A few months back I met a 60-year old male client who complained of persistent abdominal bloats, a foul smell and a problem with an inner part of the low-gastro-intestinal tract that involves the small intestines, the colon and rectum.

The story behind all these problems is that sometimes you might not have sufficient colonies of friendly, health-enhancing organisms in the gastro-intestinal system.

If you do not have friendly bacteria or non-toxic bacteria in your intestines, the space will be occupied by toxic bacteria that may take root and form colonies that cannot be easily washed away.

The reality of life is that potentially harmful microorganisms can make their way into your intestines on a daily basis. But if you have many non-toxic bacteria in your intestines, they tend to compete with toxic substances for space and nutrients in the colon.

If you do not have enough friendly or non-toxic bacteria, they tend to flourish to a degree where they can colonize your intestinal walls.

When more unfriendly bacteria, invasive fungi, and even parasites dig into the intestinal tract, the intestinal lining can begin to leak some undigested proteins and other man-made toxins that can be ingested on a daily basis.

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

You will know that your gut carries unfriendly bacteria or leaky gut syndrome occurs inside your gastro-intestinal lining when you regularly experience symptoms such as; excessive, foul-smelling gas production. Some people develop discomfort after meals or suffer chronic constipation and diarrhea

Conditions that can make your gastro-intestinal system to weaken and favour the leaky gut syndrome include; overuse of prescription antibiotics, regular intake of foods that are rich in sugar and regular use of highly refined carbohydrates such as white flour products. Other factors to consider include over-feeding and overconsumption of alcohol.

In such unfavorable conditions, a person can suffer from other adverse problems. The fierce battle between foreign toxins and the anti-bodies can lead to chronic inflammations anywhere in the body via antigen-antibody complexes that get deposited in various tissues as they circulate through the blood system.

This has been the root cause of diseases like psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia. Others include eczema, psoriasis, alopecia (hair loss), ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, endometriosis, and cystitis.

Perhaps the single most important eating habit that you can adopt to facilitate healing of your digestive tract is to chew your foods thoroughly.

One of the ways to avoid leaky gut problems is to chew your meals well. When you chew well, you allow your digestive tract to efficiently break down small particles of food into micronutrients that can pass through the wall of your small intestine to the blood.

Your teeth are designed to mechanically break down food, while the rest of your digestive tract and organs are designed to chemically break down the food. If you have dental or jaw problems that make it difficult to chew well, you can process foods before you feed on them.

Chewing your foods and liquids well allows your saliva and digestive enzymes to mix in with your foods and liquids, which begins the process of digestion right in your mouth.

Chewing well encourages physical and emotional rest while eating. And being emotionally balanced and at rest while you eat allows your body to send a rich supply of blood to your digestive organs during a meal, which helps optimize every step of digestion.

If possible, strive to combine the habit of chewing well with a steady focus on being grateful for your meal. Just as the connection between your mind and body can cause you to sweat when you are nervous, being grateful while you chew can help your digestive organs break down your food and assimilate nutrients into your blood.

The goal is to prevent incompletely digested foods from sitting in your digestive tract longer than they should, as this promotes breeding of potentially pathogenic microorganisms.