Chris D. Meletis, N.D., and Nieske Zabriskie, N.D
Digestive disorders are increasingly common and affect millions of Americans. There were 41.3 million office visits to physicians and 15.1 visits to the emergency rooms for digestivesystem symptoms in 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) most recent data. 1 Conditions include irritable bowel syndrome (IBS); inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease; celiac disease; gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD); gastrointestinal (GI) cancers; and other conditions such as diarrhea, constipation, indigestion, nausea, and flatulence.
Approximately 60–70 million people are affected by overt diagnosable digestive diseases, 2 yet tens of millions of other patients suffer from subclinical GI health conditions that alter their ability to absorb nutrients from their diets and supplements. This has a dramatic impact on quality of life with 1.9 million people disabled due to GI disease. 3 Annually, an astounding 234,000 people die from GI diseases including GI cancer. 4
The GI tract is the absolute barrier between the burdensome outside world that enters the human body as foods and contaminants (herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals, and an array of other health saboteurs) and the well-ordered 75 trillion cells that work in harmony to sustain human existence. Therefore, regardless of whether an individual has any overt signs of GI dysfunction, fortifying the GI tract enhances the ability for nutrients from food and supplements to be most optimally absorbed
