This is the second article in a five part series devoted to digestion where we have been following a nutritionally poor meal, typical of America, from the mouth to the esophagus to the stomach. We have seen that the food enters the mouth where enzymes are added via sublingual glands. The meal then moves through the esophagus where it is warmed, and then to the stomach where pre-digestion takes place. We will follow this nutritionally poor meal into the stomach.

Food is chewed in the mouth and saliva is mixed with this food. Saliva is made up of an alkaline electrolyte solution that moistens the food, mucus that serves as a lubricant, amylase, an enzyme that initiates the digestion of starch, lipase, an enzyme that begins the digestion of fat, and protease, which digests protein. Most carbohydrates are broken down by the process of chewing the food and mixing it with enzymes. Hopefully that food had viable enzymes to mix with the enzymes supplied by the mouth.

Pre-digestion in the Stomach

Here is where the food that Americans typically eat leads us directly to disease. By eating mostly refined cooked foods with meat we let our body down. It is like a very good friend of yours is lying in front of you dying of thirst and you hand him a glass of salt water. It is water but it will gradually kill him.

Below I am going to trace the food's path as it moves into the stomach, and see what happens to it and how it is treated by the stomach and the rest of the digestive system. This is information that few Americans know about. When I received this information my mind was shocked and I immediately changed my style of eating completely and for life. So please read and I pray that this powerful truth changes your life as it did mine. After swallowing the food, it moves down the esophagus, which is 18 to 24 inches long. The esophagus moves through the warm core of the body and is responsible for warming the food to close to body temperature, which is ideally 98.6. This is very important as enzymes digest food best at between 94 and 104 degrees. So, if the ideal situation exists in the esophagus (ice water is not added to the food) the food is warmed to somewhere between 96 and 98 degrees before it enters the stomach.

This food enters the stomach through the cardiac sphincter, which is where the esophagus and the stomach meet. An empty stomach is like a flattened balloon until food enters it. As the food enters the upper part of the stomach, it stretches and enlarges to accommodate the food. In fact, the stomach will enlarge beyond the size of the meal until it is fully inflated. While the stomach is inflating to its full size which takes somewhere between 40 to 60 minutes, pre-digestion takes place. Pre-digestion, is the food sitting in the stomach being digested by the enzymes that came with it. The ideal ph here is about seven, very alkaline. This pre-digestion is considered by many nutritionists to be the most important stage of digestion. This is where the enzymes from our food and mouth digest and prepare the food for absorption.

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next