CrossFit South Bend

Today, we’re going to talk about some super simple home remedies that you can use to help improve your digestion. In other videos, we’ll talk about more advanced things but today we’re going to talk about the super simple ones that pretty much anyone can do at home and these are things that you would want to check off the list first just to make sure that it’s not something super simple that you’ve overlooked.

Number one is a huge one and I would readily admit that this is something that I work on myself, but it is really an important issue. Chew your food. Chew your food. There are a couple of reasons why that’s important. One of my favorite sayings when it comes to digestion is there are no teeth in the stomach. What does that mean? It means once things have essentially gotten to your stomach, there’s acid to help break things down, but if you have a piece of food that basically hasn’t been chewed properly and it’s making a way down to your stomach and then your small intestine, it’s not going to be absorbed properly if you didn’t break it down sufficiently in your mouth. You want to chew your food. Chewing your food sufficiently also helps activate certain enzymes in your mouth that help start to break down certain compounds in the food and it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the so-called rest and digest nervous system that’s necessary to help you digest. If you’re in a constant state of sympathetic, kind of go, go, go mode, then it’s going to be very hard to digest food.

Along with that same idea of chewing your food, you want to sit down and eat your food. This is something, while the chewing I’m still working on, sit down and eat your food I’ve gotten pretty good at. Most of us today eat on the run whether it’s in our car or we’re answering emails. I routinely get emails from people who tell me I don’t take a lunch or it’s 15 minutes or they’re just gobbling down food. Again, if you’ve activated that sympathetic nervous system, it’s going to be very hard to digest in that mode. You want to sit down. Take some time out. It doesn’t need to be all the way to French culture where they take an hour and a half each day for food, for lunch although that would be nice. But it shouldn’t be five minutes where you’re scarfing down something and answering emails and driving somewhere either. Take some time out and sit down and eat your food.

Number three, water. Water is great, super healthy for you, but at the same time you shouldn’t necessarily be drinking it during your meals. There are different reasoning you hear behind this. Some people suggest that it dilute stomach acid. Some people suggest that if you have cold water it’s going to reduce the rate at which enzymes are going to be breaking down your food. But just in general, you want to try to eat your food and not drink it, so one of the most compelling reasons I’ve heard is this idea that people use water as a means to swallow otherwise improperly chewed food. If that’s your reason for drinking water when you’re eating, then you probably want to slow down, chew your food and not drink a bunch of water to have it go all the way down.

Number four, you want to try and express gratitude or de-stress or maybe it’s 10 deep belly breaths or maybe if you’re religious, maybe it’s praying or maybe it’s meditation or maybe it’s a quick laugh before a meal. Something where you’re activating that parasympathetic system and you’re not constantly in this go, go, go mode where you feel like you can’t really properly digest things.

Then number five is going to be that you want to try and cook your food or mash it. If you really are having digestive issues, one of the best things you can do is, A, cook your food. That’s going to “predigest” it for you. Then in addition to that, the more you mash up the food, the easier it is to digest so something like, I don’t know, white potato fries are going to be harder to digest than baked potato that has basically been mashed up.

Hopefully, those things can help you with your digestion and you definitely want to try those things first before you go deeper down the rabbit hole and we’ll talk about some alternative strategies for improving your digestion in later videos. All right, guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. See you next time.