Lessons
Class Introduction
00:57 2Seven Big Issues in Training
11:58 3The Right Way vs. The Wrong Way to Train
11:15 4Mobility
10:27 5Balance
06:30 6Fueling for Performance
06:47 7Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
07:13 8Ultimate Human Performance Juice & Smoothie
03:23Lesson Info
Digestion 101
it's achieving ultimate human performance is what we're talking about. And one big part of that is achieving ultimate performance of your gut. Because remember when we define ultimate human performance yesterday, what I said was that one of the ways that I personally think of it is the ideal combination of performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, brain sleep and hormone optimization and a big, big part of that is your gut, that's the whole digestion component and an interplay is quite a bit with the other components to and when I think of whether or not the digestive system is achieving ultimate performance. I ask whether or not the digestive system is providing immunity and processing and absorbing nutrients with optimum efficiency. Those are the two main things that we want our digestive system to be able to do. And if we can achieve that using some of the things that you're gonna learn today, then we're gonna be in a really good place in terms of the way the body feels and the wa...
y that the hormones are produced in the neurotransmitters are produced and all the cool things that happened in your digestive tract. And here is your digestive system, digestion starts in your mouth with these two glands that are in your mouth. We're going to learn about how your body begins to initiate things like carbohydrate digestion and carbohydrate breakdown at that point then his food travels down, It's going to go into your stomach, your small intestine, into your large intestine and travel down about nine m or so worth of tubes before it comes out the other side. And of course the other elements of digestion that we'll be covering today. Of course your liver. That's a very very important component of your gut. Your digestion will be covering your pancreas which turns out some really important hormones we touched earlier on your gallbladder and its production of bile to help you mult if I all those healthy fats that we've been talking about today And during the course of this session we're gonna how to learn how to optimize all of those different components of your digestive system. So grey's anatomy defines the digestive system as a muscular oh member nous tube about 30 ft in length. I was close with nine m extending from the mouth to the anus and line throughout its entire extent by a mucous membrane. It's really important that you understand that concept of it being lined with this mucous membrane because it's only really a very small single cell layer of thickness in many cases between your body and the external environment that you're experiencing in your gut and so this muscular membrane, this tube and its integrity is super duper important. Now the food also before it gets your stomachs because travel through your esophagus and the esophagus is a muscle. It secretes a lot of these alkaline compounds. And if you have low stomach acid this is where a lot of asthma and gastroesophageal reflux disease and heartburn starts is in your esophagus. So when you take something like NexIUM which is a proton pump inhibitor, which inhibits a lot of the hydrochloric acid and the ability of your body to break down a lot of foods many, many times. What that does is it interferes with the secretion of the alkaline compounds in your esophagus and it can really start there and we'll talk later on about some of the issues that it creates downstream and also where heartburn really comes from later on in this session. But it's important to understand that the health of even your esophagus is really important. Now food is going to wind up from your esophagus going down into your stomach and it's going to mix with enzymes there to create kind. Now I talked about in the last session how your stomach has hcl present in it or hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is what activates Pepsi and Pepsi is the enzyme that's responsible for digesting protein. So if you have inadequate hydrochloric acid, if you're taking an acid inhibitor or NexIUM or something like that to inhibit hydrochloric acid, you're going to shut down your ability to digest proteins because that protein digestive enzymes activated by hcl After food finishes in your stomach, it's going to pass into your small intestine and food passing into your small intestine stimulates production of two different hormones secreted and what's called colossus chicken or CCK that signals your stomach to moderate contractions which makes you feel full. And it also causes these digestive and hormonal secretions from your pancreas and your gallbladder and then you absorb a lot of your nutrients via these little bumps via these little vill I on your membrane wall. So if those ville I are damaged by something like a high fiber compound or if they are inflamed by you consuming of food that irritates the ville I in the intestinal wall. Something like glee Adan from the gluten portion of wheat is a perfect example a lot of times you don't get nutrient absorption via these ville. I you also don't get those village producing a lot of the enzymes that are responsible for digesting other compounds such as lactose for example, so many times someone who is lactose intolerant, if they heal those ville I by doing something like eliminating wheat or eliminating gluten from their diet, they can all of a sudden begin to digest dairy and begin to digest lactose foods again. So it's really interesting how if you've been, if you damage that bill I and then you heal it, you can consume foods that maybe you weren't able to consume before. Um food is going to pass from your small intestine into your large intestine. We talked a little bit about the large intestine before and how in some animals like gorillas and cows and to a smaller extent in humans. The large intestine is gonna take fibers and convert those into short chain fatty acids that can be used as fuel the large intestine of course is our colon where we're going to store waste things are decomposed with bacteria. We? Re absorb a lot of water and electrolytes. We absorb a lot of the vitamins that are created by bacteria in our large intestine, which is why poor Kalanick health can actually cause vitamin depletion. Like I mentioned, we break fiber down to fatty acids and we also create anti bodies in our large intestine so food can pass through in in as fast as 6 to 8 hours but It can take 24-72 hours to get through depending on, depending on how healthy your large intestine is. And I'll talk about some of the things that you can do to heal your large intestine if you tend to kind of have issues there and I can't talk about the large intestine, the colon without talking about our typical Western habit of sitting down in that shortened hip flexion position on a typical toilet, which kinks. This ain't erectile angle and actually causes things like constipation straining hemorrhoids and basically really really kind of incomplete pooping. This is where something like a squatty potty comes in. This is one of my favorite little home tools that all use to keep my pubes direct Alice muscle lengthen and to keep that anal rectal angle exactly where it's supposed to be. It's a lot easier than getting a shovel and heading out in the backyard to dig a hole. But the way this goes is you actually said it right here, you would imagine your toilet being right there and this actually allows you to get up into a squatting position and then you simply get down just like this when it's time to take a dump and this completely empties your colon and empties your large intestine, the way that it's supposed to empty. Now, you could technically achieve the same effect by getting a couple of toddler stools or books or something like that. And I've even at airports before literally perched on top of the actual toilet bowl itself. But these squatty potties just make things far more convenient. I think the plastic model cost something like 20 or 30 bucks. They make kind of a fashionable bamboo model. I've got a whole article on squatty potties over at Ben Greenfield fitness dot com, but this is a really cool tool to actually maintain the health of your colon or your large intestine.
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