Juices stomach acids, enzymes, bile, and intestinal flora they have unique requirements as to the types of protein, fat, and carbohydrates their digestive systems can handle. When they eat food that doesn’t meet these requirements, the food doesn’t get digested and turns into acid waste. Because it is in the gut that undigested food debris breaks down into disease-causing acid, it is not an exaggeration to say that disease starts in the stomach.
When the quantity of acid waste generated from undigested food is large enough, it eats away the mucous membranes in the esophagus, stomach, and the small and large intestines, causing such disorders as acid reflux, ulcers, spastic colon, colitis, and nausea. What is left of the acid waste leaves the digestive tract by way of the blood and lymph vessels in the small intestines and flows into the circulatory system.
The blood transports the acid waste to the liver to be detoxified. But if the liver is already overloaded with toxins, the acid Copyright © 2006 by Felicia Drury Kliment. Click here for terms of use. 22 Shedding New Light on Your Metabolism waste is carried by the blood first to one and then another of the detoxifying organs the kidneys, the lymph nodes, and the lungs. When these organs are too overloaded with waste to handle it, the acid waste flows back into the general bloodstream in its original form.
A Metabolically Appropriate Diet Can Restore Health
Any major illness, and degenerative disease in particular, points to a lack of balance in organ function. But so do minor symptoms such headaches, insomnia, frequent colds or viruses, pain, indigestion, dry mouth or dry eyes, feelings of restlessness, and anxiety Is Your Diet Causing Your Illness? 23 24 Shedding New Light on Your Metabolism or nervousness, a racing pulse, or the inability to sit still for very long.
They are all indications that the sympathetic nerves have become dominant in response to the elevated acidity of the body. But while hyperacidity and the resulting health problems are usually the result of the wrong diet, this is not always the case. According to Kansas City cardiologists Dr. James H. O’Keefe, Jr., and Dr. Brian Curtis, writing in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, the sympathetic nerves can become chronically overactive as a result of emotional stress.
The Affect of Acid Waste on the Grain Eater and Meat Eater
When the stress hormones are elevated it’s a sign that acid waste, triggered by emotional stress and/or metabolically inappropriate food, has thrown the body out of balance or destroyed homeostasis. This imbalance means that some organs are functioning more rapidly than others. Imbalanced organ function gives rise either to the grain eater or the meat-eater.
When you have a grain-eating metabolism, your heart beats faster than usual, your breath comes more quickly than normal, and you think faster and more clearly than you would if you were a meat eater or an omnivore. The downsides are that your overactive heart, brain, and lungs will take away much of your appetite, give you constipation, prevent you from getting as much sleep as you should, and make you feel jittery
Autonomic Nervous System Balance Depends on the Right Diet
The two parts of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, maintain balance with some assistance from the endocrine glands by acting in opposition to each other. Each branch increases the speed of the organ systems under its control and slows the organ systems controlled by Is Your Diet Causing Your Illness? Shedding New Light on Your Metabolism the other branch. Thanks to this interchange, the two systems work together, creating a balanced metabolism. Individuals who are balanced are omnivores, able to digest grains and meat equally well.
