It’s a safe bet that more people turn down the offer of pie right after Thanksgiving dinner than on any other day of the year. A couple of hours later… maybe… but right after dinner, there simply isn’t enough room.
That’s because your stomach, a ‘J’-shaped bag, can only hold a limited amount of food. While it is true that the stomach stretches, its maximum capacity is still only about four cups. Think of it this way: 1 cup of stuffing, 1 cup of mashed potatoes, and 1 cup of sweet potatoes doesn’t leave much room for turkey, gravy, biscuits, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce… let alone pie!!
The stomach has three jobs: to store the food you’ve eaten, to break the food down into a liquid-like mixture, and to slowly empty the mixture into the small intestine. Typically, it takes two to four hours for an average size meal to move through the stomach. However, Thanksgiving dinner is no average size meal, so it will take longer for your stomach to manage all you will eat.
The stomach, located in the upper left side of your abdomen, is like a mixer that mashes up the food you eat but it’s so much more. The walls of your stomach are actually very strong muscles. In fact, it is three separate layers of muscle. Those muscles move the contents of the stomach around so forcefully that the food is smashed and ground into a smooth pulp.
But it’s not just the muscles that do all the work. The food you eat can be smashed into pulp due in part to
the presence of gastric juice that is produced in the lining of the stomach. Gastric juice consists of digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and other substances that are important for absorbing nutrients.
It’s called juice but it’s a bit of a misnomer because you would never want to drink it. In fact, the “juice” is so acidic it would burn your hand if you touched it. Yet that same acidic juice does NOT harm the lining of the stomach. The inside of the stomach is protected by a special mucus covering that shields it from the very juice it produces. How AMAZING is that!!!
In addition to helping to break down the food, the gastric juice that your stomach produces also helps kill any bacteria that might be in the food you eat. How cool is that!?! Your stomach produces about 3 to 5 liters of gastric juice every day!! AMAZING!!
And all of this happens without any effort of your part!!! Whether you’re having an apple with yogurt, McDonald’s or Thanksgiving Day dinner, your stomach springs into action and goes to work on your best choices as well as your not so good choices. But it’s not magic. The AMAZING work of your stomach is directed by your nerve system. That’s why it’s so important that you keep your nerve system as healthy as possible. Your family chiropractor can help you with that.
Misalignments of spinal bones can distort the communication from your brain to your stomach and keep it from working the way it was meant to. Your chiropractor checks your spine for vertebral subluxation and adjusts you when necessary. This ensures that your nerve/communication system works efficiently and allows your stomach to do its AMAZING work!! So, enjoy the pie (in moderation) and don’t forget to include your AMAZING body in the blessings you count this Thanksgiving!!!
—By Judy Nutz Campanale, DC, ACP
