MODULE #5 - Lesson 4 … · Preventing Cancer and Other Dieases of the Digestive Tract Module 5 - Lesson 4 Welcome to Lesson 4 Module 5. This is our final lesson in Module 5. I hope

Preventing Cancer and Other Diseases of the Digestive Tract

MODULE #5 - Lesson 4

2Super Nutrition Academy – MODULE 5 - Lesson 4

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Preventing Cancer and Other Dieases of the Digestive Tract

Module 5 - Lesson 4

Welcome to Lesson 4 Module 5. This is our final lesson in Module 5. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far. This module is important to grasp because disease or healthy begins in the digestive and intestinal systems.

What We’ll Be Covering TodayToday we will cover: colon cancer; irritable bowel syndrome (IBS); irritable bowel disease (IBD); hemorrhoids; and diarrhea. .

Colon cancers usually arise from benign polyps in the colon. Polyps are like little skin tags, kind of inside the colon. Over time they can develop into cancer. Kind of like how a mole can develop into skin cancer over time if it has the right kind of free radical damage from the sun and different things.

An annual report to the nation in 2010 published in the journal Cancer reported colon cancer causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year. It is the 3rd most common of cancer, 2nd leading cause of cancer death in the United States. It’s very prevalent. More than 90% of new cases are diagnosed in those 50 and older.


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Risk Factors

Having a family history of colorectal cancer and a personal history of colorectal cancer, are big risk factors. If you’ve got colorectal polyps or chronic inflammatory bowel disease, those are major risk factors for colorectal cancer.

The risk for colorectal cancer’s approximately twice that of an average individual for those who a first-degree relative who has colorectal cancer. The risk is even greater if the relative was diagnosed at a younger age or if more than one first-degree relative has colorectal cancer. For instance, if both of your parents have colorectal or had colorectal cancer, then that is obviously a much greater risk factor than if just one of your parents had it. In my case, my father had colorectal cancer, so that puts me at an increased risk for developing that.

Generally, your doctor will have you do a colonoscopy by about 50 years old, but if you’re one of the individuals who have these higher-risk factors then it’s recommended to start screening a lot earlier. I would advise starting around 35 years and, from that point on, every couple of years.

If you have no family history of colorectal cancer, by about 50 years old—I would even say, just as a preventive means, even earlier, like 40, 45. But if you do have a family history, 35 at the latest and be screened on a regular basis.

There are some genetic tendencies, and if you have one of those, then, obviously, you need to be closely monitored by your physician. Again, the big risk factors for colorectal cancer seem to be genetic. Now, depending on the research you read, some people say that 40–50% of cancers are lifestyle-related. In my experience in the people that I’ve worked with—I believe that cancer’s 90% lifestyle. In the cancer module we’ll look at, I’ll show you exactly what I’m talking about by that.

This is really important to understand. If you are God forbid diagnosed with cancer you should take the diagnosis but question the prognosis. So, if the doctor says, “Okay, you have colorectal cancer, and you have five years to live,” He’s laid a foundation for negative beliefs and kind of disempowering


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thoughts. That’s why the Super Nutrition Academy is so important, because when you can learn how to prevent these issues, you can change your prognosis.

I want to help put the power back into your hands, because no matter what happens to you. My dad had colorectal cancer, and I know with 100% certainty that I’m never going to develop colorectal cancer. That might be naïve thinking, but based on my lifestyle, my habits, I’m doing everything I possibly can. Not that I’m thinking about this on a daily basis, but I just live a healthy lifestyle.


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How to Prevent it (Medically Speaking)

When we go to websites or read medical literature, all the advice is very medical; it’s very allopathic. I’m going to show you that right here on this page, and then we’ll talk a little bit more holistically.

So, first of all, how to prevent colorectal cancer. As I mentioned, get regular screening tests beginning at age 50 or earlier if you have a family history. So, about 35 year’s old if you have a family history. Be physically active for at least 30 minutes per day; maintain a healthy weight; limit the amount of alcohol you drink; limit red meats to less than three servings per week; take a multivitamin with folate every day; make sure you get enough calcium and vitamin D; take an aspirin every day. Check with your doctor first.

This is the medical recommendation for how to prevent colorectal cancer the cases and the incidents have gone down, about 7% over the last 20 years. Not a significant drop when you compare where we were 50 years ago, all the money spent on cancer research, we’ve come almost nowhere in terms of prevention. When you think about prevention, we’re really thinking about lifestyle. That’s why you’re in a great place. You’re learning how to prevent this from even happening.

I put asterisks by multivitamin, getting enough calcium and vitamin D, and taking an aspirin every day. I went through this self-assessment test online, and they have you answer these questions and then, based on your answers, they tell you what your risk level is for developing colon cancer, colorectal cancer.

As you see here, my risk is above average for developing colorectal cancer. Now, the only thing that should set that alarm off in the system would be the fact that my dad had colorectal cancer, he survived now and is fine, however, not one of the questions asked about my diet. They asked if I was taking a multivitamin more than four times a week. Was I supplementing with calcium and vitamin D? Had I been taking aspirin every single day for the past 15 years?


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Those were the three dietary-related questions I was asked on this self-assessment questionnaire. For the average person who goes to such a Web site and responds to these questions truthfully and they get this score back saying that they’re an above-average risk, well, they’re just lost. I mean, they don’t know.

The fact is that there’re no questions about how many fruits and vegetables per day were you eating or how many servings of brassica vegetables like cauliflower and kale. There’s a big separation between what is medically advised and what is discussed in the alternative, holistic, and natural approaches to improving your health and dealing with cancer, preventing it.


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Do I think I’m above-average risk? Absolutely not. I’ve had my general checkup; even my doctor says, “You’re fine.” Take some of this with a grain of salt if you ever do these kinds of self-assessment things.

Nutritional PreventionLet’s look at how nutrition can prevent colon cancer. It’s a very tough cancer to deal with and I want to help you prevent this from happening. First we need to reduce stressors and carcinogens, cancer-causing agents like red meat, refined sugar, alcohol, smoking, obesity; which are all correlated with cancer.

Short fasts are helpful too. This is one of the reasons I endorse one-day, intermittent fasting. The key here is that you’re allowing your body to repair itself, and that’s the power of fasting. If you’re constantly eating all of the time your energy is spent on digestion and not cellular repair.

The liver has more than five hundred functions and it gets very toxic because of our lifestyle, the foods we eat, so we need to detoxify it. If you do the things I have been talking about you will detoxify your liver naturally. Just follow the suggestions I’m about to make and your liver will naturally become healthier and less toxic.

Eat less. One research study on mice found that if they ate 30% fewer calories than controls they live much longer.

With this you are not starving yourself. You’re eating till you’re satisfied but not starving. You don’t want to be stuffing food in your mouth the whole time. Your body isn’t able to repair itself. By eating a little bit less, you’re allowing your body to divert some of its energy to repairing cellular damage, breaking down immune complexes, and doing what it needs to do other than simply breaking down food.

Improve your bowel function. Many of the issues we will talk about today can be cured or prevented by drinking more water, eating more fiber, and consuming more essential fatty acids.

Omega-3s; this kind of goes in with the EFAs, specifically omega-3 fatty acids increase tumor-necrotizing factor, TNF, which is basically a compound that demolishes tumors more or less, put it that way. Omega-3s remove the fat-soluble pesticides, which are two really important things for preventing disease.


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Fermented foods; like sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, tempeh, miso. They populate good bacteria in your gut and increase interferon production and natural killer cells.

Both interferon production and natural killer cells boost your immune system to fight whatever it needs to fight, and fermented foods block the production of carcinogenic compounds in the colon, which is obviously a good thing.

And vegetables, which are basically, water, plus fiber and tons of nutrients. They specifically increase activity of natural killer cells and a lot of other things.

This is really the nutritional prevention. Very straightforward.


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The Power of Plants

When it comes to colon cancer the more of a plant-based diet you can adopt, the healthier you’re going to be. Sulfur-containing foods like onions, garlic, leeks, chives, kale, watercress, and durian, contain certain sulfides that inhibit carcinogenesis, which is the development of cancer. Anything that contains a good amount of sulfur is going to be very healthy for your colon and your liver.

Carotenoids and bioflavonoids—carrots, oranges, grapefruit, citrus fruit—these guys are important above everything else because they inhibit tumor enlargement and decrease DNA damage. Really important.

Cruciferous vegetables, aka the brassica family, perhaps the most important class of vegetables for preventing colon cancer. Veggies like kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower contain a compound called glucarate, which inhibits the effects of carcinogens in the body.

Glucoraphanin protects cells against free radical damage, indoles reduces the effects of estrogen surplus in the body. Estrogen surplus is not a great thing because estrogen promotes growth, so if you have any kind of tumor development, then estrogen will accelerate that. Indoles that are found in brassica vegetables reduce the effects of estrogen surplus.

Cancer is not something abnormal. The thing that is abnormal is the growth rate hat becomes problematic, so we don’t want too much estrogen because the estrogen will feed the growth of these out-of-control cells.

Brassica to the RescueA large review of the literature done in1996 looked at seven cohort studies and 87 cases of control studies. They wanted to look at was the cancer-preventive effect of brassica vegetables including cabbage, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower on different types of cancer. The cohort study specifically showed an inverse association between consumption of brassica vegetables and lung, and stomach cancer and between broccoli consumption and risk of all cancers.


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Of the case-control studies, 67% of them showed an inverse association between consumption of total brassica vegetables and risk of various cancers.

Inverse association means that the more vegetables you eat, the less cancer you have and the fewer vegetables you eat, the more cancer you may develop.

So, for cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, these percentages were 70, 56, 67, and 29% respectively across these different types of cancer prevention. Cabbage has a huge, huge benefit in terms of reducing overall cancer. Broccoli, 56%; 67% for cauliflower; 29% for Brussels sprouts. Pretty awesome stuff. This is probably due to the relative high content of glucosinolates. These are compounds that are broken down from glucose and amino acids to sulfur- and nitrogen-containing compounds. Those are the ones that have the real kind of bang for the buck in the colon and really the rest of the body, for that matter.

The association appears to be most consistent for lungs, stomach, colon, and rectal cancer. So the more of these brassica vegetables you can eat, the better off you’re going to be in terms of preventing a lot of cancers.

If you want to prevent cancer eat more fruits and vegetables, reduce stressors, make sure you’re going to the bathroom frequently and they’re healthy bowel movements. If you have a family history get screened early.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)Now, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a disorder of the bowel or the colon, with no structural abnormalities. So, if you were to do a screen there wouldn’t be structural damage to the colon at all. It’s a diagnosis by exclusion, which means that if the doctors don’t know what’s going on, they’ll just tell you, you have IBS.

There’re a lot of functional abnormalities. For instance, the movement of the GI tract becomes uncoordinated and irregular, so you might be running to the bathroom one minute, and you don’t know why, or it feels like that.

Stress. There’s a whole mind-body connection, and there’s all sorts of issues from the spiritual side of things that works into IBS. Remember the mind and gut are very closely related? If you are always stressed and have things going on in your mind, you’re going to have things going on in your gut as well.


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Intestinal parasite or fungal infections, that’s another common cause of IBS. Dysbiosis, which is the out-of-control balance between good and bad bacteria. Food allergies, too much fat or sugar intake, and too little fiber are some of the more known causes of IBS.

Symptoms and signs include abdominal pain; distention, diarrhea, constipation; excessive mucus secretion in the colon; flatulence; nausea; weight loss; anxiety; and depression. So, there really are a lot of different things here.

Nutrition and Holistic Approach (IBS)First of all, we need to eliminate the intake of stressors, including emotional-psychological stress, food stress, and environmental stress. Remove or eliminate high-fat, high-sugar foods. High protein intake may also result in hypochlorhydria, which is the underactive stomach. Eliminate gas-forming foods periodically, legumes, cabbage, which is unfortunate because they’re also really healthy for you. Spicy foods, alcohol, smoking, coffee, you want to definitely remove those.

Identifying real food allergies. If you know that you’re sensitive to certain foods, you want to remove those, because they’re going to cause irritation in the gut. Increase your water and fiber intake. Papaya and pineapple may be helpful because they have natural enzymes which are very, very helpful for digestion.

Probiotics, you’re looking at about three to eight billion microorganisms per day. Digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, really important to ensure that proper digestion is occurring so we don’t get further irritation in the gut. If you want to help kind of repair the intestinal lining and then reduce some of the intestinal permeability, about 5 g a day of glutamine may be helpful for IBS.

Getting Rid of GasI know that if you suffer from IBS, it can be really uncomfortable. Part of that is gas and distention which is not comfortable at all. Let’s look at how to get rid of gas other than doing what the cows are doing and blowing flames out of the back end.

Peppermint, fennel, anise, dill, cinnamon, chamomile, ginger, all alleviate digestive stress and gas. Peppermint, fennel, chamomile, or ginger tea,


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those are soothing gas-relieving solutions. Put some cinnamon in what you’re eating. Ginger’s a really nice digestive destressor. It helps prevent gas; it helps prevent nausea.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Now let’s move on to inflammatory bowel disease. With IBD there’s chronic inflammation at different sites of the intestines usually resulting in an altered response to intestinal flora. Some speculate there’s an autoimmune component.

There are two classes of IBD: Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Crohn’s disease is inflammation at any part of the gastrointestinal tract. Individuals will suffer from intermittent diarrhea, low-grade fever, lower abdominal pain, usually on the right side, weight loss, flatulence, granuloma. If the person has surgery to have some of this repaired, it still recurs after surgery. A colleague of mine suffered from Crohn’s disease, and if he ate something that upset him, like, it was game over.

Ulcerative colitis is inflammation limited to the lining of the colon, so the large intestine specifically. Bloody diarrhea, sometimes with mucus and pus, is one of the signs; fevers; cramps in the lower abdomen; weight loss; anal fissures; hemorrhoids. In ulcerative colitis, granuloma will be absent, but there will be inflammation in most of the colon. In this case, it can be cured after surgery.

The big difference here is that Crohn’s is in any part of the digestive or any part of the intestinal tract; ulcerative colitis is specific to the colon.


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Nutritional Deficiencies

On the left-hand side, we have a healthy colon. This is what the lumen should look like: nice and pinkish, there’re no obstructions. On the right-hand side we have an ulcerative colon. Look at the protrusions, the ulcerations that have occurred and the reduction in size of the lumen.

Here’s an example of where pencil thin poop might occur, when you have this massive growth, these ulcerations that are creating inflammation that are really restricting the size of the lumen for stool to move through.

There are a number of nutritional deficiencies that can occur with IBD because you’re not going to be absorbing nutrients as you normally should, so there are a lot of deficiencies that are normally seen in people with IBD.

With Crohn’s, a lot of the inflammation and the ulcerations can occur in the small intestine, where most of the absorption of nutrients occurs while colitis is exclusively in the large intestine, where there’s less absorption that’s occurring. There’s some B12, some vitamin K, and some water that’s really


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being reabsorbed in the large intestine and in the colon. That’s why those with ulcerative colitis generally have fewer nutritional deficiencies than those with Crohn’s.

Contributing factors to this include reduced oral intake; so, you just might be scared to cause a flare up, malabsorption, increased nutrient losses from the gut, because stuff goes right through.

There’s also drug-nutrient interactions. If you have ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s, there’s about three drugs that they have you kind of working on together, and, because you’re not getting as many nutrients, then you need more nutrients, and that’s obviously an increased demand with the body.

The prevalence of protein and energy malnutrition in IBD is in the range of 20–85%, with Crohn’s on the higher end. That is a large number of affected people.

This wide array of vitamin and mineral deficiency is impacting bone mineral density, carcinogenesis, and abnormal blood clotting, which are all associated with IBD. And recurrent inflammation with ulceration confirms an increased risk of cancer in both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s.

IBD and OsteoporosisResearch has shown that osteopenia, which is the beginning stage of osteoporosis, and osteoporosis are recognized as leading problems among patients with IBD. Well, why might that occur? What do you think?

One study showed a 40% increase in the risk of fractures among patients with IBD compared with sex- and age-matched controls. Many factors other than dietary, calcium, or vitamin D deficiency because it’s not going to be absorbed properly. That’s one of the big contributing factors among others like lifetime steroid use.

If you have any of these inflammatory conditions, on a steroid. These steroids will dramatically impoverish the integrity of your gut. If you lose weight because you’re not absorbing nutrients properly, you have a greater chance of developing osteoporosis. Disease activity, depending on how prevalent it is, how the status of it is, and there’s obviously hormonal and genetic factors too.


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IBD, Cancer, and HomocysteineIf you’re not absorbing calcium and vitamin D specifically from the small intestine, you are going to have issues. There’s also associations with cancer and homocysteine, which is obviously related to heart disease. Recurrent inflammation is an increased risk of cancer, both for colitis and Crohn’s patients, however, nutrient deficiencies may also play a role, and specifically what we’re talking about here is folate, which has the most pronounced anticancer nutrients. Because the small intestine and large intestine are not going to be able to absorb folate properly, those individuals are not going to be getting enough of it.

Many studies have shown an inverse relationship between dietary folate and sporadic colorectal cancer. Another adverse effect of folate deficiency is hyperhomocysteinaemia, which means high levels of homocysteine. IBD sufferers are more prone to injury within the blood vessels, which leads to vascular inflammation, and that becomes a risk factor for coronary artery disease.

If you recall back to the vitamin-and-mineral module, we talked about the B vitamins and the relationship with controlling homocysteine and the thiamine levels—B12, folic acid, B6 specifically. So, if you’re not getting enough folic acid, homocysteineaemia can occur, increasing the risk of potential heart disease.

High homocysteine levels have been reported in 26.5% of patients with IBD, compared with only 3.3% of controls. The most striking feature of these studies is the identification of a low-serum folate level and, to a lesser extent, a low-serum vitamin B12 level. Both of them are strong cofactors in the homocysteine and thiamine metabolic pathway. High levels of homocysteine in the blood creates damage in the arteries, leading to potential heart disease.

Nutrition and Holistic Approach (IBD)IBS is not fun to live with. If you do suffer from this or if you know somebody who does, then the following information is really going to be helpful.


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We need to reduce the inflammation and then soothe and protect the lining of your gut by avoiding stressors and using EFAs. We can also use things like Slippery Elm, licorice, and aloe vera to sooth the gut.

In terms of reducing the stress, you want to identify and eliminate stressors, food allergies, and dysbiosis, and uncontrolled bacterial imbalance in the colon.

Since there are absorption issues, an elemental diet is helpful. So instead of eating foods in their whole form. We want to alleviate the stress on the digestive system. Branched-chain amino acids may be a great option here.

I don’t really know if a whole-food-based multivitamin is better than eating whole foods with this particular issue. Essentially, what you want to do is, you want to alleviate the stress in the digestive system as much as possible so that whatever nutrients can be absorbed are absorbed as readily as they can be.

To help with that, depending on the status of the issue, if you’ve got really, really advanced Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis, it might be really difficult to absorb things, so food probably should be pureed or juiced to alleviate digestion and to maximize the absorption has much as possible. That’s something that can be really helpful.

If it’s a little bit more tolerable, if you have it a little bit better under control, you want to avoid glutinous grains, which we’re going to talk about gluten in the next module. I’m not going to actually talk about Celiac disease in this one, even though Celiac disease does affect the intestinal system. I wanted to save


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Celiac disease for Lesson 4 in Module 6, because we’re going to be talking specifically about gluten in there.

Again, reducing stressors, which would mean reducing the amount of gluten coming into your body, so pseudo grains, which do not contain gluten—so, millet, amaranth, quinoa, stuff like that—are good options here. Yogurt and kefir are helpful as well because they do provide some good bacteria.

Increasing intake of essential fatty acids because they’re going to reduce inflammation. We’re talking about fish oil, flax oil, hempseed oil, whatever form of omega-3 you want to use. Water, lots of water, like with anything. The more water you can drink, the better.

Fruits and vegetables, as always, and as accepted by the body. So, in this case, you may not want to eat raw broccoli. You may want to make a broccoli soup. And think about this for a second. If you have ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s, the last thing you want are really fibrous, dense vegetables in your intestinal system. Instead of that, instead of having them in their raw form, juice them, blend them, steam them, boil them, put them into a smoothie, and put them into a soup.

Probiotics; again, three to eight billion per day. Digestive enzymes and HCl; again, the same idea. Glutamine; again, this is optional because glutamine can be helpful for repairing the gut lining; however, a lot of studies in IBD—inflammatory bowel disease—show that glutamine has really little to no effect on helping this specific condition.

In this case a whole-food multivitamin will be helpful because we just want to increase your intake of overall nutrition, overall nutrients, and, therefore, a whole-food multivitamin may be advised.

For soothing and healing the gut use Slippery Elm, licorice, and aloe vera, which will reduce some of that inflammation.

As you’ve seen now, IBD, inflammatory bowel disease, and IBS, the approaches are very similar. If we look back to colon cancer, the approaches nutritionally and holistically are very similar to colon cancer as well. Obviously, with IBD, a couple more specifics because of the nature of the damage in the colon and the small intestine, but, again, the nutritional stuff is very, very similar across the board.


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Hemorrhoids

Let’s move on to hemorrhoids, as this picture shows, you can have either internal hemorrhoids or external hemorrhoids. External hemorrhoids, you’d be able to see them around your anus, and internal, obviously, is kind of inside.

Hemorrhoids are essentially enlarged anal veins that have lost their elasticity, so they just kind of ballooned out. The causes are numerous, including genetic weakness of veins, excessive straining during defecation, pregnancy, heavy lifting, or standing and sitting for long periods of time, lack of exercise, liver damage, lack of fiber, constipation.

If you have hemorrhoids, it’s not a lot of fun. Bright-red bleeding because, obviously, that’s the most proximal point of bleeding that you would notice if you were to go to the bathroom. It’s not like bleeding happening up in your stomach and it would kind of solidify and kind of clot as it makes its way through the digestive system. Here, if you’re bleeding at the anus, it’s going to come out like it’s just happening and fresh. Pain upon defecation; so, if you have pain going to the bathroom, doing number two. Itching and discomfort around the anus; and lumps may appear outside of the anus, which would obviously indicate an external hemorrhoid.


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The Nutritional and Holistic Approach (Hemorrhoids)Increase fiber, water, and EFA intake. Increase fruits and vegetables. In this case, we want to look at two classes, the bioflavonoid-rich foods like citrus fruit, as they strengthen the vascular walls. Remember, bioflavonoids are really important for the health of your vascular system, the arteries and veins. Beta-carotene-rich foods like carrots and anything with those deep-orange colors are really good, again, as they protect the intestinal and colon lining. Beta-carotene-rich foods would be actually good for any of these issues.

Externally, cocoa butter, aloe vera, calendula cream applied topically may help as well. So, that’s it. The idea here is that you want to be able to increase the ease with which you are passing bowel movements so that there’s no longer any kind of strain when you go to the bathroom.

There’re two things happening. If it’s painful to do a number two, then you’re going to train your body not to want to do a number two, and that’s going to lead to constipation, which is going to back you up, which is going to lead to toxic overload inside your body. We want to progress so doing the number two becomes a little bit easier, so you’re not straining and pushing and causing further damage.


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Diarrhea

Diarrhea is very common and there are a lot of different causes of it. Let’s understand that normal transit time, so the time you eat a food and the time it leaves your body, should be about 18–28 hours. Anything longer than that means that there’s stuff not going on. Anything ridiculously faster than that as well is obviously a cause for concern too.

Now, colon-elimination time, which means the time that the stool, comes into the colon and the time that it’s eliminated is about 6–18 hours, so, again, you shouldn’t have stuff sitting in there for more than about 18 hours.

Diarrhea equals the frequent evacuation of watery stools. It’s usually a sign of other problems in the body, so food allergy, parasite, or other kind of infection. You go to Mexico, for instance, you have a glass of water out of the tap there, which is not advised, the next thing you know, and you’re spending most of your trip on a toilet.

It usually develops when increased mucus and fluids are released into the GI tract to flush out toxins, irritation, infections, and not enough water is reabsorbed in the colon. There’s not enough time for stuff to be reabsorbed or for the stool to solidify; water’s not being reabsorbed, so it literally just purges out of your system.

Occasional diarrhea isn’t worrisome. Prolonged diarrhea is worrisome, is problematic because it might indicate IBS, it might indicate IBD, parasites, infection, even colon cancer, Celiac disease and other things.

Consistent diarrhea is not normal. That’s one of the reasons why I had you do the poop tracker. Diarrhea, without any other complications, can lead to dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, and nutrient deficiencies. Dehydration, first of all, because you’re not reabsorbing water; it’s all going to the toilet. Electrolyte imbalance, you’re losing sodium, potassium, and chloride, which are really important electrolytes so you can get into some pretty hyponatremic states, as they’re known, which is not good. And nutrient deficiencies, because if this stuff isn’t sitting in your small intestine long enough with that kind of


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normal colonic transit time, then you’re not going to have enough time to absorb nutrients. So, everything’s just going to be flushed out, and that’s going to lead to deficiencies.

Nutritional and Holistic Approach (Diarrhea)You can follow the BRAT diet, which is banana, rice, apple sauce, and toast until stool solidifies. That’s pretty much what you need to do, so if you ever have a bout of some kind of infection or whatever it is and you’ve had diarrhea for an entire day, you want to eliminate everything else and just follow this. Ideally, the banana should be ripe but not brown. They should not be hard and green. Rice should be cooked to really soft. Applesauce, make sure it’s good and organic. And toast, just make sure it’s a decent type of bread, so, ideally, gluten-free, but if you don’t have gluten-free, then maybe rye might be a good option.

You want to avoid milk, sugar, excessive meats, and most solid foods other than the banana, rice, applesauce, and toast. In this case you actually would benefit from something like Gatorade or an electrolyte sports drink, because you need to replenish those lost electrolytes. And this is the only time, other than if you’re an intense athlete and you have no access to make your own natural sports drink.

Chamomile and peppermint are antispasmodic, so they reduce the spasms going on in your colon and they may relieve excessive diarrhea. The key is the banana, rice, applesauce, and toast until the stool solidifies. Once that happens, then you can start reintroducing foods one at a time, but don’t go from, like, a day or two of diarrhea to having spicy chicken wings. That’s just not a good idea.

Ginger and fennel may also be helpful in relieving gas and soothing the GI tract. Again, a lot of these are herbs and different foods like ginger, garlic. They’re really, really, really good for you. We’re going to talk about this in the final module, these nutrient super foods and all that stuff. But these herbs, like cilantro and parsley and all this stuff, so powerful in terms of the health benefits that they provide, as well as the flavor.


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In SummaryIn summary, your digestive and intestinal tracts can only handle so much stress before it falls apart. If you abused your body through poor food choices and lots of stress for years, it’s only a matter of time before it breaks down. It’s going to take some time to build it back up; it’s not going to improve in a couple days. The toughest part for most people is to stick to the plan until they see improvements.

We’re not realistic with the fact that, “Well, I’ve been abusing my body.” In my case, I abused my body unknowingly, up until I was 17 years old. I would say I have had about ten years of conscious control of my food choices. From 7 to 17 years old, I was eating a highly stressful diet lots of wheat, lots of processed foods, lots of dairy and, eventually, my digestive system rebelled and it just literally got shot.

So, take care of your digestion. Every time you eat, you need to be following those steps to good digestion and ensure an optimal intestinal environment, so getting in good bacteria; fermented foods; limiting refined sugar intake.

Do those two things and you will enjoy lifelong health, because if you can increase the health of your intestinal and digestive systems, you’re not going to have leaky gut, you’re not going to have the development of food allergies. You’re going to set yourself up for some really incredible vitality, energy, and health for your life.

Waste needs to be removed. If you don’t take out the garbage in your house, it’s going to build up, and toxins will spew all around. Same thing in your body. The easiest way to solve all the diseases we’ve talked about is by increasing your intake of water, fiber, EFAs, and generally eating more fruits and vegetables.

Removing the stressors. Don’t eat lots of red meat; don’t eat lots of processed, rancid fats; avoid the high-refined sugar stuff. It’s really as simple as that. It’s not rocket science and I know it’s not sexy, but this is the secret to your health.

I had a great time taking you through Module 5. As you can tell this is the subject I am most passionate about. I’ve gone through the digestive destruction which led to an autoimmune condition. That’s why I am so passionate about teaching you about the importance of a healthy digestive system.


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Coming in Module 6Coming in Module 6, we’re going to kick it up to the next level. In the next module, we’re going to continue the cascade of events that happens once macromolecules, those big food molecules, enter the bloodstream.

We’ll talk about how the immune system deals with infections and why the immune system approaches undigested food particles in the same way they do a foreign invader. We’re going to talk about the silent killer.

We’re going to talk about allergies and autoimmune conditions. This is where we’re going to segue from the leaky gut stuff and get into allergies, autoimmune conditions, and really give you a firm understanding of how this stuff happens and how you can prevent it. And we’re going to talk about gluten, I’ll also talk about Celiac disease in that lesson, and I’m going to start introducing antinutrients to you. Yes, antinutrients.

Really incredible stuff coming in the next module, so you do not want to miss it. Potentially one of the most important modules you can really understand in Super Nutrition Academy.

Thanks for sticking with me. Thanks for tuning in and congratulations for continuing to empower yourself. I’ll see you in Module 6.

Documents

MODULE #5 - Lesson 4 … · Preventing Cancer and Other Dieases of the Digestive Tract Module 5 - Lesson 4 Welcome to Lesson 4 Module 5. This is our final lesson in Module 5. I hope