28 Oct Natural Help for Digestion: Simple Lifestyle Tips That Make a Big Difference
I often compare the digestive system to an assembly line. You may have symptoms in your abdomen or suffer from bloating, gas or irritable bowels, but the root cause could be in one or more bodily functions above.
Digestion starts in the mouth. Chewing well allows your body to mix food with saliva and begin the digestive process before the food travels down the esophagus to the stomach. In the stomach, there are various enzymes produced to further break down your proteins and minerals. Stomach acid production declines with age and peaks midday. Simple lifestyle changes such as a larger lunch and small/earlier suppers is a great natural way to help your digestion. Fluids are best consumed between meals. If you drink lots of fluids before or during meals, it can dilute your enzymes and reduce digestion. Many herbs, spices, and teas can help naturally help stimulate and support digestion, including apple cider vinegar, bitter flavours, ginger tea, or peppermint tea – all excellent sources of natural help for digestion.
Your liver makes bile salts and enzymes to help you digest fats. Patients without gallbladders often experience digestive complaints after their surgery, but there are many natural ways to help digestion, such as lemon juice, dandelion, and bitter foods that offer natural help for digestion. Lifestyle changes such as smaller meals more often and avoiding meals three hours before lying down can help. Realistically, I find that most of my patients without gallbladders will probably need enzymes, especially with fatty foods, larger meals, and later in the day.
Your pancreas mostly affects how your body handles carbohydrates and sugars. Chronic overconsumption of carbs can lead to insulin resistance and possibly even diabetes. Lifestyle changes and the Mediterranean diet are natural ways to help digestion and an important form of natural help for digestion for the prevention and management of pancreatic function.
Next stop in the assembly line is the small intestine. This is where your microbiome is a large part of how you function. The microbiome is your collection of microorganisms, some of which reduce health and some of which are crucial for health. The beneficial ones are often referred to as probiotics. If you experience bloating or symptoms starting half an hour after eating, consider your small intestine. SIBO is a condition of Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, when the “bug balance” if not ideal. There are several private labs that offer testing to guide your assessment and treatment of microbiome health. IGG food sensitivities and “parasites” (harmful microbes) can cause intestinal inflammation, gas, and bloating.
A natural way to help digestion for the small intestine is to avoid harmful foods, and to consume fermented foods, the most popular one being yogurt. Yogurt does contain probiotics, but there could also be a downside for patients who are sensitive to dairy products. Kombucha and sauerkraut are excellent dairy-free options for probiotics in our diet.
The large intestine also has a microbiome and is largely responsible for the appearance of the stool. The size, shape and colour of your stool is the final product which represents the overall function of your digestive system. Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome are often normal on testing such as ultrasounds and colonoscopy, because it’s a condition of dysfunction, chemistry or an imbalanced microbiome. In fact, another natural way to help your digestion is posture and spinal alignment. It is common for patients with back pain to also experience digestive symptoms, and chiropractors often report that their patients have better digestive functions after spinal adjustments or massage therapy.
In closing, digestion is the function of a sequence of organs, with several moving parts, and there are many possible solutions. Each patient has their own root cause of digestion problems, and there are many modalities for natural help for digestion.
At Bronte Natural Health Clinic, we offer natural help for digestion through personalized assessment of your enzymes, food reactions, and microbiome to find the root cause of your digestive concerns.
Contact us at 905-825-8787 or bnhc@rogers.com to schedule an appointment.
