Sabotage of Poor Digestion and How to Fix It

March 17, 2016

What am I talking about today?

As promised, in Part 2 of this post I am going to walk you through the Sabotage of Poor Digestion and How to Fix It.  What happens when your child’s digestive system is dysfunctioning and why does it matter to his/her neurodevelopment recovery? And most important, what you can do about it. If you haven’t checked out part one of this post, you can check it out here.

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• Digestion is a “north to south” process—it starts in the brain and moves “south” down the body. Any dysfunction that happens further “north” will impede digestion further down the chain.
• Our kids are typically in a chronic state of stress from many factors. Stress plays a major role in digestive dysfunction. We must mitigate the impact of this stress by supporting healthy digestion.
• Digestive dysfunction can lead to multiple functional nutrient deficiencies, dysbiosis, leaky gut, food sensitivities, allergies, autoimmune disease and more.
• Picky eating can be a sign of digestive dysfunction. Look beyond taste or texture of the food—your child may be telling you something about the state of their digestion.
• Use this Digestion Cheat Sheet to work with your practitioner to help correct your child’s digestion.

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Signs of Digestive Dysfunction

Before we talk about why digestive dysfunction is so common in our children, take a look at the long list of the signs and symptoms:

• diarrhea
• constipation (your child is constipated if he or she doesn’t have 1–3 bowel movements daily, normally right after a meal)
• undigested food in the stool
• light coloured stool that floats
• stools that aren’t properly formed (should look like  number 4 of the Bristol Stool Chart
• bloating
• gas
• belly pain (kids usually point to their belly button when they are asked where the pain is)
• posturing (leaning over a table or couch to put pressure on the belly to relieve the pain – often seen in nonverbal children)
• colic (in the first year of life)
• vomiting or reflux in the first year of life
• heartburn/reflux in second year and beyond
• fussy eating habits/picky eater (will only eat a limited variety of foods)
• craving for sugary and/or starchy foods (cereal, bananas, breads, cookies)
• nausea after eating a meal higher in fat
• dislike or lack of interest in proteins (meat)
• gallstones
• eczema
• dry skin
• muscle cramps
• and more…

The Digestive Cascade and Why It Matters

As I mentioned in Part 1, digestion starts in the brain. To begin the digestive cascade we must be in a relaxed, or parasympathetic, state. Unfortunately, our children are in a chronic state of stress caused by many factors ranging from lack of sleep and emotional stress to inflammation in various parts of the body, gut infections and more. This means that their digestive process starts off on a bad foot—the very first signals their bodies need to prepare to digest food are not received. This misstep ensures some level of sabotage of poor digestion for our children, although it may not be obvious to us.

I could write an entire book on this subject, but let’s look at what happens to digestion when our child is in a state of chronic stress.

It All Begins in the Brain

Your child is under chronic stress, so when he or she eats, the brain doesn’t tell other parts of the body to be prepared to do their part. Salivary amylase (necessary to digest carbohydrates) won’t be released, and stomach acid production (needed to break down proteins and cleave minerals—more on this in a minute) will be impeded.

If your child is like mine, she barely chews her food. Seriously, sometimes I wonder how the kid who spent years gagging and throwing up almost every meal skipped to inhaling her food! Can you relate?

When your child is not chewing properly (the benchmark is 30 times per bite), salivary amylase, which was low, to begin with, is not sufficiently secreted. This means carbohydrates do not yet begin breaking down, and as a result, they may not get broken down fully as digestion goes on. This matters because undigested carbohydrates feed opportunistic/bad bacteria and yeast (particularly Candida) resulting in imbalances further down in the gut (and sometimes in the mouth in the form of thrush). These imbalances, known as dysbiosis, damage the ecology in the gut, causing chronic inflammation and in turn damage the gut lining. The gut lining relies on a balance of good bacteria to stay healthy, receiving nutrients from the good bacteria as well as a physical reinforcement as the bacteria line up along the intestinal wall.

In addition, dysbiosis and potential gut infections interfere with the breakdown of nutrients and impair the ability of the gut lining to absorb nutrients, leading to key nutrient deficiencies and causes sabotage of poor digestion. Last but not least, this process leads to a weakening in the tight junctions in the gut wall (which hold the lining together), creating a “leaky gut” that allows partially digested foods to inappropriately penetrate the gut barrier. Various symptoms are triggered by a leaky gut, from inflamed sore joints and brain fog to autoimmune disease that results from food sensitivities and allergies.

The Stomach—Another Critical Stage

Let’s back up to the stomach.

As I mentioned above, because your child is in a chronic state of stress, the stomach is unlikely to produce sufficient stomach acid, or hydrochloric acid (HCl), which is required to trigger the release of pepsin to break down proteins and to cleave minerals from food. Proteins make up the building blocks of the body and play many roles as enzymes, antibodies, hemoglobin (necessary for oxygen transport throughout the body, most notably in the brain) and hormones, for example. The building blocks of proteins themselves are amino acids. Amino acids are required for RNA and DNA regulation so that genes function properly, and for building