Chances are, you have not even heard about the enteric nervous system, which is connected to and located along the whole length of the digestive tract. The enteric nervous system is one of the better-kept secrets of the body. It is almost as complex as our brain, and so it is no wonder that brain and gut mirror each other. Which means that gut feelings are not just a figure of speech. They are a reality. We need to listen to them. Tending to the health of the digestive system becomes imperative if we wish to stay or become overall healthy, robust and vigorous. Due to sedentary lifestyle, stress, and bad food habits the gut has become a sensitive area for many. Intestinal discomfort, or diseases afflicting the digestive tract are common, actually with increasing numbers every year of people who complain about them. In fact in 2005, two of the five top-selling drugs in the US were for digestive problems. Not that these drugs are solving any of the problems, but the sales figures at least confirm that large-scale problems do exist.
Surveys also have shown that over 40% of patients who visit internists do so for gastrointestinal problems. Healthy Healing Center, although not a practice for internal medicine, is not an exception. In their majority, our client’s do not come and see us explicitly for complaints about their digestive system. These are not the kinds of problems that they mention first. However, upon further examination we quickly discover that they suffer from them – usually among a host of other problems. And theses other problems, in turn, in many cases, are caused or reinforced by problems related to the gut.
For example our immunity is very much dependent on an overall healthy digestive system. The latter is located in the lining of the gut, a rather delicate layer of tissues – in many places just the width of one cell, or in other words: terribly thin and vulnerable. Damage there can have many unpleasant consequences because as intimated above, 70% to 80% of our immune system is found in our digestive tract. Every weakening of the digestive tract automatically weakens the immune system. And this can easily happen. Damaged gut lining tends to let bacteria and toxins that are meant to stay in the gut’s inner tube, seep into the bloodstream. As one physician colleague put it, “ With a poorly functioning digestive system, you don’t just get digestive symptoms, you also get an exhausted immune system. To add insult to injury you can also get pain. An over-active immune system can lead to inflammation… Just think of the swelling that occurs around a cut on your hand. Your immune system creates the same kind of swelling to fight hurt and unhealthy cells inside of your body.” This is why your body feels so uncomfortable and full of aches and pains when your immune system is under attack.
We have found that a series of colon hydrotherapy treatments together with healthier eating habits and moving the body through exercise can help a lot. In combination these three factors strengthen the digestive system and help it regain its balance. By the way, healthier eating habits means eating mostly foods that do two things besides nourishing the body properly: they do not assault the gut’s linings and also do not upset the ratio of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ bacteria in the digestive system. They actually cultivate the good bacteria that help you digest, produce vitamins excrete toxins and regulate hormones.
Keeping the gut healthy is important for another reason. To quote from Michael Gershon’s book The Second Brain, “We now know that there is a brain in the bowel, however inappropriate that concept might seem to be… When our predecessors emerged from the primeval ooze and acquired a backbone, they also developed a brain in the head and a gut with a mind of its own… “
“Our enteric nervous system is not even small. There are more than a hundred million nerve cells in the human small intestine, a number roughly equal to the number of nerve cells in the spinal cord. Add on the nerve cells of the esophagus, stomach and large intestine and you find that we have more nerve cells in our bowel than in our spine. We have more nerve cells in our gut than in the entire remainder of our peripheral nervous system. The enteric nervous system is also a vast chemical warehouse within which is represented every one of the classes of neurotransmitter found in the brain. Neurotransmitters are the words nerve cells use for communicating with one another and with the cells under their control. The multiplicity of neurotransmitters in the bowel suggests that the language spoken by the cells of the enteric nervous system is rich and brain-like in its complexity.”
“”In fact the enteric nervous system is a vibrant modern data-processing center that enables us to accomplish some very important and unpleasant tasks with no mental effort. When the gut rises to the level of conscious perception, in the form of, for example, heartburn, cramps, diarrhea, or constipation, no one is enthused. We want our bowel to do its thing, efficiently and outside of our consciousness. Few things are more distressing than an inefficient gut…”
To which we only want to add, that if we want to enjoy an efficient digestive tract, we also need to be efficient in supporting it. One thing is for certain, as we are now beginning to understand the countless interconnected processes happening at many levels all at once as they unfold between our mouth and anus, we want to make sure that they interact the way that they should. As Gershon puts it in another passage of his book, “The brain in the bowel has got to work right or no one will have the luxury to think at all. No one thinks straight when his mind is focused on the toilet.”
As an aside, except for the passages quoted here and some other paragraphs in-between, The Second Brainis no easy reading for anyone who does not have a background in medicine, physiology or biochemistry. However, I can and even must warmly recommend it to my colleagues. May be after reading about Gershon's and other scientists' finding, will they finally better understand their patients who come to them with functional complaints, for which there are no explanations, because no anatomical or chemical defects are obvious. At Healthy Healing Center we have found that colon hydrotherapy together with some other treatment forms often applied in integrative medicine, can very well help these patients. And Gershon's book gives a string of perfect explanations, why this is so.