Get Your Bitter On!

Bitters are not a medicine, but a necessity and a forgotten flavor crucial for our survival as a species.
-Daniel Charles-Davies
 It is my opinion that the nearly complete lack of biter flavored foods in the overall U.S. and Canadian diet is a major contributing factor to common cultural health imbalances such as PMS, hormonal imbalances, hypoglycemia, diabetes, etc.
-James Green, The Male Herbal
Bitters are our antennae to the world, alerting us to action and compelling us to rise to the challenge. 
Guido Mase
…eat with bitter herbs… 
-The Bible
You are not what you eat, but how well you digest. 
–Italian proverb

Artichoke

Bitters have been bred out of the modern SAD (Standard American Diet), and it’s a shame. The effect that bitters have on our bodies is PROFOUND to say the least, reaching far beyond digestion (which it does a fantastic job in facilitating). Bitters not only stimulate stomach acids and enzymes, but they also open airways, calm the heart, improve liver function, balance blood sugar, and awaken the soul among others... and it makes sense that they have such far-reaching effects. Unlike all the other tastes, 

bitter receptors are located all over the body, from the tongue to the testes!

How did a taste come to be so valuable to the human body?

In order to appreciate the co-evolution of humans with bitter plants, we must take a step back in time. Upon observation, one can see how other omnivores will selectively munch on mildly bitter plants. Think about your dog or cat nibbling on grass after they get into the garbage or eat one too many mice. In this process, they are not only instinctively stimulating their digestive juices to get rid of the gunk they just ate, but they are also building up an immunity to protect themselves from more toxic bitter plants in the future.

yummy!

As ancient plant eaters, we did the same thing. The bitter-tasting components of a plant are that plant's secondary compounds, or its defense mechanisms produced to protect that plant from predation, environmental stressors, and competition. These include medicinally valuable things likes antioxidants, alkaloids, flavonoids, and terpenes. On the other hand, a plant's primary compounds are all the sugars and starches created solely for growth and development (think of primary compounds as food and secondary compounds as medicine). 

Plant's perspective: A bit of nibbling on a plant will stimulate that plant to produce more secondary defense compounds, making it stronger in the long run. With no bitter compounds, it is much more likely to be completely destroyed by either a predator or its environment (did you ever consider how some of the most antioxidant rich foods must contend with the harshest of environments? Think of dark red berries dealing with copious amounts of oxidizing sunshine). Produce too many bitter compounds and it might not be eaten or propagated at all, decreasing its chances of proliferation. Additionally, plants are conservative and it takes lots of energy to produce this potent medicine. Why should it create more than the bare minimum of the defense mechanisms it needs to survive?

Human's perspective: We notice increased digestive power after nibbling on some bitter herbs. We can feel our mouth's salivating and our juices churning. This response is because our body recognizes the bitter compounds as potentially dangerous defense mechanisms and wants to create powerful stomach acid and enzymes to expel them, pronto! 

So this is how the delicate dance between plants secreting just enough secondary compounds and humans eating just enough secondary compounds came to be...

and here's the amazing part:

We embody the power of these secondary compounds when we eat bitter plants! Over time, our internal protection designed to expel these potentially poisonous compounds was tamed and transformed into an invaluable reflex that both stimulates and tonifies our entire body (Mills and Bones).

Humans eventually recognized the digestion-stimulating effects of bitters, and began to apply them in the diet for this purpose. Eventually, the bitter reflex evolved to be a critical part of our healthy functioning.

Wormwood is a classic true bitter

so here's how bitters work in the body:

Bitter receptors are called T2R receptors. When occupied by something bitter, the T2R receptors stimulate our parasympathetic (rest and digest) response.  Our body was designed to be in this autonomic nervous state for the vast majority of the time. Unfortunately, in the modern, chronically stressed world, this is not the case. Most of us are in sympathetic (fight, flight, freeze, or fright) most of the time- even when we eat!

The cumulative effect of this is majorly costly to our entire body. 

When we are stressed out, our body is not fit to digest efficiently and fully. This means undigested food, mal-absorbed nutrients, and stressed out organs. In fact, many holistic practitioners and herbalists see improper digestion as root of many modern maladies, from allergies to autoimmunity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and anxiety (to name a few) (James Green). 

Let's learn a bit more about these T2R receptors:

 Kids have a ton of them- this is why they are typically picky eaters. In actuality, this sensitivity is a defense mechanism since a child's detoxification pathways aren't completely formed yet. As we age, our body will make less T2R receptors, allowing us to be more adventurous with food. Plus, it's always advantageous to let your kids nibble on new vegetables to enhance the development of these pathways.
But get this: do you know an adult who is still excessively picky and averse to unique tastes? It could be a sign that they are systemically inflamed and seriously stressed out. Since occupied T2R receptors usher in a calm, parasympathetic state, our body wants to fill them. Therefore, if we are inflamed and systemically stressed, our body will create more T2R receptors in order to increase the likelihood of some of them getting occupied! Once we start taking more bitters, these T2R receptors will reduce down to a happy medium as the body becomes less inflamed. For these systemically inflamed folks, a little bit of bitters goes a long way.

In the digestive system: Above all, bitters stimulate adequate digestive juice flow. This allows for complete digestion with none of the unpleasant side effects of mal-digested food (bloating, burping, heartburn, allergies, etc.). When food isn’t completely digested before leaving the stomach and entering the small intestine, it not only causes discomfort, but it serves as a food source for bad bacteria, setting the stage for low or high grade allergy and auto-immune conditions to develop. Those large, un-broken down food particles can eventually leak through the barriers of the digestive tract, causing our body’s immune systems to go into high alert. Over time, repeated offenses exhaust our immunity, causing all sorts of chronic conditions. The fact that bitters alone can increase our digestive juice power is reason alone to take them daily!

In our blood: Diabetes is quickly becoming a major issue (1 in 3 kids will develop diabetes!!!), but bitters can help. Remember how bitters stimulate digestive juices and enzymes? Well, the pancreas creates enzymes and hormones during digestion, namely insulin. Insulin is the only hormone like its kind. It has the power of delivering sugar from the blood safely into cells. Studies show that bitters not only increase the functioning of the pancreas and productivity of insulin, but some bitters like bitter melon contain Polypeptide-P, or P-insulin: an insulin-like compound that can also stabilize blood sugar levels. These bitter foods might be repulsive at first, but with diligent practice, you will find yourself craving their healing ways.

In the liver: The bitter taste stimulates the creation of top quality bile, an essential creation made by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. Bile is crucial for properly emulsifying (breaking down) fats. With inadequate bile, we run many a risk: liver and/or gallbladder congestion and mal-function, excessive cholesterol and triglyceride levels, constipating (bile is the body's laxative) and damaged vasculature to name a few.

In the sinuses: T2R receptors here help to dilate passageways and produce more snot with more immunoglobulins. This decreases the level of inflammation, making the tissue is less swollen and constrictive.

In the lungs: T2R receptors signal our body to open our airways and increase dilation to facilitate easy breathing. This is why bitters therapy for asthma patients has proven so effective.  

In the heart: bitters cause parasympathetic vasoconstriction of peripheral T2R taste receptors. This mechanism directs blood towards the belly without the heart having to do all the work, seriously helping anyone who might suffer from chronically high blood pressure.

So next time you grimace after an especially bitter bite of your arugula salad, rest assured that your body is in the process of enhancing every aspect of digestion, toning each organ and ushering in a calmer way of being.

Amy and Eileen making their bitter faces after leading a DIY bitter workshop

Herb Girls' two delicious bitter formulas