Ben Greenfield noticed undigested food in his stool and traced it back to worn teeth that prevented proper chewing. Your front teeth tear, your back teeth grind, and skipping either step means food hits your gut in chunks, which mimics digestive problems but isn't.
You want to chew your food enough. A lot of people are not chewing their food enough.
I thought that I had something like leaky gut syndrome for a while because I would, you know, as everybody, you know, you do it, sometimes you turn around and look and, you know, see the consistency of the poop and what's in the. What's in the bowl. And I would see, like, little pieces of food in there for a long time. But I also do consistent gut tests, and I rarely had, you know, elevated levels of zonulin or markers of leaky gut or anything like that. I don't get that, like, the food's actually, it was. It was my mouth. I actually, because of the way that my teeth were worn down, I was chewing, chewed, you know, mashed up, kind of half ground food, and it was winding up in my stool. My food was like liquid goo when I swallowed. I'm very careful not to rip open things with my front teeth anymore because I don't want to ruin all the hard work that we've been doing. But I used to kind of like rip meat with my front teeth and do a lot with my front teeth. Now I'm using the ones that are farther back. What happened and how should people chew?
So the front teeth are for tearing. So you can chew with the. You can tear with the front teeth.
Okay.
Chewing is for the back teeth.
And tearing would be like if you're eating like chicken on the bone and maybe you're ripping the chicken breast off the bone or the chicken leg off the bone or something like that.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah. Meats and stuff. So the fact that you said your food was a consistency of soup is really good. That's what you want. You want to chew your food enough. A lot of people are not chewing their food enough.
The Solution to Aging Might Be Closer Than Anyone Realizes - With Ben Goertzel
