Understanding the key parts of your body involved in the process of eating will enable you to fine tune your efforts to develop an effective anti-aging plan.

Each of us has what could be called a food-filter: This is best described as a discriminating muscular gate located at the back of the mouth where the throat is shut off from the mouth during the process of totally chewing up the food.

Where the tongue drops over backward toward its so-called roots there are usually five little teat-like projections placed in the shape of a horseshoe Each is surrounded by a trough and in these troughs, or depressions, terminate a great number of taste-buds. Just at this point the roof of the mouth, or hard palate, ends; and the soft palate, with the uvula at the end of it drops down behind the heavy part of the tongue.

During the natural act of chewing, the lips are closed, and there is also a complete closure at the back of the mouth by the pressing of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. During the grinding of each mouthful then, the mouth is an airtight pouch.

To comprehend the grinding hold the face down, so that the tongue hangs perpendicularly in the mouth. This will show you how food, when properly mixed with saliva, will be lifted up in the hollow part in the middle of the tongue, against the force of gravity, and will collect at the place where the mouth is shut off at the back, the food-gate.

This is a real gate. While the food is being chewed, ground up and mixed with saliva it will be chemically transformed from its crude condition into the chemical form that prepares and makes it possible of digestion and absorption. The gate will remain tightly shut and the throat will be entirely cut off from the mouth.

As the food becomes mixed with saliva, or emulsified, alkalized, neutralized, or modified in whatever form our body needs the smooth substance will be drawn up the central channel of the tongue until it reaches the food-gate.

Now that you do understand the reality and essential task of the food filter you can expect your anti-aging plan to give your plenty more years and a better quality of life.