Chapter 1 -- INTERNAL HYGIENE
Many things about our body would not seem to us so filthy and obscene
if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads
G.C. Lichtenberg (1700 German physicist)
What is the biggest taboo in our society? Is it incest? Asking someone’s salary? Or could it be toilet use, constipation or the general flushing of wastes from our system. In the privacy of your own reading, it does not seem so confidential or sensitive. But just let out a large amount of gas in a public bathroom stall and then see how long you wait before exiting -- to make sure no one associates the face with the product. We use common, vulgar, vernacular words such as ‘shit,’ but only in sentences that have nothing to do with the real thing – guano de sapiens.
The Royal Flush is not simply an end result, but indeed a process (‘the journey’ if you will). Flushing is actually about nutrition. You may think that nutrition was covered under other titles of the 120 Years . . . and Holding program. That is not totally true because nutrition is NOT what we eat. The food we put into our mouths is only a small part of nutrition, the rest is how our bodies handle the food. Sometimes the nutrients we receive are determined more by our emotions (and their effect on our systems) than the actual food composition we choose.
Nutrition is NOT what I eat
The Royal Flush starts with the very next step in nutrition—after we choose what to put on our plates. Part our lips and we open the entrance to the world of digestion.
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- Diet composition - Digestion - Absorption - Assimilation - Excretion - Elimination |
what you put on your plate and in your mouth chew it and use it how to keep it how the cells use it the waste made from it how to discharge the waste |
It is not my aim to describe each of these in integral detail, it is more important for you to have a general idea of how the whole process works from a practical point-of-view. However, a basic knowledge of what goes where, when and how, helps you to understand and evaluate your own functions more intelligently. Some physicians (especially coroners) feel that 80% of our deaths stem from the digestion system, or more correctly the gastrointestinal and urinary systems. This wide view of nutrition cannot be ignored if we plan as long a life as is possible for us.
Our digestion . . . going sacredly and silently right,
that is the foundation of all poetry.
G.K. Chesterton (1908)
GUT is an old Anglo-Saxon word. It refers to the passage starting from the mouth and terminating at the anus, not just the mysterious ‘innards’ we think of around our mid-sections. Today, other words are used to describe this passage, like Alimentary canal, Digestive or Gastrointestinal tract. They all mean basically the same thing, the way we take in, use, and keep some nutrients and dispose of the rest. The dynamics of the system are always on the move and under involuntary control. This means you cannot move material from the ascending colon to the transverse colon at will, as you would lift your hat and remove it from your head. A network of nerves (called the Enteric nervous system) lies between the muscle layers, interacting with hormones, neuro-transmitters and the Central Nervous System. Signals go from brain to gut but also vice versa. All play an important role in colon regulation, demonstrating a strong body-mind connection. As the Chesterton quotation declares when it all works right, it is poetry.
The complexity of the digestive system can be as simple as the well-known comment ‘it goes in one end and out the other.’ Or it can be as complex and detailed as a rigorous textbook focusing on the structure and bio-chemical functions of the small intestine villi. I would like to take a happy medium approach and provide enough information to allow you to fully understand the basics – which means the main action players and their abbreviated roles.
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