Source: Uncocoro for Natural Unco Life
Digestion System is more than just digestion that we had in mind, it encompasses digestion, absorption, utilization and elimination. It starts from our mouth all the way down to anus:
- Digestion – this is where food is broken down into its components and yes, it starts in our mouth.
- Absorption – Majority of absorption happens in small intestine but it’s not the only place for absorption. Simple sugar can be absorbed in the mouth and some veins in the oral cavity also facilitate direct absorption into the blood stream
- Utilization – This refers to the metabolism of nutrients / components in our body.
- Elimination – what doesn’t get eliminated will be recycled in your body so we are one of biggest recycling engine!
In general, it takes, on average, 12-24 hours for any food to go through this entire chain. Couple of foods that has been used in finding out your own transit times includes beetroots and corn. When you see it coming out from the other end, you know how long your transit time is.
Imagine that your digestive system is a huge recycling factory for electronics, Digestion is when the electronic device is fed into the factory and parts are taken apart. During the absorption phase, the parts/components are identified and channeled to the right department for storing or use. In the utilization phase, they are either used directly for a new device or reassembled into some other components for resell. And obviously whatever that is considered useless is eliminated / disposed from the factory. Our human body is in fact a gigantic recycling system so you can imagine what happened if wastes are not eliminated appropriately – they just get recycled in our body!
Our digestive system is under the Parasympathetic nervous system, i.e., we have no control over the entire process. It’s an automated self-running engine that is working collaboratively with the rest of our systems. That means we can’t speed things up when we’re in a rush. So, food flowing too fast through the digestive system means we can’t properly digest and assimilate – in another words, we wasted all that food! When you see undigested food in your stool, or when that process takes too short or too long, they all mean that some part of our digestive system is broken.
Then how come our process is not like everyone else. A “good” food to your friend may not be as “good” to you you – ie, You May not be what you eat. That boils down to the different factors that affect this process: including what are the sources? how they are prepared, how they are consumed, what’s the environment under which they are consumed, our internal system? Etc. A simple example is banana – banana is a nutritious food but people with weak spleen may get loose stool/diarrhea when eating banana, especially if eaten in first meal of the day. On the other hand, unripen banana can be used to combat diarrhea. So that illustrates a single food can bring on different consequences depending on all the different factors mentioned in consuming the food.
I’ll share more on these factors in next few blogs over next couple of weeks and some remedy depending on your situation, so stay tune!
常常聽見人家說：【吃什麼什麼好】但相信不少人也有經歷是【吃了但不覺得怎麼樣】，這是因為我們都相信【吃什麼，就是什麼】這句話，其實我認為【能吸收轉化的食物與殘留的食物】才能更反映我們的身體狀態。
消化系統包含的不止僅僅是消化，它還包含了吸收，轉化運用與排泄。從口腔一直到肛門：
- 消化 – 包含物理與化學上的消化，讓食物變成小份子
- 吸收 – 大部份吸收都於小腸進行，但也有在其他器官，如單醣可以在口腔吸收，
- 轉化，運用 – 這是營養代謝，以作進一步儲存或使用
- 排泄 – 沒被排泄的廢物或毒素會在身體內積累或循環再用。
食物的整個消化過程一般會需要 12-24小時。想知道你的消化過程的時間可食用紅菜頭或粟米作簡單測試，當你在排泄物中看到它們，便可以粗略估算閣下的消化過程所需時間。這應當可幫助大家評估每天適當排便的次數。
消化系統就好比電子用品回收工場：【消化】把回收的電子用品拆開至小零件，【吸收】的工作是把這些零件分送到不同部門使用或儲存，【轉化和運用】就把不同零件組合或單獨使用，用於新產品上，而【排泄】就把沒用的零碎件作垃圾處理掉。我們的身體比回收工場更環保，就是沒用的如果垃圾車沒來或堵在路上，身體就會再回收，頓積廢物，成了廢物臨時收集站，讓它繼續變臭變壞。
另由於消化系統是由自主神經支配，所以它的快慢，啟動與關閉都是自動的在發生。在壓力底下，它會自動變慢，相反在舒緩時，它會激活，我們所能控制的只是這些外在條件而已。任何沒被消化的食物或過快 /過慢的排泄都已經在提示我們消化系統的一些警號。
那應怎樣理解每個人對食物反應的差異呢？有幾個方面：外在內在環境因素，包括之前提到的消化系統狀態，體質，外在心裡狀態，食物源，屬性，烹調方法，進食方法等等。舉一簡單例子：香蕉，熟的香蕉容易引起肚瀉（特別是脾虛的人），生的香蕉可止瀉，脾胃虛弱的人更不應第一餐進食香蕉。單單香蕉在不同人身上不同時候進食就可以產生不同效應。我會在之後的網誌跟大家分享這些因素的一些看法。
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