Pancreas: Digesting Proteins and Sugars

Introducing the Pancreas

Your pancreas is a digestive organ of major importance. Not only is it a key participant in the digestive process, it also has important duties involving hormonal regulation, such as blood sugar regulation, prevention of chemical sensitivity, and the regulation of hormonal energy balance.

From the Digestive Awareness point of view, poor digestive function and eating incorrectly can create feedback problems for the hormonal side of the pancreas, which is also essential for life, so the importance of the pancreas is crucial on two fronts.

The pancreas is the frontline organ taking the highest level of daily abuse from our modern dietary changes. The increase of disease directly attributable to nutritional abuse of the pancreas is staggering. For example, the prevalence of diabetes has doubled in the last 20 years.

Anatomy of the Pancreas

The pancreas is a sponge-like gland that is shaped roughly like a banana. It is located next to and behind the stomach. It has double functions: hormonal and digestive.

The pancreas has many sponge-like cells, which secrete powerful digestive enzymes. These secretions gather into a central tube and are then directed into the small intestine by what I call “a squirt” from the pancreas.

The pancreas duct is a little tube that merges with the bile duct tube and the combined juices are passed directly into the beginning section of the small intestine.

The pancreatic juice contains a wide range of enzymes to break down proteins, sugars, and fats in food. You could call your pancreas the primary digestive organ. You could survive without your stomach, but without your pancreas, you wouldn’t live very long at all.

Symptoms Associated with the Pancreas

How do you know when you have a malfunctioning pancreas? You may not experience any stress on your digestive system during your meal, or even 15 to 20 minutes after eating but typically within an hour to two, you notice one or more of the following:

• A “still full” stomach
• Sharp pains under the left side rib cage
• Sharp increase in left side neck pain, where the neck and shoulder meet, especially about 30 minutes after a coffee, candy, doughnut, etc. (Not a meal per se)
• Nagging dull ache under the left shoulder blade, or at the tip of the shoulder blade
• Digestive upset or pain approximately 1-2 hours after eating
• Localized pain or sensitivity under the left rib cage
• Tiredness or severe fatigue that began about the same time these other digestive symptoms started
• Waking up with a severe left side neck or mid-back pain, even though you felt fine going to sleep
• A slight but nagging pain that begins in your left side neck or mid-back (without a logical or causative injury) and continues to become excruciating over the next few days

The hard part here is actually noticing the above symptoms. For most of my patients, these symptoms become so common that they just become "part of the mix."

They have to eat a pound of candy before they will notice them, since they eat candy all the time anyway. This means their symptoms are always there at a low level.

How the Pancreas Creates Visceral-Somatic  Symptoms

As a healthy person living in a stressful world you soon learn that you can get a little boost from a caffeine or sugar jolt. When that first cup of coffee no longer does the job, maybe you need a second, or a third to get back that "good" feeling.

Alternately, you may have chosen chocolate, a cigarette, chewing gum, cake or a doughnut to get your little boost. Whichever pancreatic stimulant you choose, you soon find yourself reaching more and more for that extra boost during times of stress. Eventually these mild stimulants become a daily necessity, and you begin upping the dose with more coffee, chocolate, or sugar stimulants just to feel “normal.”

As you continue to over-stimulate the pancreas, your pancreas eventually gives up. It becomes depleted, like a car moving at full speed that has finally run out of gas. Now whatever stimulation you try on your depleted pancreas only increases your body’s visceral somatic reflex (pain caused in a muscle or joint by a distressed organ). Soon your energy levels drop (if they haven’t already), and you may be tempted to try even stronger stimulants, perpetuating the cycle and making matters worse for your body.

Brain Management for Your Pancreas

If you believe that you have problems related to a depleted pancreas, you need to avoid putting stress on this crucial organ. Avoid drinking coffee, sodas (especially sugar free), non-dairy sweeteners, stimulant foods, etc. You know which foods you’ve been using to get a quick lift and have brought you these troubles in the first place. This includes all sugar-free diet sodas as well.

Stop All Artificial Sweeteners

I particularly advise you to avoid low calorie sugar substitutes and artificial sweetener brand sugar products. In my opinion, these are dangerous chemicals whose harmful properties we’ll never be told until it’s too late. I believe these synthetic chemicals are fooling the pancreas thus making its job much more difficult.

Diet sodas may even turn out to be the cause of the increase in insulin resistance that has occurred since the 1980s when their use began to escalate. Stop drinking them and you will notice an immediate improvement in your pancreatic reflex symptoms.

If you are dependent on coffee, (defined by drinking more than four cups per day) you should not stop cold turkey. Coffee is brutal on your pancreas. However if you stop drinking coffee completely, you will have such severe headaches and fatigue that you may want to give up the Digestive Awareness Diet completely.

In this case, you are allowed a maximum of two (and only two) cups of coffee a day. Have them at the most crucial time of your day, but start the other guidelines as well.

Taking Pancreatic Supplements

Pancreatic supplements are the major way to replenish and rebuild your pancreas. I hope that in your local health food store you can find a supplement that contains the raw gland. If you are a vegetarian, I still ask that you take pancreatic supplements, as your body requires the exact DNA and RNA to rebuild you cells. I don’t know of any vegetarian way to rebuild the pancreas and I have tried all the suggested ways to no avail.

The pancreas will also benefit from a high quality digestive enzyme, which typically includes many of the enzymes secreted by the pancreas. This type of supplement will help the stomach and gall bladder as well so it has multiple values.

The label will contain things that sound funny like ox bile extract, and many words ending with “ase.” Even though a good digestive formula may include pancreatin as part of its contents, it’s still advisable to supplement your diet with the whole gland pancreas extract when pancreatic exhaustion or depletion is suspected.

To help your pancreas rebuild itself naturally would typically require a change away from abusive dietary practices.