Natural Revolution Empowering Natural Living
By Jack Adam Weber, L.Ac., Dipl. C.H., Poet
The following tips can be helpful for everyone, especially those with digestive issues. I pulled these eleven from a list of fifty-four that were part of a talk I gave on digestive health.
They are culled from years of personal and clinical experience as well as from the annals of both Eastern and Western medicine. Many of these tips have conflicting research and opinions. The suggestions I offer, therefore, are ones that I have watched work. These are guidelines; try them and notice what works for you.
Remember too, however, that future imbalance may develop from poor habits, even if they feel okay in the present. If you suffer from poor digestion, or want to optimize your health, I recommend you give these a try. These tips are not meant to diagnose or to treat any specific disease. Please consult with a physician if symptoms are severe or persist. Bon Appetiti!
1) Tip: Do not drink liquids before, during or after your meal—especially not cold ones.
Explanation: This can dilute your digestive enzymes (conflicting research on this) and weakens digestive fire. If you do drink, a cup of warm tea or water is usually okay, and will likely not affect enzyme activity. Meals high in salt are doubly injurious because they promote imbalance of excessive thirst and water intake. Pay attention; notice what works.
2) Tip: Try squatting while you eat. The rest of the world does it for good reason, not just for the absence of chairs.
Explanation: Squatting is helpful especially if you have been sitting or doing sedentary, intellectual work, where energy stagnates in the upper body (e.g., computer work). Squatting stimulates digestion by encouraging energy to flow downward, relaxing the diaphragm and activating the “middle and lower burners,” the areas of the torso corresponding with digestion.
Also, the Spleen and Stomach meridians on leg are activated by squatting; these are the primary meridians and organ systems responsible for digestive health in Chinese medicine.
3) Tip: Talk minimally while eating, if at all, and chew your food really well.
Explanation: Talking impairs thorough chewing, allows excess air into digestive tract, and often creates tension, which hampers good digestion. Excessive talking while eating distracts one from body-awareness and leads to over-eating. On the other hand, if you are upset/stressed and you have to eat, talking might be helpful to distract you from feeling upset.
Chewing well increases the surface area of your food, making it easier for digestive enzymes to further break it down. Chewing well allows digestive enzymes in your saliva, HCl in your stomach, and pancreatic enzymes to mix thoroughly with food to begin the digestive process. Remember, you want your food to be liquefied as possible by the time you swallow your food.
4) Tip: Do not eat when stressed or emotionally upset.
Explanation: In Chinese medicine stress and emotional angst primarily impact the Liver organ network. The Liver organ network is crucial for good digestion and assimilation. Unless you are “starving,” try to unwind before eating. Take a walk, do some deep breathing, process your feelings, take some deep breaths and eat while keeping your stomach and belly area relaxed. Also try to avoid physical and emotional stress after eating.
5) Tip: Eat soup
Explanation: This is the original, post-harnessing of fire, most efficient and nutritious way to consume food. It allows for maximum absorption, and when prepared with herbs, especially Chinese herbs, the benefits are increased. Make a pot every few days, warm it up as needed. Soup is efficient on time, fun, cost effective, and easy to digest. If you eat meat, it is most easily digested in soup.
6) Tip: Eat fruit and drink water between meals.
Explanation: Wait at least 10 minutes before eating if you have to drink more than a cup or so of water, and 15 minutes after eating fruit. Especially if you have compromised digestive health, I have found that bloating, indigestion, and gas develop when this is not heeded. Wait at least an hour after eating before eating fruit and a half an hour or so for drinking water is also optimal.
7) Tip: Include fermented foods which are rich in beneficial bacteria
Explanation: Ferments make nutrients more available for assimilation, out-compete bad bacteria, improve immunity, and have recently been clinically shown to increase the numbers of certain T cells, improve mood, and even reverse mental illness such as OCD and ADHD.
8) Tip: Test for Parasites/Candida if you have the symptoms for infection.
Explanation: No matter everything else you do, you will plateau in your health if you have imbalance here. These majority of these parasites are invisible to the naked eye. In other words, just because there are not worms in your stool does not mean that you are free of parasites and candida overgrowth. The best way to determine if you have them is to do a stool test with a health care professional. Treating them because you think you might have them is not advised and in the long run can create more problems and expense.
Some of the psychological and physiological correlates for infestation, but by no means the only cause, are loss of power and compromising too much in your life, and a weak immune system. In nature, weak plants are those that are more susceptible to attack by pests. Same goes for us.
9) Tip: Resolve past and present emotional issues and traumas.
Explanation: Obsession with ultra-pure diets often carries an element of transference of unconscious emotional issues so that we feel chronically “toxic.” We mistakenly think we can clear emotional wounds and vacancies through diet. Because mind and body are intimately linked, a better diet and eating habits can help us, but will not address the emotional roots of food obsessions. Doing so creates fanaticism, rigidity, neurotic worry, and leaves our deeper emotions unresolved and unintegrated. Ironically, dogmatism around food can even leave us more physically unwell, if we are eating a diet that is not actually right for us. I see this all the time with raw-food advocates and many become my patients.
10) Tip: Let your deep body wisdom inform your food choices.
Explanation: There is no one, healthy diet. Everywhere we hear the phrase “eat healthy,” but few recognize that this does not refer to one diet specifically, at all. We each have different needs/constitutions/imbalances and those needs change over time, and even day to day. Illness, stress, physical demands, injury, and unidentifiable factors change our nutritional needs. The best dietary advice, in my opinion, comes from the Eastern traditions of Chinese medicine and Ayurveda because they contain extensive dietary wisdom in relation to individual constitutions, patterns of medical imbalance, as well as acute and long-term needs. Remember, food really is medicine, and one who gives dietary advice should do so in the context of being able to comprehensively evaluate your overall health. Dietary advice should therefore be given by health care professions who are trained in a comprehensive system of medicine. I have seen too many fad diets and charlatan idealists injure the health of innocent believers.
11) Tip: In the end, no matter what you have or do not have to eat, eat with gratitude and appreciation.
Self-explanatory.
Any questions are welcome; please post them in the comments below. I’ll do my best to answer them.
