Nutrition and Digestion
Introduction
Marion Debus
Last update: 06.03.2019
Food substance is deprived of its original form and vitality during the digestive process. This happens more and more as is broken down into its smallest components, until it is rebuilt beyond the intestinal wall into individualized endogenous substance and integrated into the life processes of the organism:
The different tastes of foods are consciously perceived in the oral cavity, which leads directly to increased salivary secretion. The first digestive steps initiated in this way—e.g., the splitting of carbohydrates by amylase—are still closely linked to the conscious experience of taste and smell.
Already in the stomach, further digestion happens largely unconsciously in human beings. But here also every step of digestion is connected with an inner process of perception. All digestive secretions are finely tuned to the quantity and composition of the meal that has been taken in.
The spiritual and soul aspects of the human being, which are fully and consciously directed to the outside world through the sensory organs concentrated in the head area, are oriented completely inwardly in the area of the digestive organs, where they orchestrate the manifold processes of perception, secretion and absorption associated with food processing. The better coordinated the activity of the digestive organs is, that is, the more active the “I”-organization and sentient organization (soul body) are in this unconscious sphere, the easier it is to absorb and transform food. The numerous cytokines in the digestive system, such as cholecystokinin and ghrelin, are an expression of this coordinated activity.