Fart free: Why good digestion is essential | Rachel van der Gugten | TEDxTauranga

it's been ugly hasn't it okay but let's all be honest how many of you were sitting in your seats right now holding babies no nudging your male partners and I'm not gonna make you raise your hands but we all do it but we never actually talk about it watch this I can't believe it it's my first blind date how I do it all the time really look guys meet Greg Janice okay so you may not have been in that particular embarrassing situation but I'm sure you all have your own finding stories to share about flatulence there was even a recent episode on The Bachelor where one of the contestants actually let one slip on her first date unfortunately for her it wasn't just two people in the back seat of the car but the whole world was on the date with her the headlines everywhere read the part that stopped the nation now I'm a nutritional therapist and I have a passion for helping people understand what's going on inside their bodies so they can make informed life-changing decisions about their health I believe it is possible for us to be fart free for life now contrary to popular belief flatulence is not actually a normal part of healthy digestion but it can be a sign that there's something out of balance and maintaining a healthy digestion and microbiome is crucial if you want to establish good health so it's important to listen to your body when it's talking to you now flatulence it's actually mainly caused when the microflora in your colon ferment carbohydrates carbohydrates are composed of simple sugars starch and indigestible fiber and the microflora in your gut love them now if you look at the food pyramid which for the past 40 odd years we've been told is the basis of a healthy diet you'll see that actually three-quarters of it are composed of carbohydrates and these are in the form of grains starchy vegetables other vegetables and fruits and some sugar at the top now unfortunately a diet that's this high and refined and processed carbohydrates can actually lead to an imbalance in our microflora we're told to eat up to 11 servings of grain based foods per day not only that but the average person now consumes up to 37 teaspoons of sugar jester's supposedly healthy alone that's a lot of fuel for our internal combustion engines to produce gas with unfortunately as well many people actually have a reduced ability to digest certain sugars such as lactose and fructose and they're found in a number of carbohydrate foods and this can lead to a much greater supply of sugar traveling into the colon for the bacteria to ferment releasing extra gas many dietary related diseases are actually being shown to be linked to our overconsumption of carbohydrates and sugars so if our growing understanding of how our body actually handles them is showing us that we probably shouldn't eat that many then what should we actually eat well I believe that we should actually be consuming foods that are much more like a pre-industrial style diet now these foods are nutrient dense they tend to be lower in starchy certain vegetables high in healthy fiber and healthy fats and they promote a good balance of the micro flora in our colon there are a number of different names given to the variations of these diets around the world they're unique to different geographic locations and people's genetic variation there's Paleo primal ancestral health low carb high fat and the more therapeutic ketogenic diets but the one thing they all have in common is that they cut out the refined and processed carbohydrates which is why they're so thick utak and effective many people find these diets to be effective for a number of different health conditions and they're having very promising results eating a low carbohydrate more pre-industrial style diet means incorporating much higher quantities of meat potentially dairy if you're doing primal or more industrial solid not paleo but vegetables and small amounts of fruit and starchy vegetables at the top so it's a restructuring of the food pyramid and thinking about it in a completely different way now these diets have been shown to be very helpful for a number of different conditions and there's promising research going on all the time where there's amazing results so it's something worth exploring how these diets can benefit different conditions that were struggling with not just flatulence now I've been doing my own research to see how all of these diets affect digestion and flatulence specifically by polling the largest online groups with thousands of members to see what they had to say about how switching to a low carbohydrate pre-industrial diet how it's affected their flatulence what I found has been confirming my theory that the overconsumption of carbohydrates is actually the primary cause of excess flatulence for most people now as you can see from the results the majority of people have switched to a low carbohydrate high protein and fat diet have had a dramatic or noticeable reduction in their flatulence now this is a statistically significant amount I myself I'm a bit of a poster child for a low carbohydrate diet confession timer I think my early 20s before my nutrition day I used to be a bit of a carbohydrate junkie and I used to eat bread and pasta cakes and cookies I used to even eat ice cream for breakfast calling it the breakfast of champions but I never realized I was paying for my love affair with all of those carbohydrates every time I walk up the stairs or run around I'd really have to hold it in to stop myself from yodeling from below what I really can say it is possible to be fart free for life it's just a matter of finding your flatulence threshold of how many carbohydrates you can tolerate before you begin to Thunder from Down Under but if that doesn't cut solve the problem and you still find yourself Tooting your horn on a regular basis then there's more work to be done one of the other things that affects flatulence is actually your stomach now have you ever been in a meeting or on a date and you can feel the pressure building and you started thinking what really hope that one's about but it wasn't and it was a bit further south and you thought I'll just slip that one out and no one will notice but then you realized you were engaging in silent chemical warfare well unfortunately addressing what causes butt the smell can be the difference between a little embarrassing squeak and losing your friends and loved ones Jax is a lot like your children you love your own or at least you don't mind your own but you really can't handle anyone else's so one of the main things that affects how your flatulence smells is actually your stomach now have you ever eaten a meal and then afterwards you started to feel bloated you may have experienced reflux heartburn indigestion you were probably told that all of these things were caused by too much stomach acid but what if I told you that all of those symptoms are actually caused by too little stomach acid and the reason that's important is because your stomach plays a very large role in how your body digests all its food I mean it's not doing its job and it's not breaking down the food properly in particular protein then large protein molecules can end up traveling through into the colon where hydrogen sulphide gas is released that's the main thing that causes your cast to be stinky now if you're not producing enough stomach acid then your protein doesn't get unraveled for enzymes to break it apart making it into smaller amino enzyme components where it can be absorbed in the small intestine that's what causes the protein to end up in your colon in larger quantities and in much larger pieces basically the other reason low stomach acid affects your flatulence it's because of the way it protects your body against infections normally your stomach and small intestines should be sterile but when you don't have enough stomach acid harmful microorganisms can establish themselves in your stomach and small intestines where they actually have access to a much greater supply of food obviously and they can produce a much greater amount of gas with that so if you've got low stomach acid you might be wondering well what would cause that well there's a number of things stress that's the biggest trigger for most people nutrient deficiencies particularly of the B vitamins zinc magnesium and lack of sleep some medications and some infections can actually lower your stomach acids as well so it's very likely you've experienced a number of these different things at some point in your life there's actually a really simple way that you can tell if you're experiencing low stomach acid it gives you a bit of a clue to know if you need to research a bit more it's called the baking soda challenge and it's a fun little experiment you can do at home you take the quarter teaspoon of baking soda and one glass of water and you mix it together and drink it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning and it gives you a basic idea of your basal stomach acid levels if you start burping straight away it's very likely that you're producing enough stomach acid because baking soda reacts with hydrochloric acid and produces carbon dioxide bubbles if you don't work straight away and it takes between two and five minutes and it's very likely your stomach acid levels are actually lower than they should be and if it's from five minutes to not at all and it's likely you're not producing stomach acid like you should and it needs to be investigated further I was gonna do this test for you on stage just to give you an idea of how it works but then I realized I actually don't have problems with my stomach acid so it would have been really risky and probably a disaster because I would have ended up burping my way through the rest of the speech now unfortunately low stomach acid has been linked with the development of a number of different health conditions and you can understand that if your body is fundamentally not digesting and breaking down nutrients properly it can lead to the malfunctioning of a number of different systems because our bodies are whole units and it's all linked together so helping your stomach to produce stomach acid doesn't just alleviate you sounding your foghorn it inappropriate claims but it also goes a long way to helping with other health problems as well unfortunately our ability to produce stomach acid actually declines with age so many people by the time they're sick the experience almost a 3/4 decline in their stomach acid production and ladies if you've been pregnant you've probably experienced low stomach acid as well because it's the main reason or one of the main reasons behind morning sickness when you're pregnant your body uses a lot of resources to create a baby and that produces a lot of stress which takes away resources that your body uses to create stomach acid children and babies can also experience low stomach acid as it's one of the main reasons behind colic reflux fussy eating failure to thrive the development of food allergies and childhood asthma specifically so it's something that can affect us all and it's unfortunately very known it's not very talked about at all so when you look at this graph and you see our chances of producing stomach acid over time it looks like we're all gonna fart ourselves into oblivion doesn't it but all hope isn't lost because there are certain things you can do to stimulate your stomach acid naturally the first thing you can do is alleviate stress in your life that's the biggest trigger for most people the second thing is incorporating naturally fermented soured and pickled foods that was actually something that was in a part of our diets before the Industrial Revolution when we began to have mass refrigeration and everything was not preserved in salt or pickled and fermented anymore and we actually lost a great benefit to our digestive health and our overall health because it put a much greater strain on our digestive tracts to digest the food itself without outside help so that's the second thing you can do the third thing which most people find easier actually is to simply supplement with Benteen hydrochloric acid which is a stomach acid supplement that needs to be done under supervision but doing that coupled with taking the nutrients that your body needs to produce stomach acid naturally is one of the best ways you can actually help to alleviate the problem now with stomach acid you'll see there we go there we go um with stomach acid when you're consuming enough then all of your body processes actually work but when you're sorry when you're producing enough some I guess in all of your body process work better and that goes a long way to alleviating flatulence as well so enhancing your digestion overall is one way that you can help to function better and using flatulence as a red-flag multimedia tool to see how you're doing is actually an easy way that you can judge that so when you go home tonight what are you gonna choose to eat a high carbohydrate diet that's full of gas and hot air or a low carbohydrate high protein and fat diet that not only stimulates your stomach acid secretion helping your body to digest protein properly but also directly reducing the carbohydrate consumption and therefore alleviating flatulence now fart free for life TEDx is all about spreading ideas so let's spread ideas and not gas and it's all be fart free for life don't let your next part be the part that stops the nation

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 222,141

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, New Zealand, Health, Cooking, Food, Illness, Nutrition

Id: hyTkKqvj2T8

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2015