Inside Job...

When you're busy at work and sticking to a tight schedule, it isn’t always easy to eat the right things. But eating well is important, and not only for long-term health and for maintaining energy and concentration levels. It also helps to reduce your chance of succumbing to tummy upsets and digestive disorders.

It's a good idea to understand how food is digested, how problems can arise and what you can do to minimise the risks. Become familiar with the symptoms of the main digestive disorders and if you spot them in yourself seek medical advice immediately. From the moment you swallow your first mouthful of food, enzymes in your saliva are starting to break it down, and saliva even protects the mouth against bad bacteria. Interestingly, when we sleep we produce less saliva, which may go some way to explaining why some people have bad breath and a sore throat in the morning.?

Brushing your teeth before bedtime is therefore important, as it neutralises the day’s bacterial build-up, while brushing in the morning cleans away the bacteria that has accumulated during the night.

SLOW FOOD

Once chewed, food makes its way down into the stomach, where the churning action of the stomach walls starts to physically break it up before it is moved on to the small intestine. There, the heat produced within the body, and specifically the digestive system, heats the food up, causing it to break down further just as it would in a hot pan.

Digestive enzymes start to break down the carbohydrates, proteins and fats in the food, working like tiny pairs of scissors, cutting up the chains of molecules. Chains of simple sugar molecules are cut up quickly, whereas more complex sugar chains take longer. This is one reason why eating food with complex carbs, such as wholegrains, oats and lentils, provides a more slow and sustained release of energy whereas cakes, biscuits and sweets will result in a quick peak that will fall soon afterwards.

Because simple carbohydrates take only around two hours to break down they also don't keep us?full for long. In contrast, proteins and fats take up to six hours, keeping us satisfied for much longer.

Interestingly, if you are looking to lose a few inches, nutritional physiologists advise doing at least an hour's exercise. Aside from the burning of calories, this is because when we exercise we convert any sugar stored in the body first before starting to burn stored fat. If we eat lots of sugary foods there will be plenty of sugar stored away.

"Eating food with complex carbs such as wholegrains, oats and lentils provides a more slow and sustained release of energy, whereas cakes, biscuits and sweets will result in a quick peak that will fall soon afterwards"

HARD TO SWALLOW

Unlike other nutrients, fats cannot be absorbed straight into the bloodstream; they're not soluble in water. Instead, fats are absorbed by the lymphatic system, a network of very thin, transparent vessels filled with a whitish liquid, which drains away the fluid pumped out of our tissues. All of these vessels converge in the small intestine, so after a meal the lymph fluid is full of tiny fat droplets.? This fluid is transported first to the heart before being pumped through the system to the liver.

As we know, too much saturated fat in the diet can cause serious problems in the heart, so it is important to limit the amount of heavy saturated fats in our diets. Any food that can't be digested by the small intestine, such as indigestible fibre, ends up in the large intestine, which also has a role in extracting other substances, including important minerals like calcium. It is bacteria in the large intestine that produces the gas we pass as wind. Alcohol can multiply these?gas-producing bacteria in the gut by a factor of up to 1,000, producing a common and unpleasant side-effect the morning after.

"People who are prone to ulcers tend to be highly driven go-getters who will push themselves hard in the pursuit of excellence”

TUMMY TROUBLES

Digestive disorders range from the mild, such as trapped wind and indigestion, to more serious conditions such as peptic ulcers, coeliac disease and irritable bowel syndrome, Ulcers can form in the stomach or in the duodenum, the upper part of the small intestine, and are caused by excessive gastric secretions in the stomach. These cause a lesion or open sore to form, resulting in pain and sometimes bleeding. Bacteria and stress are also well documented causes of this condition, with clear evidence pointing to an elevation in digestive acids as a result of the stress response. This is undoubtedly why people who are prone to ulcers tend to be highly driven go- getters who will push themselves hard in the pursuit of excellence.

Irritable bowel syndrome, commonly known as IBS, is another increasingly common digestive complaint, characterised by uncomfortable bloating, wind and abdominal cramps. Here, food is moving either too rapidly through the intestines, which often causes diarrhoea, or too slowly, resulting in constipation. While this reaction is usually caused by the individual eating something they are sensitive or intolerant to, as in the case of ulcers, stress is thought to be an important contributing factor.

Similar symptoms are associated with coeliac disease, which can also leave the individual feeling very tired. The cause here, however, is not a food intolerance or stress, but an auto-immune response to substances in gluten. The body effectively wrongly identifies gluten as a threat and so attacks it causing inflammation and damage to the small intestine.

Your doctor will be able to help you identify which foods trigger your symptoms, advise you on which foods in general to exclude and include for a healthy gut, and prescribe medication if necessary.

Recent advances in probiotics also promise to help sufferers of disorders like IBS, which is estimated to affect as much as 20 per cent of the population. "There are some very exciting developments with probiotics, especially one called Symprove," says gastroenterologist Professor Ingvar Bjarnason. "Recent research using Symprove on irritable bowel disorders showed a 76 per cent reduction in inflammation over just 30 days. This technology has the potential to change the natural history of this disease.” Meanwhile, eating a healthy diet, low in 'bad' fats and balanced with complex carbohydrates and protein, exercising regularly and trying whenever possible to recognise and control stress, will all help you to develop and maintain a healthy gut.

At work we often experience periods of extreme and sustained stress and may not have the time to eat as healthily as we would like. It’s therefore especially important that we are aware of how our lifestyles and diets can increase our chances of suffering from digestive complaints or aggravate existing issues. Armed with this information we can seek to avoid or remedy complaints that have the potential to cause discomfort and inconvenience and reduce performance.

Be well,

Dorian

www.drdoriandugmore.com