Day 13-- Fire in Your Belly?


  This phrase actually means a "strong passion" to accomplish a goal--a burning desire to win or achieve.  This could describe me in this health journey. As I learned that God designed your body to heal itself, I had a burning desire to learn how to cooperate with God and make this happen and then to share that knowledge with my friends and family as simply and non-judgmental as I could by living it out. I never knew one day that I would have a forum to tell MY STORY, and I am loving it. My only frustration is controlling the amount of information I share. I want to give it to you all at one time, and I know that would overwhelm you as it did for me at times.  I hope you have a "fire in your belly to improve your health", but not the "fire in your belly" that I am about to discuss. Fire in your belly in this case, is talking about inflammation in your belly or anywhere else on your body.



Just to build a foundation, the word inflammation is the medical term "itis". Inflammation comes from the word flame.  You would recognize it as arthritis ( a flame in your the joints) or bronchitis (air passages that have a flame in them and they swell) or, gastritis, ( a flame in the stomach), you get the picture. And there are over 200 of these "itis" diseases. Now before we get into serious diseases, lets start at the beginning when inflammation is a blessing.





There are two kinds for inflammation--acute (helpful in most cases) and chronic (harmful). An example of acute inflammation is the fever we get when we have a viral or bacterial infection.  Infections are sensitive to temperature and cannot survive in high temperatures, and because white blood cells (which aid in healing) can survive high temperatures,  they heat up the blood so they can gain an advantage over the infection. This is what causes the fever---so fever is a good thing, not something to really panic over and try to stop immediately. Is is telling you that something is not quite right in your body that it is having to fight. So just relax and let it do it's job. Yes, it causes some discomfort and I'm not really trying to tell you what to do about it, but just keep in mind that any medication you take will take over what your body is designed to do on its own. So our first response is--- lets just see what happens and you will be amazed at what your body can do on its own.






Next is chronic inflammation and this is when it becomes serious and can turns into diseases. Long term inflammation is always harmful. When there is an uncontrolled fever, there is a constant release of inflammatory chemicals and the body can no longer repair itself, and this is when it becomes a disease, because the body loses its ability to maintain a normal state of health. If the sprained ankle which starts out with swelling and it turns red this is acute inflammation. If it continues to have pain and swelling over a long period of time and your immune system is not able to repair it, this inflammation can lead to damage in the ankle joint which might bring about a disease--arthritis.


So how does this relate to "fire in the belly". There are three ways inflammatory triggers get into the body---the skin, the respiratory tract and the GI tract which is your stomach and intestines, and I am concentrating on this---the "belly" because this is where most diseases start. I did not realize this because I did not know that your GI tract housed the majority of your immune system. I knew food went in my mouth and came out the other end, but I did not know what it did in the meantime and I certainly didn't think it caused inflammation in the process  that can lead to diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, etc.
I found all of this out when I researched what caused my GERD to try cure myself.  I found out that white blood cells (God's army), examines every food I put in my body and has since the day I was born and that includes everything---food, drink,  medications, supplements, bacteria, fungi, virus and parasites. The cells allow some of these different particles to pass through and others are rejected. So what happens to these rejected particles once they are turned back by our border patrols that God put in place? They become inflamed---"fire in the belly". The signal that something was going wrong with me, was the heartburn, reflux,  gas, bloating, sometimes constipation, and sometimes diarrhea . This was the story of my life. So now the question comes--how do I fix it? That began my search for the cure and I found that it stemmed from unhealthy eating, which caused inflammation, and the good news was that I had to power to change that. And that's the best part of the story. But I also discovered something that was going on besides just those annoying signals. And this is what gave me a greater incentive to heal myself. I was playing around with chronic inflammation, that leads to something called "leaky gut" and I was there, on my way with my current bad diet.




Leaky gut happens when there is a lot of inflammation in the gut, and the lining of the small intestines get little holes in them. When this happens, undigested food particles, toxic waste products, and bacteria in your gut "leaks" through the intestines and floods the blood stream. Your body is not designed to have these substances in your blood so it starts attacking them. The foreign substances entering the blood can cause an autoimmune response in the body. An auto(self) immune disease is when your immune system begins to attack itself, and this leads to chronic inflammation.  In the beginning you see symptoms such as fatigue, achy muscles, swelling and redness. Before I started this journey, I was not surprised when I had these symptoms. I thought this was a natural progression of getting old---you know, crawling out of bed in the morning instead of "high-stepping" it,?  I thought all old people had a little arthritis. But I found out that was not true in everyone just because they got old. I found out that there were causes for each of these old age symptoms, and if not taken care of, there is a full blown autoimmune response which causes allergic reactions and you experience worse symptoms -----migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, chronic fatigue, food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis and more. I certainly didn't want these.


As a result of leaky gut, your body cannot absorb the essential nutrients which can lead to hormonal imbalances and a weakened immune system. It is at that point we develop diseases----the "itises". I already had a little arthritis in the joints of my hands. This was a little scary because Larry's mother had a severe case and I watched her suffer for many years and watched her fingers become distorted. Now I do not know why some organs are targeted for destruction in some people and other organs in other people. In my mother it was her liver. In my dad it was his heart.  It may be directly related to the type of food that you eat the most. This part is a little deep for me. And I don't really care at this point in my life---I just wanted to heal the leaky gut, because I determined for myself that I had it, and I did not want it to go any further. If you have an illness connected with any organ in your body, I would research everything about how that organ functions, do a complete detox of that organ (more later on that), get on a good diet and fight the fight and don't let ANYONE tell you that you are going to die from that disease. No disease is incurable in God's eyes. Cooperate with Him!!!! I can now say the "fire in my belly" is gone, and it is so nice, and I feel so good. Will inflammation ever come back? As long as there are toxins in this world, I will say a big YES to that question, but I will take you on the journey that will encourage you to not give up and fight it God's way. The causes and the cures will come on my next post.