There are so many things we know we’re meant to be doing if we want to be healthy.
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Eat healthy foods, take probiotics, drink plenty of water. But there are some simple strategies we can implement that are often overlooked and can dramatically improve our digestion and health.
The digestion of your food begins well before you’ve actually started eating it. The thought of eating, the smell of food and looking at food causes the brain to respond and let your digestive system know that it’s time to start producing digestive enzymes in your saliva and stomach. Making meals that you enjoy and that look delicious is an important first step in the digestive process.
Thoroughly chewing your food is the next step. If you don’t chew your food properly, you make the stomach’s job a lot harder and it’s likely you’ll end up with partially digested food that can cause digestive symptoms.
Squeezing half a lemon into water and consuming that before meals is also extremely beneficial.
Stress is a huge contributor to digestive issues. If your body is sympathetic nervous system dominant and operating in ‘fight or flight’ mode, the adrenaline produced will be redirecting circulation away from digestion to deal with stress. This is a huge issue in our modern society and we need to reset our nervous systems to being parasympathetic dominant particularly around meal times, meaning we can be in ‘rest and digest’ mode.
Avoid eating your meals in stressful situations. Practice gratitude or a breathing exercise for two minutes before you eat.
Changing these habits requires consistent effort, but if you can redirect your nervous system around meal times to allow your body to properly digest your food, that alone can go a long way to improving your digestion, health and reducing the risk of problems in the future.
- Belinda Byrnes is a qualified nutritionist and naturopath, bbyrnes@iinet.net.au, www.belindabyrnesnutrition.com