In today's modern world most of us are busy and it's easy to just grab something and eat it on the go, right?
Not only does that contribute to poor choices for our health, but it's also not good for our digestion.
Whether you deal with gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, or you don't have any digestive issues at all, your digestion will benefit from these 5 tips:
1. Prepare Your Own Food
Digestion starts before we even start eating. Our body and saliva start producing digestive enzymes as soon as we start smelling and anticipating food. Our body starts to increase its stomach acid which helps to breakdown food, activates digestive enzymes, and acts as a barrier against pathogens and bacteria. It also aids in the absorption of minerals.
2. Eat Mostly Whole Real Foods
A detriment of our modern world and being able to grab something quickly or stop at a fast-food restaurant is that often times we eat just to be eating. How often have you eaten because you're bored or stressed? It's easy to just reach in the pantry for that bag of chips, right? When we do that, we're often times loading up on unhealthy highly processed vegetable and canola oils and added sugar which are found in most processed foods. These can all have negative effects on our digestion. Eating mostly whole real foods gives your body the fiber and nutrients it needs to optimize your digestion.   Â
3. Eat When Your Stomach Growls
We've gotten away from intuitive eating, which is eating when we're actually hungry. Our body has a great way or telling us when we should be eating...it growls. Growling signals that our body is ready to eat and digest more food again. Our bodies are not meant to have high levels of stomach acid all the time. Our stomach acid is meant to lower in between meals and then when our stomach growls and we start to anticipate food again, the stomach acid increases again.Â
4. Avoid Snacking
Ok I know...you've probably heard that eating frequently is good for your digestion. This actually isn't true though. When we go at least 4 hours between meals a series of electrical impulses in our intestinal tract called the Migrating Motor Complex (MMC) kicks in and sweeps our intestines clean. If you've been used to eating frequently, it might take some time to re-activate your MMC. It may take some longer fasting for your stomach to growl, which is the signal that the MMC has kicked in. Snacking can also cause Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), due to the MMC not being able to do its job and clean out the intestine. A constant supply of food can cause food to ferment in the small intestine which can lead to SIBO symptoms such as gas and bloating. Â
5.  Support Digestion by Taking a Digestive Enzyme
Most of us don't produce enough enzymes and stomach acid, which is what leads to acid reflux. The natural tendency is to take things like betaine and HCL to increase the stomach acid. This however can cause H. pylori, which is a very common bacteria that many (if not most) people have, to bury deeper in the stomach. Not only that but both betaine and HCL will affect methylation and detox. It's much better to take a digestive enzyme like pancreatin.
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