HATHA YOGA/PART 5
CHAPTER 5.
THE LABORATORY OF THE BODY
THIS LITTLE book is not intended for a text-book upon
physiology, but inasmuch as the majority of people seem to have little or no
idea of the nature, functions and uses of the various bodily organs, we think
it as well to say a few words regarding the very important organs of the body
which have to do with the digestion and assimilation of the food which
nourishes the body—which perform the laboratory work of the system.
The first bit of the human machinery of digestion to be
considered by us are the teeth. Nature has provided us with teeth to bite our
food and grind it into fine bits, thus rendering it of a convenient size and
consistency to be easily acted upon by the saliva and the digestive juices of
the stomach, after which it is reduced to a liquid form that its nourishing
qualities may be easily assimilated and absorbed by the body. This seems to be
merely a repetition of an oft-told tale, but how many of our readers really act
as if they knew for what purpose their teeth had been given them? They bolt
their food just as if teeth were merely for show, and generally act as if
Nature had provided them with a gizzard, by the aid of which they could like
the fowl grind up and break into small bits the food that they had bolted.
Remember friends that your teeth were given you for a purpose, and also
consider the fact that if Nature had intended you to bolt your food she would
have provided you with a gizzard instead of with teeth. We will have much to
say about the proper use of the teeth, as we go along, as it has a very close
connection with a vital principle of Hatha Yoga, as you will see after a while.
The next organs to be
considered are the Salivary Glands. These glands are six in number, of which
four are located under the tongue and jaw, and two in the cheeks in the front
of the ears, one on each side. Their best known function is to manufacture,
generate or secrete saliva, which, when needed, flows out through numerous
ducts in different parts of the mouth, and mixes with the food which is being
chewed or masticated. The food being chewed into small particles, the saliva is
able to more thoroughly reach all portions of it with a correspondingly
increased effect. The saliva moistens the food, thus allowing
it to be more easily swallowed, this function, however, being a mere incident
to its more important ones. Its best known function (and the one which Western
science teaches is its most important one) is its chemical offices, which
convert the starchy food matter into sugar, thus performing the first step in
the process of digestion.
Here is another oft-told tale. You all know about the
saliva, but how many of you eat in a manner which allows Nature to put the
saliva to work as she had designed? You bolt your food after a few perfunctory
chews and defeat Nature's plans, toward which she has gone to so much trouble,
and to perform which she has built such beautiful and delicate machinery. But
Nature manages to "get back" at you for your contempt and disregard
of her plans—Nature has a good memory and always makes you pay your debts.
We must not forget to mention the tongue—that
faithful friend who is so often made to perform the ignoble task of assisting
in the utterance of angry words, retailing of gossip, lying, nagging, swearing,
and last but not least, complaining.
The tongue has a most important work to
perform in the process of nourishing the body with food. Besides a number of
mechanical movements which it performs in eating, in which it helps to move the
food along and its similar service in the act of swallowing, it is the organ of
taste and passes critical judgment upon the food which asks admittance to the
stomach.
You have neglected the normal uses of the
teeth, the salivary glands and the tongue, and they have consequently failed to
give you the best service. If you but trust them and return to sane and normal
methods of eating you will find them gladly and cheerfully responding to your
trust and will once more give you their full share of service. They are good
friends and servants, but need a little confidence, trust and responsibility to
bring out their best points.
After the food has been chewed or masticated
and then saturated with saliva it passes down the throat into the stomach. The
lower part of the throat, which is called the gullet, performs a peculiar
muscular contraction, which pushes downward the particles of food, which act
forms a part of the process of
"swallowing." The process of converting the starchy portion of the
food into sugar, or glucose, which is begun by the saliva in the mouth, is
continued as the food passes into and down the gullet, but nearly, or entirely
ceases, when the food once reaches the stomach, which fact must be considered
when one studies the subject of the advantage of a deliberate habit of eating,
as, if the food is hastily chewed and swallowed, it reaches the stomach only
partially affected by the saliva and in an imperfect condition for Nature's
subsequent work.
The stomach itself is a pear-shaped bag with a capacity
of about one quart or more in some cases. The food enters the stomach from the
gullet on the upper left-hand side, just below the heart. The food afterwards
leaves the stomach on the lower right-hand and enters the small intestine by
means of a peculiar sort of valve, which is so wonderfully constructed that it
allows the matter from the stomach to pass easily through it, but refuses to
allow anything to work back from the intestine into the stomach. This valve is
known as the "Pyloric Valve” or the "Pyloric Orifice,” the word
"Pyloric” being derived from the Greek word which means
"gatekeeper”—and indeed this little valve acts as a most intelligent
gatekeeper, always on the watch, never asleep.
The stomach is a great chemical laboratory in which the
food undergoes chemical changes which allow it to be taken up by the system and
changed into a nourishing material which is converted into rich, red blood
which courses all over the body, building up, repairing, strengthening and
adding to all the parts and organs.
The "inside” of the stomach is covered with a lining
of delicate mucous membrane, which is filled with minute glands, all of which
open into the stomach and around which is a very fine network of minute
blood-vessels with remarkably thin walls, from which is manufactured, or secreted,
that wonderful fluid, the gastric juice. The gastric juice is a powerful liquid
acting as a solvent upon what is called the nitrogenous portions of the food.
It also acts upon the sugar or glucose which has been manufactured from the
starchy food by the saliva, as above described. It is a bitter sort of liquid,
containing a chemical product called pepsin, which is its active agent and
which plays a most important part in the digestion of the food.
In a normal, healthy person the stomach manufactures or
secretes about one gallon of gastric juice in twenty-four hours, and uses same
in the process of digestion of the food. When the food reaches the stomach the
little glands, before mentioned, pour out a sufficient supply of the gastric
juice, which mixes up with the mass of food in the stomach. Then the stomach
sets up sort of a churning motion, which moves the pulpy food round and round,
from end to end, from side to side, twisting and turning it, churning and
kneading it, until the gastric juice penetrates every part of the mass and is
well mixed up into it. The Instinctive Mind does some wonderful work in the
stomach movements and works like a well oiled machine.
And if the stomach has been treated to properly prepared,
well chewed food, properly insalivated, the machine is able to turn out
a fine job. But if, as so often happens, the food is of a quality not fit for
the human stomach— or if it has been but half chewed, or bolted—or if the
stomach has been "stuffed" by a gluttonous owner—there is going to be
trouble. In such a case, instead of the normal process of digestion being
performed, the stomach is unable to do its work and fermentation results, and the stomach
becomes the holder of a fermenting, putrefying, rotting mass—an "yeast
pot" it has been called under such circumstances. If people could but form
an idea of what a cesspool they maintain in their stomachs they would cease to
shrug their shoulders and look bored whenever the subject of rational and sane
habits of eating are mentioned.
This putrefying ferment,
arising from abnormal habits of eating, often becomes chronic and results in a
condition which manifests itself in the symptoms of what is called "dyspepsia,"
or similar troubles. It remains in the stomach for a long time after the meal,
and then when the next meal reaches the stomach the fermentation continues
until the stomach actually becomes a perpetually active "yeast pot."
This condition, of course, results in an impairment of the normal functioning
of the stomach, the surface of which becomes slimy, soft, thin and weak. The
glands become clogged and the whole digestive apparatus of the stomach becomes
impaired and broken down. In such event the half digested food passes out into
the small intestine, tainted with the acids arising from fermentation, and the
result is that the whole system becomes gradually poisoned and
imperfectly nourished.
The food-mass, saturated with the gastric
juice which has been poured upon it and kneaded and churned into it, leaves the
stomach by the Pyloric orifice on the lower right-hand side of the stomach and
enters the small intestine.
The small intestine is a tube-like canal ingeniously
coiled upon itself so as to occupy but a comparatively small space, but which
is really from twenty to thirty feet in length. Its inner walls are lined with
a velvety substance, and through the greater part of its length this velvety
lining is arranged in transverse shelf-like folds, which maintain a sort of
"winking" motion, swaying backward and forward in the intestinal
fluids, retarding the passage of the food and providing an increased surface
for secretion and absorption. The velvety condition of this mucous lining is
caused by numerous minute elevations, something like the surface of a piece of
plush, which are known as the intestinal "villi," the office of which
will be explained a little further on.
As soon as the food-mass enters the small intestine it is
met with a peculiar fluid called the bile, which saturates it and is thoroughly
mixed up with it. The bile is a secretion of the liver and is stored up ready
for use in a strong bag, known as the gall bladder. About two quarts of bile
per day is used in saturating the food as it passes into the small intestine.
Its purpose is to assist the pancreatic juice in preparing the fatty parts of
the food for absorption and also to aid in the prevention of decomposition and
putrefaction of the food as it passes through the small intestine and the
neutralization of the gastric juice which has already performed its work. The
pancreatic juice is secreted by the pancreas, an elongated organ situated just
behind the stomach, and its purpose is to act upon the fatty portions of the
food and to render them possible of absorption from the intestines along with
the other parts of the food nourishment. About one and one-half pints is used
daily in this work.
The hundreds of
thousands of plush-like "hairs" upon the velvety lining of the small
intestine (above alluded to), and which are known as "villi,"
maintain a constant waving motion, passing through and in the soft, semi-liquid food
which is passing through the small intestine. They are constantly in motion,
licking up and absorbing the nourishment that is contained in the food-mass and
transmitting it to the system.
The several steps whereby the food is converted into
blood and is carried to all parts of the system are as follows: Mastication,
insalivation, deglutition, stomach and intestinal digestion, absorption,
circulation and assimilation. Let us run over them again hastily that we may
not forget them.
Mastication is performed by the teeth—it is the chewing
process—the lips, tongue and cheeks assisting in the work. It breaks up the
food into small particles and enables the saliva to reach it more thoroughly.
Insalivation is the process of saturating the masticated
food with the saliva which pours into it from the salivary glands. The saliva
acts upon the cooked starch in the food, changing it into dextrine and
then into glucose, thus rendering it soluble. This chemical change is rendered
possible by the action of the pytaline in the saliva acting as a ferment
and changing the chemical constitution of those substances for which it has an
affinity.
Digestion is performed in the stomach and small
intestines and consists in the conversion of the food-mass into products
capable of being absorbed and assimilated. Digestion begins when the food
reaches the stomach. The gastric juice then pours out copiously, and, becoming
mixed up with and churned into the food mass, it dissolves the connective
tissue of meat, releases fat from its envelopes by breaking them up and
transforms some of the albuminous material, such as lean meat, the
gluten of wheat and white of eggs, into albuminose, in which form they
are capable of being absorbed and assimilated. The transformation occasioned by
stomach digestion is accomplished by the chemical action of an organic
ingredient of the gastric juice, called pepsin, in connection with the acid
ingredients of the gastric juice.
While the process of
digestion is being performed by the stomach the fluid portion of the food-mass,
both that which has entered the stomach as fluids which have been drunken, as
well as the fluids liberated from the solid food in the process of digestion,
is rapidly taken up by the absorbents of the stomach and is carried to the
blood, while the more solid portions of the food-mass are churned up
by the muscular action of the stomach, as we have stated. In about a half-hour
the solid portions of the food-mass begin slowly to leave the stomach in the
form of a grayish, pasty substance, called chyme, which is a mixture of some of
the sugar and salts of the food, of transformed starch or glucose, of softened
starch, of broken fat and connective tissue, and of albuminose.
The Chyme, leaving the stomach, enters the small
intestine, as we have described and comes in contact with the pancreatic and
intestinal juices and with the bile, and intestinal digestion ensues. These
fluids dissolve most of the food that has not already been softened. Intestinal
digestion resolves the chyme into three substances, known as (1) Peptone, from
the digestion of albuminous particles; (2) Chyle, from the emulsion of the
fats; (3) Glucose, from the transformation of the starchy elements of the food.
These substances are, to a large extent, carried into the blood and become a
part of it, while the undigested food passes out of the small intestine through
a trap-door-like valve into the large bowel called the colon, of which we shall
speak bye-and-bye.
Absorption, by which name is known the
process by which the above-named products of the food, resulting from the
digestive process, are taken up by the veins and lacteals, is effected by
endosmosis. The water and the fluids liberated from the food-mass by the
stomach digestion are rapidly absorbed and carried away by the blood in the
portal vein to the liver. The peptone and glucose from the small intestines
also reaches the portal vein to the liver through the blood vessels of the
intestinal villi, which we have described. This blood reaches the heart after
passing through the liver, where it undergoes a process which we will speak of
when we reach the subject of the liver. The chyle, which is the remaining
product of the food-mass in the intestines after the peptone and glucose have
been taken up and carried to the liver, is taken up and passes through the
lacteals into the thoracic duct, and is gradually conveyed to the blood, as
will be further described in our chapter on the Circulation. In our chapter on
the circulation we will explain how the blood carries the nutriment derived
from the digested food to all parts of the body, giving to each tissue, cell,
organ and part the material by which it builds
up and repairs itself, thus enabling the body to grow and develop.
The liver secretes the bile, which is carried to the
small intestine, as we have stated. It also stores up a substance called
glycogen, which is formed in the liver from the digested materials brought to
it by the portal vein (as above explained). Glycogen is stored up in the liver,
and is afterwards gradually transformed, in the intervals of digestion, into
glucose or a substance similar to grape sugar. The pancreas secretes the
pancreatic juices, which it pours into the small intestine, to aid in
intestinal digestion, where it acts chiefly upon the fatty portions of the
food. The kidneys are located in the loins, behind the intestines. They are two
in number and are shaped like beans. They purify the blood by removing from it
a poisonous substance called urea and other waste products. The fluid secreted
by the kidneys is carried by two tubes, called ureters, to the bladder. The
bladder is located in the pelvis and serves as a reservoir for the urine, which
consists of waste fluids carrying with it refuse matter of the system.
Before leaving this part of the subject we wish to call
the attention of our readers to the fact that when the food enters the stomach
and small intestines improperly masticated and insalivated—when the
teeth and salivary glands have not been given a chance to do their work
properly— digestion is interfered with and impeded and the digestive organs are
overworked and are rendered unable to accomplish what is asked of them.
It is like asking one set of workmen to do their own work
in addition to the work which should have been previously performed by another
set of men—it is asking the railroad engineer to perform the duties of firemen
as well as his own—to keep the fire going on and run the locomotive on a
dangerous bit of road at the same time.
The absorbents of the stomach and intestines
must absorb something—that is
their business—and if you do not give them the proper materials they will
absorb the fermenting and putrefying mass in the stomach and pass it along to
the blood.
The blood carries this poor material to all
parts of the body, including the brain, and it is no wonder that people
complain of biliousness, headache, etc., when they are being self-poisoned in
this way.
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