Reading the Signs of an Unhealthy Digestive System
Part 1: The First Signs
Morning breath
Looking inside your mouth and smelling your breath will give you an indication of your state of health. Most people do not realize it, but since the digestive tract only has two “openings” (the mouth and the anus), the smells that come from either end give an indication of what is going on inside. As you sleep during the night, these smells gradually vent up the digestive tract. Unlike the daytime, there has been no food eaten for some time, and peristalsis is slowed down.
Interestingly, if you have a sick baby and administer a garlic enema, within about 20 minutes you will be able to smell garlic on the baby’s breath. Filling the stomach with food and liquid somewhat “plugs” this “vent hole”, so usually people are only aware of these smells in the morning before breakfast. It is called morning breath. Most people do not realize that if they have good flora in their intestines and a healthy GI tract, they will not have bad breath. This has been one of my major indicators of how healthy someone’s GI tract is, because “morning breath” will show up many, many years before the person actually has digestive problems.
Passing gas and fecal smells
Fowl smells and excess gases are common when the digestive tract is not functioning properly, when there are problems with normal flora, or when there is an overgrowth of abnormal flora. Yes, it is true that the fermentation process produces gas, but that is never in excess and never smells bad. Today there are ecological micro-organisms that you can buy for cesspools and septic tanks. These are microorganisms that are used by the waste treatment facilities in every city across the country.
When these organisms are functioning properly and are healthy, there is little or no smell. That is the one thing most people notice. If you look at a nursing infant, you will notice that there is no smell to their stools. There bodies are new and work well, provided their mother is relatively healthy during the pregnancy, and her body is not too polluted.
What we can learn from babies
When I want to meditate on something that I have read and ponder on whether or not it is true, I often times look at an infant to see if it applies to them. Their bodies are fresh and as unadulterated as they will ever be. As they grow, they will gradually age, be attacked by free radicals, chemical, radiation, etc. They will also have to deal with an untold number of pathogens. Life is a spiritual and physical battle. But a baby is born with as clean a slate as it will ever have. Here is my application to infants:
For the most part, a breast fed baby is able to digest the milk it receives, has good flora, and healthy stools with little or no odor. Nursing babies do not pass gas, either. You will find as you transform your digestive tract into a healthy state, you too will produce the same thing. If a mother has a baby with colic, all she has to do is introduce good flora into the baby’s intestinal tract and the fussy colic will totally go away.
Babies do not have mercury amalgam filling, they have not been eating preservative-laden food, they have not been exposed to chemicals and poisons, they don’t swim in pools filled with chlorine, and they don’t drink chemical-ridden tap water. Since they have not had to deal with all the things an adult has had to deal with, their solutions are usually pretty simple. If they have digestive unrest and are getting plenty of good food, then their mother has not been able to transfer the good flora to them that they need, and the baby may actually have contracted some abnormal flora.
Constipation: frequency of bowel movements
This is another sign that there is something wrong. Very few people ever talk about it. Most people believe if they have one bowel movement a day they are normal. This may be common for an American, but this is definitely not healthy. This is constipation. The worse case I have ever heard of is of a person who had on the average of one bowel movement every 28 days. Hopefully this person knew they had a problem.
If you look at an infant, they have a bowel movement within 20 minutes of nursing every time they eat. So if you apply this to your life, “healthy” would be to have one bowel movement every time you eat. If you eat 3 meals a day, you should have 3 bowel movements a day. Having to use the bathroom soon after your meal means that your system is working well!
Plaque on the teeth, pockets around the teeth
The health of our gums is a tremendous indicator of the flora residing there. Since digestion begins in the mouth, you can also say that the flora in the mouth is an indication of the health of that digestive organ.
Mercury poisoning
In studies where they put in radioactive mercury fillings into sheep and monkeys, they removed the fillings after just 30 days and checked to see if and where the mercury had spread throughout the body. They found that:
The heaviest amounts of mercury were in the gums.
The next heaviest mercury contamination was in the gut and the cells lining the intestinal tract.
The liver and kidneys also contained heavy amounts of mercury.
There was not any organ or tissue that did not contain some mercury.
The effect of plaque
There is a direct link between gum disease, plaque and the state of health of your body. If you are not in tune with your body enough to know your energy level has dropped, or if you are not remembering things as well as you use to, or if you get angry or fatigued easier than you should, or if you just do not feel good, then look at your teeth. See how many pockets you have around the roots, how many root canals you have, how many crowns and bridges you have. This is an indicator of how healthy your body is.
Plaque can be defined as a complex microbial community. There are 260 different species of bacteria that has been cultivated from the mouth of humans. Some are normal flora and some are pathogenic. The pathogenic bacteria actually secrete digestive enzymes that will digest the gum cells creating pockets around the roots of the teeth. They can also digest the tooth, creating a cavity.
Brushing the teeth helps to remove plaque and keep pathogenic bacteria in check. However, gums laden with mercury, in bodies that are not healthy, continue to degrade---even when teeth are brushed. There have been some studies done to see if normal flora or “healthy” bacteria had any effect on cavity formation. There is evidence that they can reduce cavity formation (Wei et al. 2002).
The effect of toxins
In my mind the biggest problem is to address the toxins and pollutants in the body that killed off the normal flora in the first place. Adding normal flora to a polluted mouth is only a temporary solution if they will soon die off. If you clean up the body, clean out the mercury, and then add good flora, the flora will be able to thrive in their new home, staying around to create a much more permanent solution. There is a reason abnormal flora are abounding in the mouth. I believe that reason needs to be dealt with first.
When I did a parasite cleanse about 5 years ago, after not having gone to a dentist for 17 years (and having 7 children during that time), all my plaque disappeared, my gingivitis disappeared, and I had no more bleeding gums. I had discontinued going to the dentist because of all the procedures they wanted to do on my gums (because of the gingivitis). For years after that we did periodic parasite cleansings, and later added virgin coconut oil.
More recently I had my mercury amalgam fillings removed and did a chelation to remove heavy metals. After this another change occurred: I noticed the color of my gums changed to a much lighter pink and they became even healthier. Today my gums never bleed. I do not go to the dentist now for a cleaning, because there is never anything to clean. I believe that is the way it is supposed to be. The healthy people that Dr. Weston A. Price discovered (in his quest during the early 1900’s) never brushed their teeth, yet they had healthy, non-crowded teeth containing no cavities.
People with heart valve problems have been shown to have pathogenic bacteria in their gums (mouth), and researchers have shown the direct link. There has been other speculation on links to other health problems. But what I feel certain of is that the flora in the mouth is a strong indicator of the health of the body. I believe plaque and gum disease (bleeding, sore gums) is an indication of an unhealthy body, and I believe that a healthy body has healthy teeth and healthy gums.
