The first myth of the nutritional vegetarians, is that we aren't meant for meat. Most of us ate grains, and a lot other leafy green things. Never mind that grains were not even in existence for the majority of our time on earth. Grains have to be grounded, soaked, and most of all, cooked. Grains can't be eaten raw. Don't believe, then try it out yourself? You will get sick. This is true for grains, beans and even potatoes. They contain toxins, politely known as anti nutrients, to stop animals and people like us from eating them. Just because plants can't scream, doesn't mean they wan't to be eaten. And just because they don't have claws or teeth, doesn't mean they aren't fighting back.
First of all, plants produce enzyme blockers, which act as a pesticide against insects and other animals, including us. Our digestive systems utilize many enzymes to break down and absorb food. When the food is seeds(E.g beans and grains), the seeds resist by blocking those enzymes. The most common enzymes that grains try to disrupt are proteases, which digest protein. Proteases include the stomach enzyme pepsin and the small intestine enzymes trysin as well. Other chemicals interfere with amylase, the enzyme that digests starch, and hence are called amylase inhibitors.
Beans, grains, potatoes also use lectins, which are proteins that fill a huge variety of functions in both plants and animals, though the exact function of many lectins is still unknown. In order to understand the damage that these substances can do to human body, you first need a basic primer on human digestion. Well, that's what I call it Digestion 101.
Well, I'm not going in depth on how our GI tract works, but let me brief you guys a bit about digestion. Our digestive tract has one tough job to do. It has to sort through a huge array of foreign substances, the things we swallow, the junk we put in our mouth, and decide what's nutrient, and what's danger. The ones deemed nutrients have to be broken down into the smallest possible components and then absorbed. This work is so labor intensive that your intestines measure approximately twenty two feet. Can you believe it is that long? To increase the work capacity, the intestines are folded up into compacted gathers called villi. Heard of it?
Next, microvilli, are even smaller folds. They comprise what's called the brush border, the area where digestive enzymes break proteins down into amino acids and starches into sugars. Once food is completely broken down, the lining of the gut lets the nutrients into the bloodstream through what are called tight junctions. These are specialized seals between the lining cells. We need to be protected from all sorts of contaminants and toxins that travel from the outside world, past our teethm and through our stomachs. The tight junctions are the place where substances are either absorbed or rejected. If the substance is too big, too scary, too hamrful, too foreign, it can't get through these tight junctions. But if anything smaller and simple, such as water, sugar, ions and amino acids, gets a pass.
That's one mechanical way our intestines keep us safe. Another is through rhythmic contractions that keep the input moving through the intestines. The constant motion stops unfriendly bacteria from setting up residence. And the lining cells are continously shedding, so any bacteria that have managed to grab a hold of our guts are carried away.
If these mechanical methods fail, our guts can also mount an immunological defense, and it's a very specialized defense. The usual immune response elsewhere in the body involved inflammation. Not so in the gut, and if you picture the surface of a tennis court folding itself into half a square inch, you will see why. There is no room for inflammation, not if that area wants to absorb nutrients too.
Inflammation would weaken the tight junctions, rendering us vulnerable to dangerous substances that could slip into our bodies. Instead, the gut operates its own rapid response team. Specialized cells take any invaders prisoner. Also, another set of cells, called lymphocytes, will start manufacturing poisons to kill the foreign invaders or invading substances. Bear in mind that the armed lymphocytes will remember the face of the invader forever, so that if one like it ever cares to show up again, the immune response will be swift and sure.
Well, eating grains causes mainly 3 problems. The first, is that a grain based diet, will include too many starches and sugars, which will overload the intestines. The gut in turn will pass them on undigested to the colon. These sugars create so called 'bacterial picnic' and the colon's normal population of bacteria experiences exponential growth. Not so fun for a so called picnic right?
This over productive fermentation can then surge back into the gut, causing an inflammatory response which blunts microvilli, impairs proper digestion and absorption, and in the beginnings of a vicious cycle, sends even more incompletely digested foods downstream. Most crucially, the tight junctions are damaged, letting substances like lectins pass through into the bloodstream. And the lectins themselves may bind to the wall of the intestines, altering their permeability and their function.
So, you must now be wondering, what are lectins? Well, think of lectin as a protein containing a key that fits a certain type of lock. This lock is a specific type of carbohydrate. If lectin with the right key comes in contact with one of these 'locks' on the gut wall, or artery or gland or organ, it opens the lock. Which means, it disrupts the membrane and damages the cell and may initiate a cascade of immune and autoimmune events leading to cell death.
Lectins, don't break down without a fight. Once they are ingested, neither hydrochloric acid nor digestive enzymes can destroy them. Please do REMEMBER this fact! Remember your cereal breakfast you are eating every morning? A cereal grain lectin, is heat stable and resistant to digestive breakdown in humans and has been recovered intact and biologically active in human feces. Folks, that means your POO aka SH*T.
By the time a meal clears the stomach and enters the intestines, any protein we have eaten should have broken down into amino acids. This helps keep larger components from passing through the wall of the intestines and into the bloodstream. But, because lectins can be quite high, consequently their transport through the gut wall can exceed that of other dietary antigens by several orders of magnitude.
Lectins, can also bond to the walls of the intestines and damage their permeability. Their bonding creates everything from shortened villi to changes in intestinal flora to cell death. This combination of sheer concentration of lectins and damaged guts means that lectins pass through the intestines whole. Bear in mind, once they get past that basic defensive barrier, they wreak havoc all over human body! Boom!
So, to all grains lovers, you might want to think seriously about enjoying those bakeries, breads, cereals, which you find most of the time satisfy the cravings that have been haunting you so ages. To be continued...
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