When I work with people, I often look at, okay, let's make sure and see how your digestion is working

and let's optimize that first because ideally we should have everything working in good order

and we should be able to digest and break everything down. The stomach is the place in the body where

our food is cooking. I like to think of it as the pot is where we cook

our food. Yeah, we liquefy it. It's a kind of sour place. It gets really hot. And then if we,

and this is where we unfold and de-nature, or not denature, but we unfold our proteins to make it

so that we can break down those amino acids. And if we don't have a lot of stomach fire, then our proteins are not going to get absorbed as well in the small intestine.

And the other thing the stomach does is the, it's also part of our immune system.

We have this strong fire that can put pathogens out right there in the stomach. So we can eat something that

is like, whoa, this is not okay for the body. And boom, we'll put it out in the stomach with that fire.

So if you think of the stomach as the pot that's cooking our food, there's lots of ways that we can

put that fire out. One of them is we drink a whole bunch of liquid at a meal. All of a sudden

we start drinking all this water. That's going to put your fire out. Oh, I love that analogy.

Oh my gosh. That is so good. Yeah. Well, that's exactly. So each part of the digestive tracts

can be related to a flavor and a, you know, and then it's action. What does it do? So, you know, so many people have things like SIBO and which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or IBS and they've got lots of bloating and gas or constipation. And a lot of times we have to back it up and say, how's your stomach fire? Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this week's podcast preview. Now, don't go anywhere. This was just a little taste of last week's show. You can check out the full episode with so many more of your intermittent fasting questions by clicking the link down there in the show notes. Also, remember, if you enjoy the podcast, it would mean the world to us for you to leave a review on iTunes to get this podcast out to other people that may have the same questions that you do.

And as always, if you have a question that you want answered, email those to questions at

shantorayway.com. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.