26/12/2025
THE PANCREAS
Between sweetness, bitterness, and the Art of Choosing what truly matters.
In this Christmas, treat your Pancreas well!
Why?
Christmas arrives, tables expand, chairs multiply, and suddenly food seems to reproduce by itself. A little more dessert, another slice of bread, “just a taste” of everything. It’s a time of reunion, warmth, love… and of asking a very small but incredibly hardworking gland to perform Olympic-level feats without training. Poor pancreas.
While we toast to abundance, it silently negotiates balance.
The pancreas is often wrapped in poetic slogans like: sweetness of life, joy, pleasure. Nice words indeed, but dangerously empty if we don’t ask a deeper question: what is sweetness for?
Physiologically, the pancreas is a dual citizen. On one side, it is an endocrine organ, releasing insulin and glucagon directly into the bloodstream to regulate glucose levels. On the other, it is exocrine, secreting digestive enzymes, like amylase, lipase, and proteases into the duodenum. And here something fascinating happens.
In the duodenum, pancreatic enzymes meet bile, a bitter substance produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. Bile emulsifies fats, allowing enzymes to do their job. Sweet meets bitter. Harmony is born not from one dominating the other, but from cooperation.
Bile is bitter! And its function is essential. Without bitterness, sweetness becomes useless. Without sweetness, bitterness becomes sterile. Digestion, and life itself, requires both.
This physiological truth opens a symbolic door. Sweet and bitter are opposites, yes, but also complements. When sweetness is unmanaged, bitterness inevitably enters our emotional landscape. Not as an enemy, but as a signal. So the real question is not how sweet is my life? but rather:
How do I manage satisfaction?
What do I choose to nourish?
What place does pleasure occupy in my daily decisions—and at what cost?
The pancreas teaches us discernment. Insulin lowers blood glucose, allowing cells to receive energy. Glucagon does the opposite, mobilizing stored glucose when needed. One invites, the other releases. One says “now,” the other says “later.” Balance is everything.
From a holistic perspective, people living with diabetes often show a profound dissatisfaction, not necessarily but often with life itself, but with priorities, with choices postponed, with values misaligned. This is not a judgment, nor a simplification; it is an observation repeated across cultures and clinical settings. When sweetness is sought without direction, without hierarchy, it loses meaning. Satisfaction becomes elusive.
The pancreas does not punish excess. It adapts, compensates, works harder… until it cannot. Much like us.
In Hebrew, the pancreas is called לבלב (lablav), meaning the heart of the heart. Not poetically, but functionally. Think about it, if we take the heart as an independent entity. So the poor pancreas sits at the crossroads of nourishment, energy, survival, and pleasure. It decides what enters, what waits, what is stored, and what is released. It is not about indulgence; it is about timing, measure, and value.
When we overload it, physically or emotionally, we are not being too sweet. We are being unclear. And here lies the danger.
So perhaps this Christmas, between one celebration and another, we can offer our pancreas something truly nourishing: clarity. Choosing what really matters. Allowing pleasure without guilt, bitterness without resentment, sweetness without excess.
Because in the end, the pancreas doesn’t ask us to give up dessert.
It simply asks us to know why we choose it.
This Christmas, keep your Pancreas happy. A happy Pancreas is a healthy Pancreas.
I hope you enjoyed the read.
And I will be very grateful for your insights. ❤
Credit: Reflexology World Network
