This article is from Nutritionist Karen Hurd’s website.
Beans are a bile magnet. Bile and beans have an incredible affinity or liking for one another. They make a sort of chemical bond that is almost impossible to break. Most of the other foods with which bile binds in the intestinal tract are foods with which the bile makes temporary bonds. But when the bean enters, the bile leaves all other foods behind and rushes to make a permanent bond with the bean.
Now you must know something else about bile. This digestive fluid that the liver makes is released into the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine). It travels to the last part of the small intestine, doing its digestive work, and when it reaches the terminal part of the ileum, bile is reabsorbed and returns to the liver! How much bile returns? Ninety to ninety-five percent!
Please understand that bile is the trash truck for the liver. The liver cleans the blood stream of fat soluble waste and deposits it in the bile. Hopefully the bile will make it past the terminal part of the ileum, get into the large intestine and make its way on out into the toilet. However, that is not what is happening in the normal American’s digestive tract. The bile returns to the liver with its garbage in tow!
Unless the bile meets up with the mighty bean.
The soluble fiber in a bean binds tightly with the bile. Interestingly, soluble fiber has a very unique characteristic. It cannot cross the intestinal barrier anywhere. Period.
So if the bile is bound to the soluble fiber in a bond that cannot be broken, when the bile tries to reabsorb and return to the liver, it will find that it cannot, because the soluble fiber will not allow that passage. Therefore, the bile with all of its toxic liver trash will be tossed into the toilet in the form of a bowel movement.
What if the bile is not tossed into the toilet? What happens then? When it returns to the liver, full of trash, the liver is waiting with more trash. The liver is constantly filtering the blood stream. Just because the bile is running around in the gastro-intestinal tract doesn’t mean the liver stops filtering blood. So the returning bile is loaded down with more toxic waste as it passes through the liver again. So the cycle goes, until the recycling bile is so loaded down with garbage that it can no longer do an efficient job in digesting the foods in the intestinal tract. Instead of digesting the foods, the bile ferments the foods. Fermentation always causes gas. Now we have a problem with flatulence.
The answer is to get rid of the nasty bile. If we had new, fresh clean bile then the foods would not be fermented but digested properly, and no gas would form. How can we get rid of the nasty bile? Eat beans!
Remember that when the beans enter the intestinal tract that the foul bile will immediately rush to bind with the soluble fiber found in the bean. The bile is still saturated with toxic waste that causes fermentation. So the first thing to be fermented is the bean! So the bean gets the blame for causing the gas, when really it is the nasty bile that is causing the gas.
If we want to get rid of gas, we must eat beans so that we can throw the foul bile away into the toilet. New bile will then be made that is not noxious. New bile will digest foods and not ferment them. Therefore the flatulence problem will clear up.
I should finish the story of the young man from Canada. He dutifully ate his beans. I had him start at six servings a day. The frequency was the critical issue, not the amount, although I did ask him to eat one-half cup for each serving. I asked him to call me in a few weeks as he should be seeing results by then.
In one week he called. “I couldn’t wait any longer to call you. I just wanted you to know that I no longer have any gas. I am eating my beans faithfully and they’re working! I even take them to Pizza Hut with me and I don’t get gas there!”
I have many stories to tell you about beans and gas, but suffice it to say that the bean really is the answer to flatulence. No longer blame the bean, blame bile for your gas. Then begin to toss away your recycled bile by eating your soluble fiber.
A note for those who positively cannot stand eating beans: I do have some clients that just can’t seem to choke them down. Psyllium husk powder is soluble fiber. You can substitute two teaspoons of psyllium husk powder for one-half cup of beans and it is just as effective. Remember it is the frequency of consumption that is important.
Enjoy a gas-free life. Eat your beans!
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