear is prudent.  Always check your back swing and the path of the axe overhead to ensure you don’t get hit with a deflected strike.  Cutting small brush to clear out fence rows and edges is a good chore for the axe in winter too.  If you don’t have land of your own try asking a local farmer if you could clear out some storm deadfall.  Most sizeable public lands have firewood permits at really affordable rates.  

Enjoy the aching muscles and a big mug of your own house made Kombucha or Ginger Ale!

Feel free to comment on your family's favorite enzyme-rich recipes.