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Many common health problems begin in the gut. 

It makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?  The same place where our food gets digested and where the majority of our nutrients get absorbed in our body is also one of the most important places for our body to function properly.

All of the systems in our body work together to keep us healthy and there is no single system that deserves all of our attention when we are battling with any health problem.   Unfortunately, that is one of the major puzzle pieces that western medicine seems to be missing.

Did you know…

that how you eat matters just as much as what you eat?

Digestion is a parasympathetic process.  Meaning that our body has been created to put digestion on hold when there is stress in our lives and our “fight or flight” response has been activated.

For those of us who experience anxiety, stress, and a crazy lifestyle on a regular basis may hardly ever be digesting our food.

Poor digestion may cause a lot of problems such as:

• deficiency in a variety of nutrients
• obesity
• anxiety
• depression
• inflammation
• & the list goes on…

Fact: The same part of your brain that turns on stress also turns off digestion.

If you are looking to lose weight,  often times the slower we eat the faster we metabolize our food.

If we want to begin healing our body we need to start looking at more than what we eat, but also looking at how we eat.

These 4 easy steps can help you begin to heal your body in big ways by simply changing your eating habits.

Step 1  – Sit down to eat!  Relax!  Don’t eat on the run!  – Our busy lifestyle keeps us in a sympathetic state.  Your sympathetic state is your flight or fight response.  If you are sympathetic YOU ARE NOT DIGESTING ANYTHING. Relaxation will switch you to parasympathetic, this will allow your body to digest the food as it needs to.

Step 2 – Chew your food. All of it. Put your fork down between bites.  Give yourself plenty of time to eat. –  Swallowing big chunks makes it hard for your stomach to digest.  Your saliva is supposed to begin to break down your food. If you are swallowing large bites of food it is difficult for our saliva to begin the digestion process.

Step 3-  Supplement with fermented foods, herbal bitters, and possibly only lightly cooked foods for a while to give your digestive tract a short break.   – A properly trained Nutritional Therapy Practitioner can help  you with this.

Step 4 – Take care of your gallbladder.  Eating good fats will stimulate the release of Hydrochloric acid in your stomach and make sure that bile salts from you gallbladder is working as it should.  Proper fats can include pastured butter, ghee, cold pressed nut and seed oils, animals fats from properly raised animals and coconut oil.

These steps can begin the process of healing in the body for nearly any health ailment.

Read part 2 for more great info on supporting the body to heal the digestive tract.

*Please note: I am not a medical doctor or a licensed dietician.  This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease.  This information comes from my own studies and experiences as well as the evidence supported training that I have completed.  Please do not let this advice take the place of  your primary care provider.

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