The way in which you live your life will directly affect your health – and you know that! If you smoke, your teeth, skin and lungs are negatively affected. If you eat a lot of sugary foods, your teeth and gums are as affected as your weight. The way we treat our bodies really does matter, and if you want to enhance your overall health and wellbeing, then you need to take the right measures to make improvements on your health. If you want to ensure continued kidney and liver health, cutting right back on alcohol will help you to do it. Improving acne? You need to remember to hydrate properly and cut back on sugary items. So, what do you do when your gut health isn’t up to scratch? To ensure that your digestive system functions properly, you need to ensure that you are taking the right measures at all times.
The good news is that it’s not difficult to get your digestive health on track; not when you can look after your diet and your exercise to do it. Below, we’ve got some information that will help you to start improving your digestive system and feeling fantastic as a result.
What does the digestive system do?
The whole digestive system is more than just the stomach; it’s the intestines and bowel, too. The role of this area of the body is to absorb the right nutrients and expel waste, breaking the food down into the nutrients for energy and cell repair is important! Digestion is necessary for the body and it works by moving the food down the GI tract once it’s been chewed. It finishes up in the small intestine, and the digestive juices contain enzymes that will separate food into the variety of nutrients the body needs.
The whole digestive system process is controlled by your hormones and the nerve regulators, and if you have poor digestive health, there are a range of complications involved. From Crohn’s Disease to Irritable Bowel Syndrome, you could be dealing with a range of conditions. You may also find that you increase the load on your kidneys, you live with reflux and insomnia and you find yourself afraid to eat. The most important thing is to learn what you can do to improve your digestive health, and luckily for you we have several suggestions for you below!
- Eat Healthier Food. You can begin improving digestive health with herbs and choosing better, more wholesome food choices. The standard diet in the Western world is packed with processed carbohydrates and saturated fats, and too much of this – delicious as it is – it can lead to developing a range of digestive disorders. When you cut back from additives and highly processed foods, you reduce the risk of inflammation to the stomach and you instead reverse the damage on the stomach lining. It’s important that you choose foods that are whole and healthier, and these can be everything from lean meats and fish to fruit and veggies. More of this and less of the saturated fats and you will have a more wholesome diet.
- Move More. Believe it or not, gut health is more than what you eat. Too much weight around your stomach and hips and you run the risk of excess internal fat around your organs. One of the best ways that you can improve your daily digestion is with exercise. The movement will help your gas and food to move through your digestive system much better, and you can move things through the body to waste with cycling, jogging, yoga and power walking. Moving more will also help you to make the best food decisions as you will enjoy better movement with more energy.
- Eat Slowly. We’ve talked about eating better food and moving more, but you also need to be mindful about the way in which you eat the food. You need to pay attention to what you’re eating to properly enjoy it. You will also find that the more you eat slowly, the more you avoid gassiness and bloating. No one wants to be uncomfortable with wind in the stomach sitting and waiting, but if you take your time and eat slowly, you’re going to chew properly, swallow more easily and enjoy better comfort. When you eat too fast, you swallow in air and this causes painful gas that can just be avoided.
- Drink Plenty of Water. Improving your digestive health should include water! Hydrating your body is one thing but ensuring your hydrated will make moving food and waste through your body much simpler. Water doesn’t just make your skin and nails look good, it can prevent you from becoming constipated. Low fluid intake leads to feeling backed up and causes fissures on exit. Water will prevent this from happening and you can prevent your waste from drying out and becoming painful. If you’re living in a warmer place, drinking more water is smart for your overall health, but eating watery foods like watermelons and cucumber is also important.
- Choosing Healthy Fats. Not all fat is bad fat! You need to eat enough healthy fat to keep your body moving food through it. Fat makes you feel relaxed and will help you to better absorb the nutrients in your food for better energy and health. You can eat fatty foods like salmon, mackerel, nuts and sardines and absorb the good fats from these. These will reduce the risks of bowel diseases and inflammatory conditions that you could suffer from in later life.
- Up Your Fiber. Soluble fiber can help your stool to bulk out and absorb water. Alongside the insoluble fibre, which keeps things moving along the digestive tract, soluble fibre will make heading to the toilet far more comfortable. High fiber diets are known to correlate to the reduced risk of digestive disorders. You can eat more fiber by eating oat bran, nuts and seeds, legumes and whole grains, too. The more fiber you eat, the better your digestive health.
- Stop Eating Too Late. There is no correlation between eating late and gaining weight, but there is plenty of evidence to show that eating late can make for an uncomfortable night’s sleep and interrupted digestion. Your body takes 2-4 hours to digest food, and you need to give your body that time. You want to ensure that your food is moving in the right direction, which is why it’s so important to eat with enough time to get to sleep at night. The contents of your stomach will cause horrendous heartburn if you lie down with it full of undigested food. You will be dealing with reflux symptoms, which are common when you lie down after you eat and can hurt your throat and your stomach.
- Choose The Right Herbs & Probiotics. You need the right herbs in your diet to ensure that your digestion is comfortable. Improving your health is important and probiotics can help you to introduce healthy bacteria to your gut, which will improve your overall health. Herbs and probiotics will help you to feel better on the inside and improve your health on the outside, too.
- Experiencing discomfort in your digestion is going to lead to pain over time, and the first step toward better digestion is trying out all of these tips above. You deserve to be comfortable and when you add these tips to reducing your stress and moving properly, you can benefit from every single one overall.