“All disease begins in the gut” is a phrase said to have been coined by the Greek philosopher Hippocrates over 2,000 years ago.

Positive spin: All health begins in the gut. What we put into our mouths and how we care for our digestive tract and digestion process is a creative factor in our health, vitality, and longevity.

The health of our body cells, the building blocks of who we are, depend on excellent nourishment. For nourishment to be extracted from our food, the digestive tract needs to be in tip top shape. It is a little catch 22: food nourishes our digestive tract to be healthy and our digestive tract needs to be healthy to digest well so all of our body cells are healthy.

I will give reference links to other articles I have written over the years. Use it as you like to learn.

To keep the digestive tract healthy, try these simple tips:

Chose to cook and eat in a relaxing environment for every meal. The food we create is a gift of nourishment to our bodies. When we prepare food in a peaceful, unhurried mode, we infuse the food and eating experience with calmness. Relaxation, while eating, promotes our vagal nerve “rest and digest” mode of the nervous system. This mode ensures better digestion of the food we eat. Try taking five slow and deep breaths before even putting food on your plate.

Eat real food. I often suggest this in my newsletter posts. The food we eat is what creates the cells of the digestive tract that are doing the work to extract the nourishment. The food’s nourishment builds better body cells of every organ.  Whole food nourishment

Eat only when hungry. Listen to your body’s signals. When you are hungry, your digestive fires will be ready to kick in and do their job digesting.

Chew food well.  Slow, gentle chewing promotes relaxation for better digestion. It breaks food down to liquid consistency for better harvesting of nutrients in the digestive process. The longer we chew each bite of food, the better we prep the digestive tract for the job of digesting. Chewing activates the organs of digestion.

For further reading:

• Better Gut Health Starts with Eating & Chewing and
• 5 Reasons Why Chewing is Important

Bitters: Eating bitter food with meals enhances liver and gallbladder bile activity. Bile supports many aspects of the digestive process. Think bitter salad greens like arugula, mustard, dandelion, watercress, endive, stinging nettle, kale, escarole, chickweed, radicchio, and endive to name several.

Taking a bitter tincture, after meals, is a common habit in many cultures especially during winter seasons when greens are not available.

Gut Health can be improved in many ways. I will start with gut microbial health. Our gut is teeming with microbes that are essential for many aspects of our health including digestion of food, mood and nervous system health, immune health, and actual nutrient creation in the gut, to name a few. To enhance gut microbial health:

• Upon awakening, swish the mouth with room temperature water and swallow. Repeat 1-2 more times. This rinses the bacteria that grow in your mouth overnight and sends them down to your gut enhancing your gut microbial population..
• Eat naturally fermented foods: sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, etc. The quality of these foods does matter, chose high quality options.
• Eat plenty of fiber from whole foods: fruits, vegetables, herbs, whole grains, beans, and nuts and seeds. Fiber supports a health gut microbial population.
• Organic, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, ACV, with the mother intact, is a fermented drink that supports stomach acid digestion for promoting better digestion along the whole digestive tract length.  Add 1 tablespoon of ACV to 8 ounces of chlorine free water. Sip while preparing your meal. Chlorine in drinking water reduces gut microbial population. Filter chlorinated water for better gut health.

The first 3 options in this link are extended gut health newsletter posts.

Enhancing the lining of the gut also supports better digestion and overall better whole-body health. The lining of the gut is the barrier between the food we eat and the bloodstream. Once food is fully and properly digested, it is meant to pass across this lining into the blood stream. Food substances that are not completely digested, and pass across an unhealthy gut lining barrier, are seen as foreign substances by the immune system. This situation is called *gut permeability and can contribute to immune activation and health conditions.

*leaky gut syndrome.

Simple gut lining enhancers:

• Everything above… chewing well and slowly helps to create a healthy gut lining. Real food is crucial for keeping this lining healthy and intact. Junk food causes inflammation of the gut lining contributing to multiple ills.
• Bone broth is healing to the gut lining.
• Vegetable broths are healing as well. Mucilaginous foods, such as okra and marshmallow root, create the slippery, gel like substance that is in animal bone broths. This substance helps to coat the gut lining and aid its healing.

Self-acupressure: Stomach meridian (ST36), on the outer lower leg, is a point for supporting digestion. Its position is 3 centimeters (cm) below the knee joint along the outer edge of the shin bone. It is super easy to find images of this point on an internet search. Acupuncture and acupressure are excellent healing supports for digestive health.

Use herbs to enhance the digestive fire: garlic, onion, black pepper, cayenne, horseradish, cinnamon, ginger, and curry mixes are some healing options for digestive fire support.

Drinking warm water, with or without lemon, or ginger tea at the beginning of a meal helps to clear heavy energy from the digestive tract. Sips are recommended as large quantities of fluids with meals is best avoided for proper digestion by not overly diluting your digestive juices.

AND… provide time between meals for proper digestion. Allow 3-5 hours between meals for food to properly digest. Bigger meals need longer digestive time. It takes your body 3–5 hours to properly digest food. This is one reason I advise against the grazing all day, many small snacks, kind of eating habit. You need to allow time for food to digest. If you dump more food, on top of food that is not yet finished digesting, the digestive process gets thwarted. If you add more rice to a pot of rice that is 3/4’s cooked, the newly added rice will not properly cook in the time left. Same goes for piling meals one on top of the other.

And… Your digestive organs also need rest time in between digestive events.

Eating well, caring for the digestive tract, are all part of a Whole Health – Holistic Lifestyle approach to not only preventing disease but, more importantly, enhancing wellness, vitality, and longevity.

And, as always, information is my thoughts – education – experience woven together into my lived wisdom and not the Potsdam Food Co-op’s information.