Expert Advice from Dr. Samara Freeman: What is Digestive Health?

Digestive health is an important first step towards a healthier you. That's because the intestinal wall acts as a gatekeeper—creating a separation between inside the body and the outside world. That means your gut has 2 main functions. The first is to take the valuable nutrients from the diet and transport them across the intestinal wall. The second is to keep bacteria, toxins and undesirable elements outside the gut wall where they can be eliminated without causing harm to the rest of the body. Therefore, the intestinal wall has functions for both digestion and immune protection.

For food to be effective in nourishing, energizing and protecting the body from daily stresses, nutrients, vitamins and minerals have to be released from the food you eat. Digestion aids this process by breaking the carbohydrates, fats and proteins into smaller sized units that can be carried across the intestinal wall and distributed to the rest of the body. These building blocks are used for promoting tissue growth, repair and of course to provide energy to fuel our lives.

Digestion requires coordinated efforts of many different processes in the intestinal wall to accomplish these tasks. The ability to match the gut's response to the actual food and nutrient content of the meal is an important feature of digestive health. Fortunately, the digestive system is very effective at capturing the nutritive value in your food, recycling and extracting the most from the food you eat.

When it comes to immunity, we are only as strong as our intestinal barrier. The overall goal of the intestine is to keep pathogenic or bad bacteria from getting inside the body. Building a strong barrier means that the pathogenic bacteria are less likely to get close enough to the intestinal cell surface to start an infectious process. Prevention is always the best strategy to keep this from happening. In order to prevent the gut and the rest of the body from being damaged, our digestive system has developed different strategies and levels of protection.

One such strategy is the use of beneficial bacteria, which are an important contributor to defending this barrier and keeping you healthy. These good bacteria are active and thrive in your intestinal environment to monitor, suppress, and out-compete the bad, harmful bacteria that are regularly present or may enter your system. The bad bacteria are controlled and eliminated by compounds secreted by your digestive system and the good bacteria.

Another strategy is performed by your intestinal cells, which are in continual contact with each other to form a physical barrier. They are replaced every 4-7 days to make sure that wear and tear on the cells does not weaken the intestinal barrier. Specialized intestinal cells also secrete mucus to moisten and protect from damage the valuable cell machinery that processes food. Finally, there are "sampling sites" along the entire gut that educate the immune system about the outside environment. This allows it to prepare and immediately respond to anything foreign that should be kept outside the body.

So, remember not to don't take your digestive system for granted. It plays an important role in keeping you healthy on a daily basis. Next time you reach for a snack, remember that your digestive system needs to function optimally to allow you to get the good things into your body and keep the bad things out.

Dr. Samara Freeman
PhD in Gastrointestinal Physiology & Mucosal Inflammation
From the University of Calgary, School of Medicine, Calgary, Canada
University of California Davis, Food Science & Technology Researcher

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