Digestion problems: A Shelburne Chiropractor’s Perspective

Digestive problems in Shelburne are growing. Right now 70M Americans have digestive problems, with females being more likely to suffer from them. That is 1:5! Think of all the people you know who may be struggling right now with digestive issues. We have one of the largest wellness clinics in the area so we get to see a good cross-section of the community and what people are struggling with these days. I want to cover what we see as the Big 4: Acid Reflux, IBS, Celiac Disease, and Chronic constipation

Most people try to deal with digestive problems by managing it with either a very restrictive diet or medications, while things may be just getting worse. For example, the common treatment for acid reflux is OTC Prilosec. It turns out that it is only meant to be taken for 14 days and I have people coming into my clinic that has been on it for years! Prilosec’s side effects are much worse than the reflux it is chronically used for. They include:

• Headache
• Abdominal pain
• Irregular heartbeat
• Persistent muscle spasms
• Seizures
• Diarrhea
• Abdominal or stomach pain/cramping
• Fever
• Blood/mucus in your stool.
• Rash, itching/swelling
• (especially of the face/tongue/throat),
• Severe dizziness
• Trouble breathing

We need a better way

Let’s look at our first and now most common symptom:

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Chronic Constipation in Shelburne

Like all of these – there is a continuum. Some people notice this more off and on…others struggle with this as the “new normal” - well I am here to tell you that this is anything but normal. Constipation is a serious issue – as I like to say –

“An engine is only as good as its exhaust system.”

So what is happening? This is all about muscles tone just moving food along. The digestive tract is a very sophisticated series of involuntary smooth muscles and like any other muscle, we can end up with tonal issues. Nerves control the movement of food along the digestive tract from mastication (chewing) in the mouth, swallowing which is using voluntary muscle along with involuntary reflexes for the bolus of food to move down the GI tract, all with very specialized tissues in each area and all controlled by what system?

The Nervous System.

The stomach grinds down foods with a specific PH/ acidity of the system and digestive enzymes. The liver and pancreas add digestive enzymes. The healthy lining of GI tract, mucus production. Drawing nutrients and water out of the bowels to reuse again in the body.
What controls all of this every step of the way? The Nervous System.

As food moves along in this process, you can end up with tonal issues. Chronic stress causes stress hormones to slow down the GI tract and interrupts the normal flow through the system resulting in chronic digestive problems for multiple reasons. When we check the nervous system, we typically find that constipation is a neurological stress issue.

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Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Crohn’s Disease, Celiac

These are characteristic of an inflamed GI tract all the way through. Your digestive tract is simply a very sophisticated hose with 2 openings at each end. Food is not actually inside you until it is broken down and absorbed and metabolized in your body. You have heard: “You are what you eat.” Actually, you are what you absorb not what you eat because it isn’t inside of you until you break it down and absorb it into your bloodstream. Something can go in you and go all the way through you and never be absorbed so it was never inside you.

What determines what comes in and out of you is the wall of the GI tract. It is the health of the lining or inside wall that is involved with the IBS situation. The gut lining is irritated.

Our bodies were designed to work best eating an ancestral diet, and this goes for the digestive tract as well. Modern diets create chronic irritation and can lead to a leaky gut.

Dormant genetic factors can be upregulated when triggered by environmental stresses such as diet or toxicities, or mental-emotional stress can play a role here, and if stress hormones flood the body, digestion will be downregulated. Add a disruption of the microbiome where the healthy good bugs are outnumbered by the harmful gut flora and you have the perfect storm for trouble.

With IBS, IBD, Crohn’s, and Celiac, it is a chemical stress issue.

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Acid Reflux, Heartburn, GERD

As modern life gets more and more stressful, we see more and more Acid Reflux. Again it is a combination of factors that come together: chronic social stress, choking down foods that are also crappy foods and being too sedentary, sitting all the time with poor posture.

Here is what happens. When you swallow a bolus of food, it should settle at the bottom of the stomach. There is a sphincter which is a muscular valve at the top of the stomach that keeps this a one-way street; typically; everything should be going in one direction: down. Since the esophagus is merely passing the food to the stomach it has more of a neutral pH, but the stomach that must digest all these proteins has an acidic pH.

The esophageal sphincter is a valve-like trap door that separates the two environments; food comes along, the door opens, the food drops through and the sphincter slaps shut to keep acidic juices of the stomach in the stomach where it churns food around in an acidic soup to break down proteins and fats to digest before it goes out of the bottom pyloric sphincter into the small intestine for further digestion and absorption of nutrients and water further downstream.

In reflux, as the stomach churns food, it refluxes the acidic bolus back up into the neutral environment of the esophagus, irritating the sphincter and esophagus. It is a tonal issue of this one-way valve losing tone so it can’t keep food in the stomach.

So what controls the tone of these valves? The nervous system, and particularly the nerves that come from the mid-back. Chronic slouching or hunching posture not only compresses the abdomen which can push food back up out of the stomach into the esophagus but also causes pressure on the nerves that are in charge of controlling the sphincters causing them to lose their proper tone.

Acid reflux is a physical stress issue.