From Fork to Colon and How to Get Rid of Inflammation

Written by Bradley Abbott, Personal Coach

Bradley Abbott is known for his wholistic approach to personal coaching merging fitness training with nutritional therapeutics. Author of the e-books A How-to Guide in Developing Functional Strength, Power and Adaptability, and The Cussing Coach, both published in 2024.

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The saying “you are what you eat” might not tell the whole story. In reality, you are what you absorb. This article dives deep into the complex process of digestion, shedding light on the impact of food on your health, from the mouth all the way to the colon. We explore how certain foods inflame your body and how you can support optimal digestion for better absorption and overall well-being. Join us as we uncover the science behind inflammation and discover actionable tips to help your body heal from the inside out.

'Eat this'

People are so used to saying, "You are what you eat," but this was never true. You are what you absorb. Think about that for a moment: You are what you absorb.

Digestion starts in the mouth in two ways: first, through mechanical grinding and chewing, which makes food particles smaller and smaller. In fact, the human body is like a juice machine. Everything is working to break food down into this more absorbable "juice." Another way the mouth breaks down food is through the enzymes contained in saliva. Saliva contains ptyalin, a carbohydrate-busting enzyme. Ptyalin breaks down carbohydrates into sugars and then further into simple sugars. The pH changes from an alkaline environment in the mouth to a very acidic environment in the stomach. The pH in the stomach ranges from 1.0 to 1.5.

From alkaline to acidic: pH-dependent enzymes

With 1.0 being very acidic, 7.0 being neutral, and 14.0 being the most alkaline, it's imperative that your stomach remain acidic for several reasons:

1. It sterilizes the stomach so yeast and bacteria don't grow there. It also prevents the formation and fermentation of carbohydrates, sugars, and fiber into gases, which cause bloating, reflux, and heartburn.

2. The enzyme pepsin requires an acidic environment to function properly. Pepsin is a protein-digesting enzyme that breaks down animal and plant proteins, including those in grains, eggs, cheese, and milk. The proteins are broken down into their simplest forms, amino acids, by pepsin in the stomach.

3. The acidic environment is also required for a substance called 'Castle's Intrinsic Factor,' produced by the stomach wall, to bind with vitamin B12 and absorb it. You cannot absorb vitamin B12 without first ensuring that the stomach is sufficiently acidified; otherwise, the 'Intrinsic Factor' won't work and will become obsolete. There are cells in the stomach that make stomach acid (hydrochloric acid), known as chief cells, and these chief cells require sodium chloride (salt) as the essential raw material to make hydrochloric acid.

When food moves into the duodenum, both the pancreas and the liver empty into the common bile duct, which then empties into the duodenum. The pancreas also produces quarts of alkalinizing mucus in the form of bicarbonate, the purpose of which is to alkalinize the duodenal environment. This is necessary because the pancreatic and intestinal enzymes only work in an alkaline environment.

So now, you have switched from a very acidic to a very alkaline environment. If they are not in the right environment, the enzymes will become ineffective, and they simply won’t work if they aren't in the correct pH range. This is why people can die from pH imbalances in cells, as the cells in our entire body require a precise environment to function properly. It's not just the different pH ranges in our digestive tracts that need to stay in a healthy range. Our body’s pH is supposed to be 7.1, slightly over neutral, and if it reaches a pH of 7.3, you could end up in the hospital, suffering from alkalosis, because the cells that require a pH of 7.1 have stopped working. The same thing happens if your pH drops to 6.9 or 6.8; you’re in the hospital, dying of acidosis, because those particular cells don’t function in an acidic environment either.

Bile: The "magic detergent"

You have a whole plethora of enzymes produced by the pancreas to digest proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Lipases, produced by the pancreas, are responsible for breaking down fats into fatty acids.

The bile coming down the bile duct, produced by the liver (the largest gland in the body), is designed to do two things:

1. Homogenize fats, breaking them from large molecules into small droplets in a very uniform fashion. The purpose of this is to absorb fats more efficiently. When fats are attached to bile salts, you absorb them more easily. The body breaks large fats down into fatty acids, or triglycerides, which are three-carbon glycerol molecules with three long chains of fat. Bile breaks all of that down into the simplest form of fats called fatty acids.

2. The bile also helps you absorb fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K. The bile from the liver also helps you absorb cholesterol and other good fats that are very important for your brain, cell walls, nerve insulation, and energy storage. The list goes on.

Down, down, down we go

At this point, it’s like a "soup," called chyme. This "soup" moves down the intestine to where, if the stomach, duodenum, pancreas, liver, and bile have done their jobs, you now just have this "soup" moving down the intestine. Instead of the intestine being a smooth tube, the intestinal surface is magnified about 85 times by finger-like villi that stick up. They almost look like velvet until you look at them under a microscope, where you can see that the "velvet" is actually finger-like villi with little blood vessels in them, which bring blood closer to the surface of the cells.

When you absorb the molecules, amino acids, fatty acids, and simple sugars, they pass through one cell in the intestine and into these small blood vessels (capillaries), then into the bloodstream. From there, the blood moves up the hepatic vein into the liver, where the liver pulls out what it needs and distributes everything else accordingly.

Strong are the villi

In addition to the flow of the digestive tract, there's a muscular, wave-like motion that helps food travel down the digestive system. Microvilli contain a small amount of muscle, as do the stomach and small intestine. These peristaltic waves of muscle squeeze the food along, much like you would see magicians moving the narrow end of a balloon to create little balloon animals. The muscles in the stomach do that; the muscles in the intestinal walls do that; and the muscles in the villi do that. Additionally, there’s this wave-like motion to the large muscular movements, which helps open up the space between the villi, allowing more of this "soup" (chyme) to get between the microvilli and be exposed to this surface area.

Water in the stomach, fire in the intestines

There are certain foods that prevent absorption and cause inflammation:

1. Wheat

2. Barley

3. Rye

4. Oats

5. Fried food

6. Oil in a bottle

7. Carbonated drinks

8. Nitrates/ nitrites in meat

9. Skins of baked potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes (when they’re crispy)

10. Burnt meat

11. Soy

12. Corn

Wheat, barley, rye, & oats

When it comes to bad foods, inflammation occurs, especially with foods such as wheat, barley, rye, oats, oil in a bottle, and fried foods. Wheat, barley, rye, and oats are part of the gluten category, and you don’t necessarily have to be allergic to them for them to cause harm. Intolerances, however, seem to be happening more frequently, and even though these glutens are harming us, our bodies have an amazing adaptability. In this context, I mean that it can continue to harm us even though it has become our “norm.”

Gluten is a protein, and it is used as a broader term when referring to gluten proteins. When gluten makes contact with our small intestine, it flares and swells up. Think of poison ivy: when animals come into contact with poison ivy once, they won’t do it again, because poison ivy produces toxins to defend itself against foreign invaders. Similarly, when gluten makes contact with the small intestine, it becomes damaged immediately. It’s easy to tell when people have a gluten intolerance because the signs and symptoms show themselves in the skin, breathing, digestive issues, and allergies. A good example is when you see people with noticeably red patches on their cheeks, and they are not wearing makeup. In babies and toddlers, it’s more noticeable. Usually, any eczema, dry skin, dermatitis, asthma, bronchitis, allergies to dust, and others, and colitis, Crohn’s disease, and other related skin, breathing, digestive, or allergy issues, are all directly related to a gluten intolerance.

The bad foods cause malnutrition because they damage the small intestine, and therefore, minerals cannot be absorbed into the bloodstream through the small intestinal villi.

Fried food & oils in a bottle

Fried food and oil in a bottle are chemically different, but they both cause high levels of inflammation and are carcinogenic. Oil in a bottle causes harm primarily because the space between the bottle top and the surface of the oil is made up of air (oxygen). When fat, any fat, is exposed to air, it oxidizes. When fats and oils become oxidized, they become rancid and harmful to the human body, especially the digestive tract, and therefore, to the skin and DNA. When you heat oils, not even to the point of burning, but just heating them, they produce toxic chemicals called acrylamides, which are pro-inflammatory and highly carcinogenic.

Carbonated drinks

Carbonated drinks, whether it be Coke, Pepsi, Fanta, Tango, lemonade, or even soda water, neutralize stomach acid, something you don’t want when you’re trying to break down foods into smaller molecules for absorption. This, more importantly, is responsible for the development of allergies, because you can’t break down proteins into the simplest amino acids, so your body recognizes them as a foreign invader. We are not meant to digest and absorb whole proteins; we’re meant to absorb amino acids and smaller molecules. Carbonated drinks also sap minerals from your bones, which contributes to scoliosis, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and ankylosing spondylitis, to name a few. Another issue with carbonated drinks, especially sugary ones, is that they increase your risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity when consistently consumed.

Nitrates/ nitrites in meat

These chemicals, which are used as preservatives, are found in foods such as already-cooked and prepared deli meats. They are incredibly toxic to humans and are pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic, even on fresh meat that you find at the butcher’s. When you heat and cook meats with nitrites/ nitrates, they create toxic chemicals called nitrosamines, which are pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic.

Skins of baked potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes

The skins of all potatoes and potato-based foods, when they’re crispy, become highly toxic. When carbohydrates are heated at high temperatures, they produce toxic chemicals, collectively referred to as heterocyclic amines, which are also pro-inflammatory and highly carcinogenic. This means they damage the cells of your body, including your skin and other organs, as well as your DNA.

Burnt meat

The reason burnt meat is harmful is the same reason oil is bad. When you burn fats within the meat, they produce very harmful chemicals called heterocyclic amines, which are highly carcinogenic and pro-inflammatory. When people eat meat rare or medium-rare, far fewer of these toxic chemicals are produced. This is also why frying meats is harmful. It’s not necessarily the meat itself, but how it’s cooked. Animal-based proteins, fish, eggs, and similar foods contain essential nutrients, such as choline (a B-vitamin), iron, zinc, selenium, and so on.

Soy & corn

Why soy and corn? They directly harm our DNA due to many corn and soy products being heavily genetically modified, and not every company puts this on their labels. Some companies do, however, so be cautious when consuming these products. Additionally, and most importantly, corn and soy are heavily sprayed with a herbicide called ‘Roundup’ (chemical name: glyphosate), which the World Health Organization has deemed a carcinogen. Avoid these foods! They do not help; they only make your efforts to recover worse.

If you have inflammation for any reason, whether you have consumed the 12 bad foods, have a salmonella infection, or have food poisoning, everything comes out the other end because you cannot absorb it. These little villi swell, and the swelling closes off the space between them. Even the tips of these finger-like villi get inflamed and swollen, so they cannot perform their function. As a result, their ability to absorb nutrients is reduced to almost zero. Remember the information in the first few paragraphs of this article: you must maintain a healthy digestive tract and optimize it through the tools I'm about to share with you!

The clarity in the chasm & the healing ability of your villi

The good foods & their benefits

I don't believe in restrictions, so don’t worry. Yes, change can be scary, but there are still loads of foods and meals you can eat. So, what are the good foods?

• Vegetables & fruit

• Nuts & seeds (if no allergies are present)

• Red meat (not burnt and without preservatives)

• Poultry

• Fish

• Eggs

• Cheese, yogurt & milk (whole milk, preferably, but semi-skimmed is okay), butter, lard

• Rice (brown, preferably), buckwheat (not actual wheat), quinoa, sorghum

• Beans, pulses & lentils

• Herbs, spices & salt!

• Dark chocolate (85% or above)

• Tea & coffee

The benefits of consuming these good foods are that you will automatically clean up your digestion and eliminate free radicals from your diet. This will allow your small intestinal villi to grow back, which will increase the surface area of your intestine. In turn, this allows you to absorb the nutrients and raw materials required for your body to function optimally, like the previously mentioned sodium chloride (salt). Just like when you cut or graze your arm, your intestinal villi have the ability to grow back; you just have to allow them to. By eliminating the bad foods and replacing them with healthier choices, you enable the villi to grow back. Our body has an innate healing ability if you let it.

Lastly, there are things you can do to speed up the process of digestion, which I have helped my clients with. They are:

1. Take 1 to 2 drops of apple cider vinegar in a half-glass of water, once in the morning and once in the evening, for 30 days. Take medicinally.

2. Salt your food to taste.

3. Use a food diary and a rotation/ elimination diet for individual foods to ensure you have no allergies. (Remember, allergies have an inflammatory effect on your small intestine and villi.)

Thank you for reading!

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Read more from Bradley Abbott

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Bradley Abbott, Personal Coach

Bradley Abbott is a personal coach and author. Known for his wholistic approach to training merging naturopathic principles with fitness training, he has managed to reverse the symptoms of his clients almost completely, and raise their energy to heights they never thought possible. He is the founder of Phoenix Phorm Online and uses these platforms to educate and inspire a larger audience.