Transcription
Uh, one of the most important slides that I actually share with people, and uh, this one here says there's a lot to digestion.
On this slide, you have a representation of the whole digestive tract system from your mouth all the way down to your anus. That's called your gut tube; so it's all these different tubes that are connected together. So when something goes in your mouth hole, the intake, it can go out through the other end, and that's a long process. So when people talk about nutrition and digestion, well, that's only one piece of the puzzle. Okay, there's a lot more other steps. So I'm going to go through the steps that are listed on this slide, and they are: this number one is ingestion; number two is digestion. Most people start with ingestion and digestion to try to help their stomach and gut—good start—but then the bottom three, many people don't look at, but that's actually where I focus. And that's absorption—how well you can absorb what you actually stick in your mouth and digest, if you're lucky enough to digest it; the metabolize—so what you do with the nutrients once you absorb them inside the cell—that's metabolize, metabolism, right—and then uh, what happens after you metabolize them, then you have elimination—you got to get that stuff out. All right, you can get stuck anywhere along that process, and I'm going to tell you most people are stuck at the bottom three for sure, if not all of them.
Now I'm going to also reveal to you, when I go over this, why people who change their nutrition and change their diet and take all these supplements don't necessarily get better; some get worse, or they get better and then they stop getting better, or everything seems to come back because they're only paying attention to the first couple steps. Right, so let's go by the first one: ingestion—that's what you stick in your mouth hole, right? What you eat. So here's the first tip on having a better gut and better lifestyle: stop eating crap and eat better food. That's it. Now, you are—people say, well, what is crap? Well, you already know what crap is. It's all the sugar and processed food and refined foods, things like that. So if you just cut out all that stuff and you try to eat better—not the current nutrition of the modern world, if you even want to call that nutrition—it's absolutely horrific, particularly here in the United States, right—but it's also ingestion of fluids. So try to drink more water than you're doing now and less of everything else, particularly alcohol and sports drinks and all sorts of stuff like that. It's all about balance, okay, and it's also about the supplements you take, right? But there's like a billion and one supplements that people can recommend to you for quote-unquote gut health and your health, and here's the dirty little secret: they all work for someone, but unfortunately, people take often way too many supplements, right? So just pay attention to what you're putting in or what you're not putting in. So very often you get better from what you stop doing as opposed to what you start doing.
Now, after it goes in the hole, then it's got to go down your esophagus into this thing called your stomach, all right? And that's where the digestion process really begins, because digestion actually starts as soon as you put it in your mouth, because you have the saliva and you have enzymes in your mouth; they're going to start to break things down, make things a little bit smaller. You actually have acidity in your mouth, so digestion really starts there too, but the meat of it happens when it plunges into your stomach because your stomach has stomach acid in there, and the stomach acid is supposed to start to uh, break things down, particularly proteins, right? So it breaks down proteins so we can make amino acids, and the amino acids are building blocks of life, so that you can get to a cell and create energy and go through what's called the Krebs cycle, the energy cycle. All right, that's metabolized, but we're jumping ahead of ourselves. So breaks things uh, down, and you have all sorts of digestive enzymes that throw on into the mix from what your pancreas is going to fly in there, your gallbladder, right? All those things. And once it's broken down, what you're going to find is this: most people I find have low stomach acid; they don't have enough stomach acid. So already they're not breaking down the food enough to be absorbed, because you can't absorb it till you break it down, right? So then you have larger chunks of protein or food in your system, and that's not going to work out well for you, because your immune system is going to go crazy bananas and start attacking those things when they leak through your leaky gut, which you probably have. So low stomach acid, you're already going to struggle, and that's one of the biggest things that we teach people in our course is how to check your stomach acid and how to normalize your stomach acid. And I'm going to say this now, and I'll stand by it until I'm dead: if you don't have enough stomach acid, you're never going to get your gut better, and you're not likely going to recover from inflammation in the body either. Okay, that's about inflammation and too much protein in the body; you'll learn more about that in the course.
So stuff has to go into the stomach, then it's got to go into that small intestine, and the small intestine is going to start to break some things down, right? So things can cross over the intestinal barrier, and that's why you don't want to have holes in your gut called leaky gut, because now things are not supposed to leak across the gut—leak across the gut—and then when they do, your immune system kicks into gear because those things are not supposed to be there, and then you get inflammation in your gut. And the number one system that lives in your gut, and it's part of your immune system, is your lymphatic system. So your lymphatic system takes a huge hit when you have leaky gut, because the lymphatics are supposed to help transport proteins, right? Because they're gonna—they're going to take a hit trying to get the proteins out. Now you also will have typically poor blood flow in the gut, around the gut, to the gut, because people are really stressed these days—high-stress environment—you can become what they call sympathetic dominant, hypervigilant, hyperaroused; you're locking the on switch all day long. When you do that, you decrease blood flow to the gut; you decrease digestive enzymes; you decrease saliva input; you decrease hydrochloric acid output, because you're not supposed to be digesting food when you're trying to fend for your life and not die. So digestion shuts down so you don't die. If you don't die, then you can eat and recover and regenerate afterwards. Problem is, people never come out of that fight-or-flight mode. So absorption takes a hit, and remember things that go into your mouth that are going to go make their way into that intestines have to send their products into the liver through the portal vein, because then the liver has to scan everything for toxins and break things down, make fat-soluble things into water-soluble things, and it detoxifies stuff. So you overload your liver at the same time; your liver takes a big hit.
Now, if you're lucky enough to eat good food, have enough water, have enough stomach acid, and then you can begin to break things down and start to absorb them into the gut wall, there's still another process of absorption. So when your body's trying to deliver those nutrients from the food or from the supplements, it has to get it to a cell; it's got to go to the cell. So my next question is, how does it get to the cell? Blood flow, right? Blood flow takes it to the cell, and once it leaves the blood flow, then it has to cross this fluid-filled environment that has what they call interstitial fluid in it—fluid between the cells—and what they call the interstitium, the support structures around there. It's called pre-lymph fluid, because that fluid will eventually become lymphatics, but it has to be absorbed into the blood, then into the fluid, and then into the cell. But if you have a crappy lymphatic system and you have too much muck and waste and cellular debris—we call it cellular poop—in the interstitial fluid that the cells live in, they won't absorb what's going into the fluid. So basically, you're not getting anything into the cell enough that you need to to actually heal, recover, and regenerate the cell, because you're already stuck full of too much muck. Muck just means waste, let's say that. Okay, you were able to get stuff through the blood, through the interstitial fluid, then it goes into the cell. Now we do metabolize—take that oxygen, because oxygen also has to go through the blood—and then I'm going to create an energy cycle called the Krebs cycle, so I can make ATP, which is the energy of life—recovery, regeneration—has a beast mode monster, right? So it's a metabolic process that creates energy; it's an energy process—you know, mitochondria, all that fun stuff. So my next question is this: whenever you create energy, what do you make always when you create it? Waste—the byproduct of energy. So think about when you use gasoline on your car; you have an exhaust system—that's waste—right? And it's got to go out, and you've got a muffler system and a filtration system, so it's hopefully not as toxic. Well, that's what your lymphatic system is designed to do. Um, so you create waste, right? And then where does that waste go? The waste now goes back into the interstitial fluid of where the nutrients actually came at. So then the cell poops out into the same fluid that it's living in, right? Now, where does that waste have to go? That's called the elimination phase. There's a couple of elimination phases: you have to get rid of carbon dioxide from using the oxygen; that's going to go out through your veins, so that's an elimination route. Then you have your lymphatics, and your lymphatics take out all the other waste, and the lymphatics will send that into the veins of the body; the veins of the body will send that back into the arterial system, and then it'll send whatever is remaining left, hopefully, out through the kidneys, and then you pee it out. And then you also have the elimination phase of your poop, so it's got to go out through the poop shoot. What if you're constipated? Well, then you're stuck at your elimination phase, and then you're going to be in big trouble when you stick anything in your mouth then, because it can't get out after it makes its waste, and then you become more toxic and you become more sick. Or maybe you have uh, diarrhea, which means your potty's trying to eliminate stuff out that way; a lot of times it'll do that because it can't get waste out other ways, so it overuses the poop shoot. All right, but in order to go from your mouth to your anus, it has to go through different things, like your stomach, and then it's got to go through the small intestine; it's got to go through the large intestine and out. And each one of those places, they have these valves called sphincters, and these uh, valves have to open and close at specific times to allow a proper transit time, because otherwise, if I stuck something in my mouth and I didn't have those transit times, I would be running straight to the bathroom because it's going to come out my poo too fast, right? So these valves open to let stuff in, then they close it off so stuff can't get out, and then it'll trap it so it has time to do its thing and break it down, like stomach acid, for instance. Okay, but these sphincters, these little open-and-closing doorways—think about going in and out of a door into a room, right?—sometimes they can be stuck open, sometimes they can be stuck closed, which means stuff stays too long or doesn't stay enough, then your transit time gets messed up, and then that's when you get a lot of gut issues, like dysbiosis—not the right type of bacteria, balance of bacteria—dysbiosis just means you're a hot mess in your abdomen, or you're going to get inflammation, okay, around the abdomen and pretty much in your gut, and if you got gut inflammation, you get inflammation everywhere, even in your brain—called the gut-brain axis—that goes together.
So hopefully you're seeing that now. Holy cow, doc, there's a lot of stuff going on here besides me just choosing to eat a piece of broccoli as opposed to a Ding-Dong and a Yoohoo and a donut, all right? Like, I'd rather you not eat those things because they're going to really damage you, even when you absorb it. So eat the good stuff, but even the good stuff has to get to its target, and even good stuff makes waste, all right? So that's why in my Gut Mojo program, I don't really teach you nutritional stuff to do, because everybody teaches you that, right? And go on and look at some internet things on diet and nutrition; it'll be kind of the same thing on everybody, but then you—then you'll get some polarization and fighting because somebody says do this and somebody says do this, and everybody's fighting amongst each other in there, right? So you get so stressed going in there that your gut system's a hot mess because you're too stressed reading about diets. I just tell people: don't eat crap, eat better—start there—drink more water, and then I concentrate on helping you with what I just told you: we have to calm your nervous system down to take you out of fight or flight, so your digestive process can turn back on; then that will allow you to have good blood flow to your gut, good blood flow away from your gut, good waste from your gut through your lymphatics; we make sure your stomach acid is nice and balanced, okay, because that's going to be a big deal; then we help you move your gut around through some manual techniques, so we can move stagnated areas that have been stuck for a long period of time; some of it will be including some diaphragm breathing; and then we work those sphincters to make sure that they're working properly, so you can hopefully help your constipation or your diarrhea. And we come from the physiological side of what the body needs in order to actually do what it wants to do with the great nutrients and supplements that you're taking, because if you don't have all those things that I just mentioned, I don't care how well you eat or how many supplements you take, you're only going to get so far, because your body just doesn't have the supply chain of what it needs to actually do—do what you're asking it to do. Does that make sense? Okay. And then I'll also put on the YouTube video uh, for this one a small little sample of how we do some work underneath the rib cage on both sides to help alleviate tension in the diaphragm and relieve tension around your liver and your gallbladder and your spleen and your stomach and your esophagus in that region—very gentle, easy techniques. You'll see uh, how I'll do it to somebody, and I'll show you how you do it to yourself—very, very easy. And we'll show you a lot of other different options inside the course for the Gut Mojo and the Breathing Mojo, but you have to go to the YouTube channel, of course, to be able to see that. Okay, so I hope this gave you a new appreciation for the amazing, incredible thing that your body does to keep you alive, and not just alive but thriving—through ingesting food through the mouth and the process of elimination all the way through. You have to look at all of those honestly if you want to have a well-functioning gut system; it's not just what goes in the hole, it's what happens after it goes in, and that's where we come in. We want to relax the tension underneath the rib cage here. If you have chronic pain and you have autoimmune disease, I already know there's inflammation here, and if you have a gut issue, I know blood flow has been compromised on you for probably years, if not decades. So how do you scoop it? Well, that's easy; let me show you. I'm going to give you a few examples. Left side here—big side because of the spleen—lightly put your fingers underneath; if there's a lot of tension and tightness here, that means fascial tension all the way up underneath to the diaphragm. Dig your fingers underneath there a little bit, press in, scoop down towards the center, and repeat that three to five times—I mean, you pick a number, there's no magic number; the scoop is the key. You can also use the edge of your hand; works great. Can you do that with your own hand? Yes, or yes, of course you can, right? So you do your own hand like that—see, that's how you do it. Can you use gotcha tools? Yes, so we have what's called a navel wand, the Mojo Navel wand—this side digs around your navel because the navel is always going to be involved with the lymph and blood flow problems in the gut—and we have a flat end, a fan end that is designed to go underneath the margin of the rib cage, and then I'll—I'll scoop down towards the middle with the Mojo Navel wand, just like that; I'll open that area up. Then we do the liver side—same thing; I'm on the right side now—come underneath—he's got a little bit right there—and then I'll scoop towards the middle, just like that. Now, how do you do that to yourself? Well, how you do the same thing—see, easy peasy, right? Navel wand comes up underneath and scoop towards the middle. And now you're thinking to yourself, hey, Doc, could you use vibration in there? See, now you're talking my language, right? You take the ball—if you have the Mojo Ball, even better; it has these small little raised edges in here, and this silicone grabs the skin quite nicely—so I turn the ball on, then I'll put the vibration ball up underneath that angle of the rib cage, and then I'll lock it into the skin as it vibrates, and I can pull down towards the center, just like that. So I vibrate and I pull at the same time, or I'll lock it right up underneath there to get the diaphragm quite nicely. We'll show you how to do all the gut and the Gut Mojo class to show you how you release your digestive sphincter in here and open up the blood flow to your gut so you can get poop out or keep pooping if you have constipation or diarrhea; that just means your digestive sphincters are stuck open or closed—those are basically gates or valves—so that opens up this diaphragm here quite nicely; that feels good—that's the anterior part of the diaphragm. Now let's take a look at the posterior part.