The Stomach is the Boss
Yes, I know. All of your “bits” are important.
But when it comes to digestion, I think the stomach deserves some special attention.
There are two big reasons for this.
First, digestion is a sequential system. What happens at one stage affects what can happen at the next. The stomach sits right near the beginning of that process, which means what happens there can have consequences all the way downstream.
Second, the stomach is incredibly sensitive to what's happening inside it. Through the vagus nerve and other sensory pathways, it's in constant communication with the brain about what's happening inside of us—stretch, fullness, nutrients, discomfort, nausea and whether we're ready for more.
We tend to think of the vagus nerve as the brain telling the digestive system what to do. But a great deal of that information is actually travelling the other way.
The brain is listening to the stomach.
Put those two things together—its position near the beginning of a sequential system and its enormous capacity for sensory feedback—and the stomach has a lot of influence over what happens next.
That's what I mean when I say:
The stomach is the boss.
The Stomach Rules Descending
I first learned this axiom in TCM class at naturopathic college.
Well, I got it right on the test.
But it was only after working on hundreds—probably thousands—of stomachs with trained and sensitive hands that I began to appreciate the deeper wisdom of this simple phrase:
The Stomach Rules Descending.
The stomach isn't the only organ responsible for motility, but it has one major advantage: it gets the meal first.
As food arrives, the stomach senses stretch and the physical and chemical characteristics of its contents. Those signals help determine how the stomach accommodates the meal, how quickly it empties, and can influence motility much farther downstream.
The gastrocolic reflex is the obvious example. If breakfast—or your morning coffee—makes you poop ten minutes later, it didn't travel through you that quickly. Something happening upstream triggered movement downstream.
This is why, when I'm trying to improve motility, I don't necessarily start by asking how to make the intestine or colon contract harder. I pay a lot of attention to what's happening at the stomach.
Optimizing gastric function and signalling may be one of our most underappreciated opportunities to influence motility throughout the digestive tract.
Maybe the Stomach really does rule descending.