During the holidays, its easy to get off track with so many delicious, festive foods, and it's important to keep your digestion functioning well.
Digestion has a direct impact on whether you gain, lose or maintain weight.
It affects how you feel, including your energy levels.
Have you ever had a "carbohydrate coma?" This is a silly way of saying that too many starchy carbohydrates can make you feel sleepy or lethargic, but it also causes some stoppage in your digestive tract.
Having healthy digestion also affects how your body fights off colds, flu, and disease.
If you are properly absorbing nutrients, it will also show by the radiance in your skin.
Healthy digestion allows food to be taken in by the body properly, which is beneficial to all of your cells and brain, improving overall functioning and feelings of wellbeing.
If too much food or drink is consumed too quickly, indigestion and stomach problems can flair up.
Eating too fast happens a lot when people are over worked, over stressed or over committed.
All people inevitably eat on the run and at times experience indigestion, which may be compounded by overeating.
Do you ever eat standing up because you are in a hurry? Give yourself time to sit down and relax when you eat a meal.
Take time to be social during meals by spending time with others, and chew your food well.
Be sure you are not consuming empty carbohydrates full of sugar and white flour, but eat good complex carbohydrates and high water content foods, including raw vegetables which contain live enzymes.
And, stay active.
Fiber, water and exercise assist with proper food absorption and elimination, by moving food through your body, and keeping food from building-up and putrefying in your system.
Fiber-poor diets can instead promote fat absorption and weight gain.
When food is kept in the body longer than normal, intestinal yeast and fungus growth may result in feelings of malaise, illness and impaired immune system function.
You may have a special sensitivity to spicy or high fat comfort foods, which for some people may interfere with healthy digestion.
So, if this is the case, choose food types and drinks carefully.
Other digestive irritants may include caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, nuts, carbonated beverages, smoking and certain medications.
When a cause for indigestion can't be found after a thorough evaluation, a person may have a malabsorption issue or some sort of functional dyspepsia, which is a type of indigestion created by an impairment in the stomach's ability to accept and digest food and then pass that food on to the small intestine.
Personally, I am often plagued by indigestion due to Hereditary Pancreatitis, so i share this with you based on a lot of my own experience with digestion management, which sometimes, but not always, mitigates my own flare-ups and eases the recovery phase.
I believe that practices of healthy digestion can be applied in many severe digestive diseases, such as gallstones, stomach ulcers and other medical conditions, which cause intense and prolonged symptoms requiring medical intervention.
So, if you know you are eating right, but are still having problems, please do call your physician and get checked out.
Meanwhile, do take care of your digestive tract.
I wish you wellness.