Here are some ways to keep your digestive system healthy.
This was mentioned in the What Can Go Wrong – Don’t Ignore the Score article, but it is so important that it is worth mentioning again here. Our ancestors approached a meal with thankfulness and appreciation for the food in front of them. It was ritual. We need to strive to get back to that place. Sit at the meal table, actually see what you are about to eat. Take in its beauty, smell the aroma, and then give thanks. In the meantime, your mouth can start producing saliva and your stomach has the opportunity to start producing some hydrochloric acid. When your body is “stressed” or in a sympathetic state it can’t digest. Our body does not differentiate the stress of driving in a car differently than that of running from a saber tooth tiger. In fight or flight mode, our body will do everything it needs to do to survive by directing focus to the necessary systems. Digestion does not fall into that category. The body wants to get away from the tiger before worrying about digesting the food.
Chew your food 30 times. Yes, this is a long time. But you need to feel the consistency in your mouth of what it is supposed to be before you swallow. Essentially, drink your food.
Drink a glass of room temperature water with lemon. This stimulates the digestive tract.
Being hydrated overall will help maintain a healthy digestive tract. You want to drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water. For every ounce of diuretic, you have to add an additional 1.5 ounces of water to compensate.
Stay away from carbonated beverages. If you are going to drink one, drink it 20 minutes before a meal or 2 hours afterwards. Remember the sodium bicarbonate that gets released to raise the pH of the chyme in the stomach? Drinking a carbonated beverage will make it more difficult for the stomach to lower the pH of the chyme and will result in the food sitting in the stomach too long.
Increase your consumption of raw fruits and vegetables. This helps to increase the fiber content. The beneficial bacteria in your digestive tract feed off the fiber. Raw vegetables aids in digestion as they contain beneficial enzymes.
Switch your fat consumption to ones from natural, organic sources. If you buy your oil from the store in a clear container off the shelf, it’s not healthy, as a general rule of thumb. Olive oil in a green glass bottle from a trusted source is a good option for salad dressing. I personally try not to cook with olive oil. For cooking, coconut oil is great. Other options are tallow, ghee, butter, and lard all from healthy sources like grass-fed cows.
Stay away from processed foods! They are loaded with toxins that our body does not know how to process. Additionally, refined sugars and flours not only threaten the survival of the beneficial bacterial in our digestive tract, but feed the “bad” bacteria and yeast.
This was a lot of information! But digestion sets the stage for our health. It is important to have a healthy digestive system for our cells to get the nutrients they need, so that our tissues are healthy, our organs are healthy, our organ systems are healthy, so WE are healthy and can enjoy our body’s song.