Eating For Your Digestive Health
Eating for your digestive health doesn’t necessarily come down to what you eat (assuming you’re eating real food over processed food), but rather how you’re eating that food.
Let me explain….
All food offers us energy, but also requires energy to digest. This is important because how that food is prepared and how we eat it determines how much nutrition (energy) we take from the food, and how much energy that food takes from your body in order to break it down.
Your digestive system fires up as soon as your senses recognise food - your eyes see the juiciness of the ripe mango, your nose smells the frying of garlic and onions, and your ears hear the sizzling of a steak.
These senses tell your mouth to start producing saliva, the saliva sends a message down to your stomach to get its juices ready, and those juices send alerts to your gallbladder and pancreas to prepare your digestive enzymes.
As you put that first bite of food into your mouth, the chewing action releases more saliva and digestive enzymes which send more communication signals to your stomach.
As you swallow, your stomach acid is strong and firey, ready to take on all the protein, fibre, carbs, and fats that you’ve just swallowed
For a few hours, your stomach gets to work breaking down the food into nutrients. It makes pepsin to break down the protein into amino acids (but you do need a strong stomach acid to make enough pepsin!).
Eventually, the meal you ate a couple of hours ago is broken down into something called chyme (essentially mush), and is ready to be released from your stomach into your small intestines ready to be covered by a gush of bile and a shower of pancreatic enzymes.
Whilst your stomach has been working hard to break down food, the stomach acid has signaled to your gallbladder to prepare bile, and to your pancreas to get digestive enzymes lined up.
So when the chyme enters your small intestine, the bile and enzymes are there waiting.
Bile breaks down your fatty acids and your pancreas releases digestive enzymes to break down carbohydrates, but also fats, proteins, minerals, antioxidants, and vitamins - your pancreatic enzymes act on pretty much all nutrients!
Bile is also a great antiseptic for the digestive system, protecting your microbiome from unwanted pathogens that might have survived the stomach acid, but also making sure your oestrogen metabolism is efficient (make sure you watch step 8 inside module 3 to learn why this is important).
As the chyme moves through your small intestine this is when your millions of villi come into play. Their role is to absorb the nutrients from the chyme that your saliva, stomach acid, bile, and digestive enzymes have broken down.
The villi also produce more digestive enzymes if they recognise molecules that haven’t been broken down so well, so if a chunk of steak is still making its way through the small intestine the villi know you need more protease to break it down - clever!?
As the chyme moves towards the end of your small intestine towards your colon, the majority of nutrients have been absorbed, and you’re left with fibre, water, and other waste products that your body doesn’t need to absorb.
As the chyme enters your colon, it is met with your appendix.
Your appendix has a reputation for being useless, but it is actually part of your immune system with the majority of it being immune cells!It’s very cleverly positioned to protect the colon from any nasty bacterias, toxins, and other things that shouldn’t be in the colon.
Just a quick note, the appendix can be easily blocked as it is very small which can lead to a ruptured appendix - if you’ve had yours removed because of something like this then no worry, you can have a healthy digestive system without it … but maybe some extra attention to your microbiome and upper digestive tract.
Same goes for your gallbladder, you can live a healthy life without one … but some extra support is needed.
As the chyme, or waste at this point, travels through your colon the fibre is nourishing your microbiome and absorbing some nutrients like calcium, salts and water depending on your hydration levels! The more dehydrated you are the more your colon will absorb water from your waste and the more likely you will become constipated!
Stay hydrated!
Once the waste has moved through your colon, the next step is its exit plan through your bowels!
As you can see, it takes a lot for your body to create your daily bowel movements (hopefully daily), and there is so much more detail to add to the above processes.
So, the food you give your body needs to support all of these digestive jobs, not hinder it.
Digesting takes a lot of energy so give it food that is easy to digest. Foods like cooked root vegetables, ripe fruit, and well cooked rice and oats.
Think about the texture of raw salad or even cooked kale when you chew, this is what your digestive system has to contend with. Compared to a cooked potato or carrot, or a ripe banana vs an under ripe banana.
The second thing to consider is how well you chew your food. Just a few chews and then swallow, or do you take your time to chew your food down to mush before it enters your stomach?
The more saliva you can produce through chewing, the stronger your stomach acid. The more mushy your food is on entering your stomach, the less resources the stomach has to use to break it down.
This has a knock on effect throughout the rest of your digestive tract.
Let’s summarise what you can do to support your digestive health:
Mindful eating
From preparing your food to trigger your senses, to taking smaller bites and then chewing your food to mush (or chewing liquids like smoothies and soups to encourage saliva production).
Take time over your meals, your digestive system really will thank you and you will get more nutrients out of the food you eat.
This is important if you struggle with heartburn and acid reflux, bloating after meals, burping and flatulence, undigested food in stools, allergies and intolerances, and skin issues.
Cook your food
Choose cooked vegetables over salads, and opt for ripe fruit or cooked fruit like cinnamon apples or ginger and turmeric pears (check out the recipes). Soak your grains and beans overnight, then rinse and and cook them with salt and kombu to improve digestibility.
This is important if you experience bloating, fullness, IBS type symptoms (both diarrhea and constipation)
Eat bitter foods at the beginning of a meal
A small bitter salad like rocket (arugula) with cooked beetroot will enhance bile production and secretion of digestive enzymes to help you break down and absorb fat, as well as protein, carbs, and all the other nutrients.
This is particularly important if you experience sloppy or greasy stools, or stools that are pale, nausea, jaundice, and upper abdominal pain.
Other foods that enhance your digestive integrity and support your whole digestive process include:
Bone broth (unless you have histamine issues)
Fresh ginger tea
Nettle tea
Warm lemon and celtic salt water (through a straw)
Cooked cinnamon apples
Pure aloe vera juice (check for 98%+ aloe in ingredients)
Mushrooms cooked in butter and sea salt
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar in a small amount of water (through a straw)
Gelatinous meats like beef cheek, oxtail, lamb shank etc (usually meats that have to be slow cooked)
Make sure you complete the gut crash course in step 7 - it dives into this in much more detail to help you understand how to eat for your digestive health!