Chronic Conditions
Jigsaw Health Products
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10 Common Causes of Chronic Conditions: Cause #1
1. Poor diet with impaired digestion.
The SAD Diet
Today’s Standard American Diet (SAD) contains many components that are making
us sick. These ingredients include refined sugar, refined and “enriched”
carbohydrates such as white flour, pasta, and white rice, partially hydrogenated
oils (also known as trans fats), artificial sweeteners, chemicals, pesticides,
and traces of heavy metals. Food manufacturers have found many ways to
prolong shelf life, and increase calories in foods, at a severe cost to
human health.
We, as a society, have departed from eating nutrient-dense, low-glycemic, whole
foods, and we are experiencing chronic conditions—sometimes in epidemic
proportions.
On the other hand, many people believe that if they eat healthy foods, they will
be healed. This is not entirely true. Eating healthy foods is just one component
of nourishing your body. The other component is the healthy absorption of key
nutrients that adequately sustain the body. When your digestive tract is
sluggish, impaired, or injured, your body isn’t able to process and absorb
nutrients from the foods that you eat—even if you’re making every effort to eat
the best foods. The truth is you can become malnourished despite the fact that
you’re eating what you feel are the “right” foods. And when your body isn’t able
to adequately absorb nutrients from the foods you eat, all your body’s systems
become impaired, ranging from your cardiovascular system to your
neurological
system.
The Results of SAD
One of the chief problems related to the digestive tract is the breakdown of the
permeability in the small intestine, commonly referred to as
leaky gut syndrome.
The small intestine, which has a surface area larger than a tennis court, is
designed to allow very small particles of digested nutrients to pass through its
wall and into the bloodstream so that these nutrients can be distributed
throughout the body. But numerous things can happen and the gut can become more
permeable, allowing larger “less digested” particles to pass through into the
bloodstream. The immune system then interprets these larger particles as foreign
invaders, and it goes into overdrive (also known as a hyper-immune response).
Leaky gut is almost always involved in chronic illness and is actually a leading
cause of many chronic conditions. Leaky gut starts a vicious cycle in which
allergic sensitivities, toxic and hyper-immune activation, liver dysfunction,
pancreatic insufficiency, and malnutrition occur.1
The good news is that if you can heal the gut, you can dramatically improve
almost any chronic condition. In order to heal your gut, it’s important to
understand the key factors that can damage your gut in the first place. Leaky
gut can be triggered by:
- The overuse of broad spectrum antibiotics—Antibiotics kill ALL bacteria, even
the good bacteria that protects the lining of your gut.
- The use of over-the-counter pain relievers, such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and
acetaminophen, that can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and damage the lining of
the intestinal tract.2
- The use of steroids, such as prednisone and corticosteroids.
- The overuse of alcohol.
- Common allergies and food intolerances such as wheat and/or dairy (also known
as gluten, casein, and lactose intolerance) that can wreak havoc in the
intestinal tract.
- Bacterial and fungal overgrowth, such as candida (yeast).
- Lack of adequate hydrochloric acid in the stomach. Many people unknowingly
have low concentrations of stomach acid that hinder the body’s ability to
adequately digest food, and disrupts the delicate balance of good and bad
intestinal bacteria.
Healing leaky gut requires several components:
- Avoid any gut-toxic drugs and allergic foods.
- Eliminate as much bacterial and fungal overgrowth as you can by using herbal
antimicrobials, such as garlic, and if necessary prescription anti-fungals such
as Diflucan®.
- Use high-quality probiotics (good bacteria) for an extended period of time in
order to restore the good organisms that should be dominant in your gut.
- Supplement with digestive enzymes, to facilitate digestion.
- Maintain a proper concentration of stomach acid (hydrochloric acid, or HCl).
By effectively restoring the correct concentration of stomach acid, your
digestive tract can break down food efficiently. When food fails to break down
in the digestive tract, it putrefies, and aggravates leaky gut.
< Back to "10 Common Causes of Chronic Conditions" Homepage
1Galland, Leo. “Leaky Gut Syndromes: Breaking the Vicious Cycle”
www.mdheal.org/leakygut.htm
Accessed August 2005
2“Acetaminophen (Tylenol) Liver Damage”
www.medicinenet.com/tylenol_liver_damage/article.htm
Accessed August 2005
Last Updated: Friday, June 08, 2007
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