Abdominal health check

Do you suffer from abdominal pains and complaints? Author of Gut Instinct Pierre Pallardy explains the inner workings of your 'second brain'

Extract taken from Gut Instinct (Rodale)

Like the upper brain, the abdomen is constantly active, day in, day out. Cerebral processes do not shut down at night: we dream. Equally, abdominal processes remain active: the processes of digestion, absorption and elimination are uninterrupted through the night.

Optimal abdominal health is to a large degree governed by what we eat, although other factors enter into the complex equation. As a practitioner treating abdominal problems, I am aware of the abdomen's innate properties as a preventative and restorative organ and convinced of the importance of what we eat and how we eat it.

Eating is both a necessity and a pleasure. Typically, a 60-year-old will have devoted more than five years of his or her life to ingesting food. Some cynics might argue that eating and drinking are merely signposts along the road to death, but I take the opposite view: I believe that what we eat and drink is what helps us to remain healthy. Provided, that is, that we do not eat indiscriminately.

Perhaps the first point to be made is that when we eat is of crucial importance. Eating 'on the run' or as the opportunity presents itself is simply not good enough. Although we have gained substantial insight into the functioning of the upper brain - discovering, for example, that the regenerative powers of sleep are more pronounced in the initial rather than in the later hours, or that dreams recur in cycles - we are still not totally sure how our 'second' brain processes food, despite the fact that this is crucial to the overall well-being of the abdomen.

Respect your body clock

Our lives are regulated from infancy onwards by what is commonly referred to as a body clock, for which the secret mechanism is located in the hypothalamus. Among other things, it controls 'automatic' functions such as body temperature and hunger. Our body clock is central to our general health, not least the digestive processes performed by the abdomen. When it comes to nutrition, we ignore those natural rhythms at our peril.

In days gone by, mealtimes were sacred and hallowed by observance - particularly in rural areas, where falling ill was simply not an option. I recall from my own childhood how fieldworkers would simply not tolerate any departure from the time-honoured rituals of a punctual breakfast and midday meal. Staying healthy was a precondition of running a farm and tending to crops and livestock. Mealtimes were set and respected back then, when labour laws were fluid and statutory maximum working hours simply unheard of.

Times have changed. Today, we tend to eat what we like, as and when we choose, and whenever time permits. To my mind, the consequences of this have proved disasterous. Once our body clock has been tampered with and abused, the system fights back. The digestive cycle is disrupted at the level of the solar plexus, the gall bladder, the pancreas and the intestine, triggering a destabilisation of the tenuous relationship between the two brains. Once that balance is upset, internal rhythms are thrown into disarray. Systems malfunction and serious illness may result, including the onset of allergies, depleted energy levels and higher incidence of heart problems.