Although the gastrointestinal tract is itself a fascinating and marvelously complex apparatus, it is still only one aspect of the intricate and often bewildering entity that is our physical self. For this reason, I believe it’s appropriate to begin by offering you a new understanding of your body as a whole—one could even say a new vision of it. I believe that once you’ve viewed yourself from this new perspective, you will see yourself as you did before, but with an important foundation on which to build a program of truly perfect health—that is, a healthy GI tract and a healthy body overall.

The new perspective is derived from Ayurveda, so in a sense it’s not really a new perspective at all, because Ayurveda is the oldest health care system known to man. Remarkably, this ancient approach to understanding the body, which has been tested and proven over thousands of years, is also completely compatible with our contemporary understanding of how nature works. In fact, Ayurveda simply uses a different terminology to express some of the most advanced ideas of molecular biology and quantum physics.

The first principle of this new/old perspective is that the human body is not a solid, particulate, static, fragmented, “frozen sculpture” that exists in isolation from the rest of nature. Rather, Ayurveda recognizes the body as part of the natural continuum. From this point of view, the human body is a dynamic field of energy. It is constantly participating in an exchange with the larger field of energy that surrounds it, which comprises the rest of the universe. Most remarkably of all, as a result of this continual exchange, your body is being renewed and replaced every moment of your life!

If you could see your body as it really is at the most basic level, you would realize that 98 percent of the atoms in your anatomy were not there a year ago. For example, scientific research has shown that your bones—which seem so solid and which support your entire frame—are re-created brand new every three months. This means that while the configuration of the bone cells remains constant, the billions of atoms that comprise the bones and pass freely back and forth through the cell walls are constantly undergoing change and replacement. As a result, you acquire a new skeleton every three months.

The same processes are at work throughout the rest of your body. The cells in your liver turn over very slowly, but new atoms still flow through them, like water in a stream, creating a new liver every six weeks. Your skin is new every month. Even within the brain—where cells do not regenerate when they die—the specific atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen are totally different today from what they were one year ago. In the digestive tract, you construct a new stomach lining every four days, and the surface cells that actually come in contact with digesting food are renewed every five minutes. Basically, your body completely re-creates itself down to the last atom over a period of four or five years.

It is as if you live in a building whose bricks are constantly being taken out and replaced. From one day to the next it looks like the same building, but in fact it’s fundamentally different. A human body also looks much the same from day to day, but it is forever in a process of change and exchange with the universe around it. And this process includes the basic physiological functions of metabolism, digestion, and elimination.

All the renewing and re-creating I’ve mentioned is very carefully controlled. It must be, in order to rebuild the body in recognizable form rather than as a haphazard collection of parts. Where does this careful control originate? In a word, it originates with intelligence.

This brings us to the first and perhaps the most important Ayurvedic principle: Our physiology itself is inherently intelligent, and the many physiological functions guiding the replacement of cells and molecules and even atoms are dependent on the inherent intelligence that inhabits the human body.

In recent years, quantum physics has provided us with these same basic insights into the nature of human functioning. The body is made up of atoms. And what are atoms? It may be easiest to think of them as particles whirling at lightning speed through vast empty spaces—colliding, disintegrating, darting back and forth—but atoms are not really particles in the sense that a pebble is a particle of rock or a twig is a piece of tree. Rather, they are minute fluctuations of energy in the infinite expanse of energy that modern physics calls the unified field. It is from the unified field that all natural forces emerge, giving rise to an entire material universe, including your body.

Fundamentally, your body is as void of matter as is intergalactic space. It may be surprising to realize that an apparently solid mass of living, breathing matter is in reality mostly empty space—nothing more than a perceptual illusion, a reflection of the more basic underlying intelligence that structures the entire universe. It may indeed be surprising, but nature’s truth often is.

This perspective on human physiology, which recognizes intelligence as the basic fabric from which the body is structured, gives rise to the concept of the quantum mechanical body. This phrase pays homage to another crucial principle, that the body’s inner intelligence is the ultimate and supreme genius that mirrors the intelligence of the universe as a whole.

These lofty notions may seem somewhat removed from the explicit focus of this book. In order to bridge that gap, let us first try to locate the mechanisms of the body that are responsible for healing—or, as I prefer to express it, for re-creating health. Obviously, no single organ is responsible; every part of the body is able to recognize when it is damaged and is capable of initiating healing. This in itself is an astonishing miracle, and as yet we have no simple answers to explain how it is even possible. Every one of the thousands of processes involved in healing even a superficial wound is incredibly complex and incompletely understood. Although countless articles have been written about the clotting process of blood, for example, it remains true that no medical intervention can reproduce the healing action that takes place in a tiny cut on your finger.

According to Ayurveda, the ability to heal is the primary and most significant quality of the body. Ayurveda defines healing as a process of returning the body to its natural functions. This is accomplished by enlivening the intelligence inherent in every cell of the body. When Hippocrates declared thousands of years ago that only nature itself can bring about healing, he was expressing a truth that is still valid today, despite all our technological advances.

Consider, for example, the case of a broken arm. A skilled physician will align the bone fragments in such a way as to minimize the effort nature needs to effect healing. The wise doctor creates conditions that help to support the restoration of health, but he or she always recognizes that something beyond the physician’s power performs the actual work of healing.

Digestion plays a critical role in the natural healing process. The constant renewal of every part of the physiology is dependent on proper digestive functioning, which Ayurveda sees as a means of extracting intelligence from food and then processing it to support the intelligence inherent in the entire physiology. In this way, the process of digestion plays a pivotal role in maintaining overall homeostasis and healing power. It is through digestion that intelligence, in the form of nutrients from the body’s surrounding environment, is extracted, broken down, and then combined again in such a way as to re-create every cell, every organ, every tissue of the human body.

Let me emphasize this point. To many people, it may seem strange to find digestion discussed in terms of intelligence. After all, in the West we’re used to associating intelligence with the brain, not with the stomach or the intestines. But Ayurveda recognizes the intelligence that exists in every organ, in every cell, of the body.

All the functions of your body have inherent balance points, which are set by the natural intelligence we’ve been discussing. This is really quite remarkable: The millions of molecules in your bloodstream, for example, travel where they’re needed with unerring accuracy; the pupils of your eyes are always adjusting to changing light conditions with greater flexibility than any camera lens you could ever hope to buy; your body temperature is constantly falling or rising as your internal thermostat reacts to the temperature of the air, to the time of day, and to your level of exertion. And all the while, your digestive system is moving along with the efficiency of an assembly line in a well-run factory.

It is only when this balance is disrupted for some reason, when the set points of your physiology are disturbed, that symptoms begin to occur. When that happens, your task is not so much to defeat or suppress the symptoms as it is to restore balance to your system, whereupon the symptoms will disappear by themselves.

For digestion and metabolism to perform with their natural precision and efficiency, a well-balanced lifestyle is the first prerequisite. Unhealthy food, poor sleeping habits, negative emotions, or physical and mental strain all can cause the body to deviate from natural functioning. Perhaps it is the central role that digestion plays in the constant restoration of the body’s intelligence that makes it so exquisitely sensitive to all of the influences that comprise modern life. It may be for this reason that “gut” problems are among the most common complaints in contemporary health care.

The body is part of the larger unified field, and our being extends beyond the confines of this bag of skin and bones to the far reaches of the cosmos. Our thoughts, imaginations, feelings, desires, and energies are as much “us” as are our fingernails, our blemishes, and our digestive tracts. Why should we give more regard to physiological artifacts? Why should we think that any imperfection in them is more a part of us than is our infinite awareness, which is capable of reaching the stars in the blink of an eye? In fact, we are the stars. We are the rivers, we are the storms, we are the floods, we are the galaxies. These are all projections of our awareness.

But to fully experience this awareness, we need our physiology. Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, digesting—we need all of these in order to sense and understand the universe we live in. Therefore, our intention in this book is to re-create healthy balance not only in every cell of the intestinal tract but in every aspect of the quantum mechanical body.

Now you’re ready to take some practical actions toward fulfilling that intention. You should begin by keeping a record of any gastrointestinal symptoms you have during the day, together with your feelings before and during the occurrence of the symptoms. This will help reveal any patterns to your symptoms and any relationships that exist between them and fatigue, stress, and other emotional factors.

At the end of this chapter, you’ll find several IBS Tracking Sheets on which to record your symptoms. Keep a copy of this form with you throughout the day, and use it anytime you undergo discomfort in the intestinal tract.