
Christmas is around the corner and it is difficult not to over-indulge over the festive season. I recommend some basic guidelines to the diet we eat, in order to achieve optimum health.
It is important to focus upon the digestion health particularly during the Christmas period. The keys to healing an upset digestion system are as follows:
- Restoring healthy levels of hydrocholoric acid and digestive enzymes by reigniting the digestive fire. We need hydrocholoric acid to support digestion of proteins that are broken down in the stomach
- Restoring healthy liver function
- Avoiding foods detrimental to digestive health and eating foods with correct levels of fibre
- Resolving dysbiosis ie too many bad bacteria and not enough healthy levels of good bacteria, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium and killing harmful yeast overgrowth
- Having healthy elimination and bowel movements to get the waste out
- Consuming healthy bacteria such as in fermented foods
You know you have good digestion when:
- You feel comfortable after eating
- You have bowel movements at least once a day
- Your stools are free of blood, mucous, and undigested food and are easy to pass
- You pass little or no wind with only slight or no odour
Regardless of how healthily we eat, if our food is not digested properly and the waste evacuated completely, we can still have big problems.
Bowel movements should be regular and frequent – once or twice each day. Studies of indigenous peoples have revealed that they have a bowel movement for each meal they consume.
If the transit time is too short, vital nutrition from the food will not have been absorbed. If it is too long, putrefaction will take place. Food reaches a temperature of 37C in the gut – the temperature of an extremely hot sunny day. Average transit time is 24-hour, but 48 to 72 hours is relatively common, which means that food can be ‘digesting’ in a very hot place for three days. In short, it is decomposing and rotting in the gut. Naturally forming toxins will then spill over from the gut into the rest of the body, creating autotoxaemia, a process of self-poisoning.
Try to follow the following guidelines for good digestive health:
- Chew your food thoroughly. This is an all-important first stage in digestion and one that most of us don’t take enough time over. As they say, the stomach does not have teeth!
- Avoid drinking liquids when eating – this dilutes the digestive juices
- Sit down when you eat
- Don’t mix fruit with other foods. Eat fruit at least one hour before or after foods. Fruit ferments in the gut when eaten too close to other foods.
- Don’t eat late at night. This results in incomplete digestion of food and can contribute towards insomnia and waking up feeling sluggish and tired in the morning
I would recommend making and consuming the following recipe:
- 2 tsp organic goat yogurt
- 8 tsp mineral water
- 15 cardamon seeds – crushed
- 1 cinnamon stick (1-inch long) crushed
- 1 whole red onion, chopped and blended
- ½ cup pomegranate juice
Mix the ingredients into a thick drink and consume at mid-morning and or afternoon for three days. This can be repeated once a week for up to a month to improve the overall digestion. Increase absorption and stimulate the production of digestive juices and enzymes
Before the Christmas break have a colonic to support your digestion. If you suffer with chronic digestive health please come and see me for a Gastro and IBS consultation to get to the root cause, utilising functional medicine testing and possibly short-term course of supplements.