Super Simple Nutrition Series: The Importance of Good Digestive Habits
There’s a reason that the global health and wellness industry is worth over 4 trillion dollars - people want to feel good. It’s that simple. So, why then do people think that following a complicated diet or meal plan is the key to feeling good and having a healthy and happy body?
Diet plans make their creators lots and lots of money. Thanks to their very good marketing teams, they’re often able to convince us that this new diet or that miracle food will cure us of all that ails us - from Alzheimer’s to Zika virus. (That’s a joke.)
My point is that the next time you’re feeling motivated to give living a healthy lifestyle a go, don’t fall for just any doctor or Joe Blow claiming that their protocol will cure you of this, that, or the other thing.
What I’ve learned in the years of doing my own research and during my formal education as a Holistic Nutrition Consultant, is that getting healthy is simple. People just really like to overcomplicate things!
So over the next four weeks, we’re going to get back to basics. I’m going to introduce (and re-introduce in many instances) you to how simple it really is to have a healthy mind, body, and soul. We’re going to start at the beginning, with important dietary habits, then get into food and nutrition rules, lifestyle habits, and finally how to supplement your diet properly.
“All disease begins in the gut” – Hippocrates (460 – 370 BCE)
Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, knew what’s up. All disease - and conversely, all health- begins in the gut.
Well, I’d like to argue that health actually begins a bit further up, with the digestive system. The digestive system is a group of organs that together make up the first half of the gastrointestinal tract. These organs work together to convert food into energy and basic nutrients for the whole body.
When the digestive system is working optimally, food is efficiently turned into sustained energy. The nutrients found in that food are well-assimilated to support all other body systems, and whatever we don’t need is turned into waste and eliminated easily.
When the digestive system is not working optimally, our bodies aren’t at their best. Our natural cleansing and detoxing functions are low or non-existent, we’re tired, lethargic, and we get sick easily. Being in this state for the long term can result in what Hippocrates warned us about 2500 years ago - disease.
So what can we do about this, then?
To ensure that our digestive system is performing at its best, we need to implement a few simple habits.
1. Eat mindfully...
First thing’s first. If you’re sitting down to eat a meal and feeling stressed, or worse yet, you’re scarfing something down in your car on your way to some important appointment or event, you better believe your digestion is going to be below sub-par.
Our bodies operate in a couple of different nervous system states - parasympathetic or sympathetic. If you’re in the sympathetic state (you’re stressed out for any reason at all whether emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, etc.), your body is going to allocate its energy to the body parts that will help you fight or flee from that stressor (even if they’re only inside your head). Guess what? Digestion isn’t something your body cares about when there’s a major threat in the environment, so it shuts off all energy supply to those organs until it’s safe to resume the breakdown, absorption, and elimination of food and nutrients.
This is why rule number one of this ENTIRE BLOG POST SERIES is to eat mindfully. In other words, I want you to make it a habit that before any meal or snack you take as many deep, calming breaths as you need to feel safe, secure, and totally stress-free. That could be three breaths or ten minutes worth of belly-breathing.
Eating mindfully also means having gratitude for the food you’re eating and where it came from, especially if you’ve just spent X amount of time preparing it. You deserve to get the full sensory experience. Enjoy not only the taste of it, but the smell, how good it looks, etc. When you slow down enough to notice these things, your body will not only be in the prime digestive state, but you may also find yourself to be full quicker after eating less food - which is, typically, a good thing.
2. …With your friends
One more thing about that sad scenario of you eating in your car as you rush to wherever you need to be - you’re most likely alone!Eating alone these days is not best practice when it comes to digestion. Because when you’re “alone” you’re most likely not alone at all. You’re scrolling through Instagram, working on your computer, watching YouTube or TV, or any other number of ways that we like to entertain ourselves when we’re bored. When we’re distracted by screens, we’re definitely not eating mindfully.
Up until very recently in North America, meals used to be a way to connect with people. Now, we rarely even eat with others.Let’s change that! When you eat with others, you form connections, your body is at ease (remember the parasympathetic state?), and you’re much more attuned to sensations of satiety. Sadly, often when we think we’re hungry for food we’re actually just starved for these social connections, so we find ourselves snacking when we’re bored, lonely, etc.
So rule number two is all about enjoying as many meals as possible with family, friends, and co-workers. Trust me, your meal companions will be glad you asked- and all of your digestive systems will have you to thank!
3. Chew properly!
This one may have you rolling your eyes, but let me ask you this:
Do you ever feel like you need to use your water or whatever other beverage you’re drinking to “wash your food down”? If yes, you’re not chewing properly.
Now, I’m not dogmatic or a lunatic about this. I’m not going to tell you that you need to be chewing each bite a minimum of 100 times. But it’s true that ideally, the food entering your stomach should be baby-food consistency. Yum.
For optimal digestion (that means optimal energy conversion and assimilation of nutrients), chewing well is so important. Digestion begins in the mouth with the mechanical breakdown of all food and the chemical breakdown of carbs.
So, hello, if you’re concerned about the amount of carbs you’re consuming for whatever reason, but you aren’t paying attention to the way you break them down, i.e., your chewing, then you really got it backwards.
Maybe Michael Pollan should revise his famous quote to “Chew food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
4. Don’t water your food down
This rule goes hand-in-hand with number three. Like I said, if you feel the need to wash down the lump of food that’s sitting quite obtrusively halfway down your throat, you’re not doing your digestive system any favours.
Your stomach is the primary location of mechanical digestion of all foods and where proteins begin to be broken down chemically. Whenever you sit down for a meal or snack, your stomach secretes a very specific balance of enzymes, hydrochloric acid (HCl), and mucus, which we scientists like to call “stomach juices”.
If you then pound back a full glass of water (because you never remember to drink the stuff until it’s time to sit down for a meal), that delicate balance of acidic stomach juices gets diluted, affecting the breakdown of your food and assimilation of nutrients.
Worst of all, when proteins aren’t broken down properly and enter the small intestine, they can get past loosened tight junctions in the cell walls and contribute to something called leaky gut (which deserves a full blog post series of its own).
If you know anything about leaky gut, you know it’s not fun. Unfortunately, many, if not most of North Americans eating the Standard American Diet (SAD ☹) have leaky gut which leads to a plethora of symptoms like allergies, bloating, gas, headaches, the list goes on.
So, don’t dilute your stomach juices, kids. Drink the bulk of your liquids away from meals and if you do feel like you need something to sip on, a small glass of room temperature water is best.
5. Stay well hydrated between meals
But Emily! I’m always being told I need to drink lots of water and now you’re telling me I can’t drink any with my meals?! What’s the deal?
What you’ve been told about staying hydrated is right - you just didn’t get the whole picture. Your body is almost 70% water, so staying hydrated is just as imperative for the proper functioning of all body systems as having a healthy digestive system is. It’s just that timing is key.
The amount of water you should be drinking depends a lot on your height, weight, activity level, health status, etc. I typically recommend adults drink at least two litres of filtered water daily, starting first thing in the morning.
Our bodies lose a ton of water while we sleep, so starting the day off with a tall glass or two of water is always step number one in my recommended morning routine. To prime the digestive system and get those stomach juices flowing, I recommend adding fresh lemon juice. Just leave yourself at least a half hour in between your glass or two of water and your breakfast.
Pro tip: warm water with lemon can be very soothing on cold days, and sliced ginger really takes it up a notch! P.S. If you want to read more about hydration dos and don’ts, check out the first part of my three-part blog post series on hydration here.
The End - For Now.
Now that your digestive system is armed and ready to do its job as best as it can, it’s time to talk FOOD. Next week, I’ll tell you my five rules for eating healthy.
Spoiler alert: the post isn’t going to contain the one amazing food that instantly turns you into a supermodel or the single nutrient that’ll keep you young forever and ever.
Nope. These rules will be easy to understand and implement and not leave you feeling limited in the foods you can eat! In other words, you’ll never want or need to follow another diet again.
Stay tuned, and in the meantime - let us know in the comments below what you think about these digestive habits! Are you already implementing them in your day-to-day? Did anything surprise you?
