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Nutrition & Muscular Health: The Missing Link in Absorption, Part I
September 10, 2020   |   By Kate Patterson

After 5 months of a quarantine-style, down-hill slide into the delicious land of pastries, pizza and cake, I started to feel the effects. After weeks of feeling like garbage, I finally decided it was time to get myself back in line and re-instate some healthy practices. Sound familiar? Introduced to local Chicago juicery Hi-Vibe, I enthusiastically jumped into my reset with a 6 day juice cleanse. Coupled with a time restricted eating window (aka intermittent fasting), I was committed to clean up my gut to feel better, adjust my moods, my abdominal and body aches. Not only was not having to worry about meal preparations for almost a week a dream come true, but I was surprised how easy it was for my first time. 

Throughout the juice cleanse, I noticed a great deal of improvements. On day 2, I completely forgot to drink coffee, a huge event for a coffee addict like myself. As I knocked off the days, I felt my energy levels progressively getting higher while feeling generally more at ease and more rested after a night of sleep. On day 5 after a hard workout with the coaches at Strength Society, I was not sore AT ALL. This was a huge shock for me since I always expected to be sore after a workout if I didn’t get my recovery sessions at Delos Therapy.

When I reverted back to solid foods, I felt great and noticed that while some of my food triggers were still present, they weren’t as extreme as before the cleanse. Pre-cleanse, I would feel terribly bloated and hungover after consuming dairy (especially ice cream) and sugar filled desserts. Certain types and amounts of carbs would make my brain feel foggy. This sparked questions about what the juice cleanse helped me to accomplish. What could I do to make the benefits I felt last as possible? What was my lack of post workout soreness about? Coupling what we’re learning from the field of myofascial science with the expertise of a fellow food fan and Director of Clinical Services at Lifestart, I got the chance to discuss some of my questions with Grace Iberle in this two-part series.

How does our body draw and distribute nutrients from our food, what is the basic process? 

Grace: Let’s go into a quick overview of the digestive system and how our body absorbs these different nutrients. Our food is broken down through both mechanical and chemical processes. Nutrients are then absorbed from the digestive tract through diffusion or active transport to be used in the body. To get started, we chew our food and begin to mechanically break down the nutrients through chewing. Our saliva also has an enzyme called salivary amylase which starts the chemical breakdown of carbohydrates into smaller molecules, simple sugars like mono- and disaccharides. When we swallow food, it goes down our esophagus and our body automatically initiates peristalsis. 

Next is our stomach, where hydrochloric acid is released and other digestive juices continue the chemical breakdown of our food. This mixture is called chyme and next moves into our small intestine. We have 3 parts of the small intestine: the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum. In the small intestine is where enzymes from the pancreas and liver are delivered, and continue to break the food mixture down into smaller more absorbable items. We have small finger-like projections called microvilli lining the inside of our small intestine. It gives our small intestine a much larger surface, the size of a football field, to better absorb nutrients. The majority of nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine through diffusion or active transport. This is where water is essential for the diffusion process. Through diffusion water and water-soluble substances move across barriers, like the villi in the small intestines. Glucose, amino acids, water soluble vitamins, and minerals travel this way. From here, these nutrients enter the bloodstream and go to the liver in order to be processed or delivered to other parts of the body where they are needed to create energy and protein for other functions. Fats and fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) require a few extra steps but they travel through lymphatic vessels to the liver. They are stored and released as needed. The remaining mixture moves along to the large intestine. Which also has three parts, the ascending colon, the transverse colon, and the descending colon. The large intestine is responsible for reabsorption of water, sodium, potassium, and vitamin K. The waste solidifies into a stool and goes through the rectum to leave the body. 

Our foods have a combination of macro and micronutrients in them and our bodies have specific methods and pathways for breaking down our macronutrients and micronutrients into molecules our body can absorb and use for energy. Macronutrients are the nutrients that give us calories, which includes carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Micronutrients do not give us calories, but have an exponential amount of other purposes in the body. Our micronutrients include vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals. For example, an apple is mostly carbohydrates which is a macronutrient, but also contains micronutrients such as vitamin C and potassium.  

Going back specifically to the nutrient absorption and our muscles, our muscles can store energy from glucose in the form of glycogen. Muscles do not export this energy to other organs and are used solely for muscle activity. When energy stores are diminished, muscle contractions weaken. Our muscles then use alternate fuel sources such as fatty acids and protein to produce cellular energy. 

How does absorption tie into muscle tightness? 

Kate: One idea that is not often addressed is the next step. What happens after the molecules and nutrients get dropped off into our muscles, organs and lymph? Ideally every element is properly distributed and can be freely transported or transformed by the working cells, but recent research considers that fascia, or the ECM, is another structure to consider when in the conversation of nutrient absorption.

Fascia surrounds all of our internal organs and muscles, it’s one of the first structures that gives shape and nutrients to developing anatomy within an embryo, and over the course of our lifetime, it continuously remodels itself to create an environment that supports our cellular metabolisms and repair from the natural process of living. You can think of it as the road map and enabler for cells that utilize the nutrients we give them through our diet. It shapes the environment for your muscles to grow & develop, it funnels water through your anatomy to help with hydration, and it is a big player in repairing processes and adaptations. 

In a healthy state, fascia is pliable and soft, it can extend in multiple directions and contract fully and uniformly. In a dysfunctional state, fascia will feel hard, which you can test for yourself at home by pressing into an achy or sore area on your body. If you feel some hardness and sensitivity there, it may be an indication that the fascia is not in its healthiest state and inhibiting nutrient flow through that area. There are a few ways that fascia can become stuck/ dysfunctional:

  1. Normal wear & tear: Wear and tear from our lifetime accumulation of movements, postures, training, and form, coupled with chronic low-grade inflammation that we can enable from our diet, creates fibrosis or a scarring of the fascial tissue over time. This fibrosis can create stiff pockets of fascia and can hold metabolic waste like lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts stagnant around nerve endings. This can generate soreness and prolonged aches, also known as delayed onset muscle soreness. On the flip side, these fibrotic sections of tissue can act like a wall around the muscles and organs they contain, blocking cells like immune cells and nutrients from access into the anatomy. Fascial researchers have found that immune cells utilize the extracellular matrix (fascia) to navigate to the site of trouble, and that the level of fascial stiffness plays a role in developing pathologies like cancer and liver cirrhosis.
  2. Dehydration: We often have clients who say that they drink tons of water but still feel stiff. Why is that? While these folks may be drinking enough water, they can still be dehydrated if the water can’t get where it needs to go. Dehydration draws the gluey surfaces of collagen layers together, similar to layers of papier-mâché. Over time, sheets of collagen can stick together, which blocks out water and nutrient flow through that avenue. Shearing forces increase a proteoglycan called hyaluronic acid at the points of friction between these stuck layers. A hyaluron molecule acts like a magnetic balloon, creating space between the collagen layers and drawing water in. You may recognize hyaluronic acid from popular new skin care products, but it’s not just beneficial for the skin, it’s also works to hydrate your body (no, your new skincare cream won’t hydrate your muscles, but good try)! Because fascia surrounds all of your muscles and organs, hyaluronic acid is essential for optimizing muscular health. The result of increasing hyaluronan is deep tissue rehydration and expanded myofascial avenues that optimize nutrient flow and distribution.
  3. Advanced Glycation End Products: Also known as AGES, these by-products of refined sugars create problematic non-enzymatic crosslinking to lipids and collagen proteins. AGEs are extremely difficult for our bodies to eliminate on their own, have been found to alter enzymatic signaling, and to drive processes of inflammation that contribute to the development of conditions like diabetes. The long life of collagen proteins combined with high glucose in the bloodstream promotes AGE formation, acting like cement to our fascia, and inhibiting myofascial function and the systems it integrates with.

As one can probably imagine, any one or combination of these events can create inefficiencies for your body in its utilization of water and nutrients.  While there are many components to nutrition and health, it’s not a far reach to anticipate that some of the difficulty in nutrient absorption or hydration may be within the fascial tissue itself. 

In Part II of this series, we discuss practical ways to optimize nutrient absorption.

Kate Patterson
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