CrossFit South Bend

Today we’re gonna talk about why a healthy digestive system is so important for your overall health. And this is gonna be the first in a multi part series about natural solutions for digestive issues and so on and so forth.

So you may have heard recently with a lot of articles that have been published about how important gut health is for overall health. And some people so as far as to say that gut health is the main determining factor in your overall health. If your gut isn’t healthy, you aren’t gonna be healthy. So gut health relates to so many different things. To hormonal health, to kidney health, liver health, brain health, heart health. It’s literally implicated in so many different aspects of our health. And in future videos, I’ll go into exactly why those things are all connected and practical solutions to make your digestion better.

But today I just wanted to give you a sense of why digestion might be so important in the first place. So if I had to sum it up super simply? It’s because your gut allows good stuff into your body and it keeps bad stuff out. That’s really what it comes down to. So let’s talk about that. So let’s talk about the good stuff in first. So, nutrients, all the nutrients, the number one criteria in our healthy food list where we want food to be super nutritious … You could eat the most nutritious food in the world but if you’re not properly absorbing it through your gut, either through adequate stomach acid production and balanced microbial ecology and sufficient amount of pancreatic enzymes, you’re not actually going to get the benefits of that nourishing food.

So being able to absorb your nutrients is critically important and where all your nutrients get absorbed is technically in the small intestine. That’s where all your nutrients get absorbed. So again, you could be eating the most perfect diet in the world but if you’re not absorbing that properly, you’re not gonna get the benefits of increased energy and better mood and better sleep and fewer cravings and all the rest of those things.

So that’s number one. So the gut is the gateway that lets good things in. But number two, it’s also the thing that keeps bad things out to a certain extent. When you think about it, the vast majority of our exposure to bad things during the day that gets inside our body is through things we eat. Right? Three times a day we get exposure to these things and from the moment you eat it, to the time the food exits your body, it’s actually going through a tube that is meant to prevent bad stuff like viruses, bacteria, yeast, undigested food particles from getting into your blood stream.

So if the integrity of that system is compromised, it’s going to lead to inflammation. It’s going to lead to all sorts of other issues in the body. So they’re a lot of different reasons why digestion is so important for your overall health, but if you had to boil it down? Those are the two main reasons. Keeps good stuff in, allows good stuff in and it keeps bad stuff out. It’s basically the bouncer of the body. And when the bouncer is not in front of the club? Then anyone who wants to can get in and you run into all sorts of bad issues.

So in future videos, we’ll talk a lot about how you can optimize your digestion and therefore optimize your health. But just for today, we’re gonna talk about how your gut health is so intimately related to your health. Again, it’s because keeps good stuff in and it keeps bad stuff out. All right guys, thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.