MindCure Seattle 2016: In Control- Living Above Your Emotions

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Kirkland SDA Church

Ron Meinhardt

Of Bowels, Bacterium, & Brains…

Well, it's my hope and prayer that after the short time that we have together today, that your EQ will be much improved, and your IQ, and your knowledge.

Because we're going to be talking about something that has amazing potential for health that is often overlooked.

In fact, I will submit to you, it's been overlooked so much that it's almost a travesty.

As we look back at our history as a nation, we've overlooked this.

We've kind of thought to ourselves there was really nothing to it, but now within the last 10 years, 12 years or so, we're coming back and realizing, hey, there's really something to this of bowels, bacteria, and brains subject.

There's really something to it after all.

Dear Father in heaven, we ask that you would give us wisdom because we know that ultimately when we study the human body, we need to go to the maker of the human body.

So we pray that you would give us wisdom to understand physiology, understand its application, understand how we can live in harmony with these wonderful little workers that you've placed in our large intestine, these probiotic bacteria, and we pray that you would help us more than ever to be appreciative of the wonderful bounties and blessings you've set before us.

If you look on your schedules tomorrow, we're going to be finishing up this subject with the presentation food and mood.

It's going to be looking at very, very similar aspects of probiotic bacteria, but we're going to be looking at foods that actually promote the growth of proper probiotic bacteria.

You would think, well, we don't need a whole lot of time to talk about that.

But honestly, you could spend months at a seminar looking at all of the recent research.

And this is research that has come out since pretty much 2003.

All this new research that has basically exploded on the field of the medical literature that is showing that there really is something to this concept.

Now, I will preface that with saying that for the last, prior to 2003, for the last 70 years, or prior 70 years before that, as a medical culture we had dismissed the idea that what's in our colon really could affect us.

And I don't really know what brought it about, you can study the historical research and kind of get an idea.

But during the early 1900s, this was the talk of the day.

And in fact, it probably was too much of the talk of the day during that time.

But 1 such physician researcher actually wrote in the journal, the American Journal of Gastronomy or Gastroenterology in 1920, it is probable that future years will show that many of the diseases classed today as of obscure origin will be understood to be directly or indirectly due to states of chronic toxemia from the intestinal canal.

To be directly or indirectly due to states of chronic toxemia from the intestinal canal.

Because there was a war that was raging during this time.

And it was basically raging between 2 different ideologies.

1 thought that there really was something to this wisdom here displayed.

The other said there's nothing to it, it's just hypothetical, it's just too obscure, too unknown, and in fact it just seems like a fanciful theory.

And so you had this warring against this ideology by many individuals.

But there was reason to war against this ideology, because some people took this kind of information and they became fanatical about it.

The study of how the, they used to term it auto-intoxication, auto-intoxication of the colon producing things or the byproducts of putrefaction and fermentation producing things that leached out into the blood and then intoxicated or caused toxemia in the body or toxic type developments.

So some of these doctors said, OK, we see that there seems to be a correlation between depression, between diseases, and between the colon.

So we're going to actually cut the colon out altogether.

And we're going to do a colon resection and take that irritating colon out and the person will be all the better.

And they perform thousands of these operations thinking that they would be a cure to this toxemia or this auto intoxication.

Now when studied, when actually looked, the research was looked upon, we realized that hey this wasn't such a good idea because these people didn't really benefit.

There's a reason why God gave us that organ.

And increasingly we become aware that yes, it plays a very important role, not only in withdrawing fluids from the feces, but also in positively providing nutrition in a kind of obscure but a necessary way.

So there were these 2 classes of medicine that were worrying and I'll tell you which 1 won.

It was the class of medicine that said, this is just ridiculous.

And so from 1930 on until about 2003, Anyone who came up with the idea that something could come out of the colon and cause problems was basically called a fanatic or just uneducated.

Even though there were some studies that were coming out that were saying, hey, maybe this does happen, maybe this does happen over here in the colon.

And even in the 1970s or 1980s, I believe, there was a research article saying that this concept of auto-intoxication really is a thing of the past.

But the amazing thing about that is we have revisited it and we've realized we've been wrong for over 70 years.

And people's lives have suffered because of it.

We're living in a state in which 26.2% of Americans, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, suffer from a diagnosable medical or mental disorder every year.

So 1 out of every 4 Americans every year, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health, will suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder.

Now, we're in a physical health crisis, we're in a health care crisis, but we're also in a mental health crisis as well.

And I'll submit to you, what we're about to discuss today is not a cure-all.

It's not going to solve all of our problems, but I do believe it's important to understand and to make it a part of our lifestyle, a part of our knowledge base.

But it definitely isn't the panacea that some physicians touted it to be in the early 1900s.

However, scientists have realized there is a direct connection between your gut bacteria and your colon.

But to understand this connection, we first need to understand a little bit about physiology.

We could end up going home and spending thousands of dollars on probiotic supplements that may or may not even help us.

I'm not doubting the fact that probiotics are often helpful, but we could, without the proper understanding of physiology, we could place an emphasis on an area that should only be a minor consideration.

Because I'll submit to you, if you want healthy gut bacteria, probiotics are not the ultimate solution.

They're a help, but they're not the ultimate solution.

And you don't have to just take my word for it.

We're going to show that through the evidence.

Now I know the stomach is not a bowel, but it does play a role in protecting the bowels.

The stomach is what we call the gatekeeper of the small intestine.

What is the normal pH of the human stomach?

Lower the pH the more acidic and so a pH of 2 is enough to dissolve many substances And I'm very thankful that we have a protective layer of mucus and a very capable set of cells to produce this mucus to protect our stomach from disintegrating itself.

But that acid also is helpful in destroying some of these bacteria that we may inadvertently put into our mouths.

Now, if you wash your hands before eating, I think that's a great practice.

But chances are you're still going to introduce bacteria into your stomach that you may not necessarily want to be there.

We call these pathogenic bacteria, disease-causing bacteria.

But there are other strains of bacteria that you still may not want to have in your intestines.

They may not cause disease outright, but they may be interfering with things like mental cognition.

So first of all, it's important the stomach is healthy.

The stomach is really being that gatekeeper that it needs to be to prevent unwanted strains of bacteria from entering into the bowels.

Studies are showing that the chronic use of proton pump inhibitors and antacids are causing massive amounts of small bowel intestinal overgrowth, or small intestine bacterial overgrowth.

And we'll talk about the detriments of this as we go on, but suffice it to say, it's basically leaving the gate open and allowing some of these more harmful bacteria to come in.

Let's talk a little bit about the small intestine.

Basically upon leaving the stomach, we have a sphincter muscle that opens up the duodenum.

We have an accessory organ called the gallbladder that contracts.

And bile is poured out on that acidic content that's leaving the stomach, neutralizing it, making it more I guess palatable and less caustic to the tissues further on down the duodenum, the jejunum, and also last but not least the ileum.

Now take note, where does the food pass through from the stomach?

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Of Bowels, Bacterium, & Brains…

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