Every human being can fall sick usually due to various illnesses. But one of the tangent measures to overcome illnesses is to ensure a healthy gastro-intestinal tract through proper feeding.

It is worth understanding that proper overall health of every living animal is strongly correlated with a healthy digestive system and agree that most of chronic illnesses begin with breakdown in the digestive system.

Ideally, if you want to improve in any area of your health, it is better to think first what you bring in your body or what you feed on. There could be other sources of infection as seen in most of systemic infections among others but the gastro-intestinal tract is a major source of our healthy intoxication.

The problems of our health have no independent compartments and every illness of the body part has correlation with overall health. This is one of the reasons medics tend to use laboratories as major diagnostic tools.

There are so many channels of communication in our body system. For example every cell communicates with every other cell on a regular basis. This may not be directly but occurs via fluids, hormones, and neurotransmitters that travel through the vast network of blood vessels and nerves that course through every part of you.

The digestive tract can act as our first physical line of defense against all chronic, degenerative illnesses.

You have to imagine that from the mouth to down to the large colon and to the terminal part of as the anus. There is a lining of the digestive tract that is continuous as compared to the skin that covers the whole body from any physical aggression.

This explains why the digestive tract lining and the skin act as first physical line of defence because they act as barriers to protect our health and delicate parts like the blood and inner tissues against undesirable substances.

Feeding is very important right from the day you are born. For example, a baby who is breastfed by a relatively healthy mother, you expect the gut of the baby to have plenty of health-enhancing organisms. These micro-organisms are often friendly bacteria that line the walls of the small and large intestines to serve several functions. Micro-ogranisms in the body serve various roles such as enhancement of natural immunity via production of natural antibiotics in the body.

They produce organic acids that help regulate pH levels throughout the digestive system and inhibition of growth of potentially harmful microorganisms like gram-negative bacteria, fungi, and even parasites.

The micro-organisms are very important in our body protection because they prevent entrance of potentially harmful microorganisms that make their way into the intestines on a daily basis.

People who lack sufficient colonies or friendly bacteria that enhance health protective purposes become vulnerable to many illnesses such as the leaky gut syndrome.

This means if more unfriendly or harmful bacteria, fungi, and even parasites dig into your digestive tract lining, your gut can actually begin to leak the incompletely digested protein and man-made toxins that make their way into the body system.

As these foreign substances enter your bloodstream through your damaged gut lining, your immune system will begin to manufacture antibodies to combat them, which can lead to chronic inflammation anywhere in the body via an antigen-antibody complexes and easily get deposited in the tissues as they circulate through the blood.

The end result of the foreign invasion is a plethora of common health conditions that can manifest in various parts of the body such as ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, endometriosis, cystitis, and even psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia.

The leaky gut syndrome is not readily recognised by our daily conventional medicine because there are no patented prescription drugs or surgical procedures that can be prescribed for them.

Some of the most common manifestations of leaky gut syndrome or digestive tract dysfunction include excessive and foul-smelling gas production. Other manifestations include ill-defined discomfort in the abdomen following meals or even during meals.

Chronic constipation or sometimes diarrhoea is a common manifestation. Some of the natural measures to protect normal gut flora include avoiding the overuse of prescription antibiotics, avoiding overconsumption of alcohol, avoiding over-feeding and adopting intake of foods that are rich in sugar and/or highly refined carbohydrates, that is to say, white flour products.

To ensure a healthy gut, you are also advised to get adequate rest. The more you rest, the more energy your body can devote to repairing damaged areas, including your digestive tract.

It’s during deep, restful sleep that your body produces large quantities of growth hormone, testosterone, and erythropoietin. All of these hormones are needed in optimal supply to keep the digestive tract lining healthy.

Dr Joseph Kamugisha is an oncologist at Rwanda Military Hospital, Kanombe