Why should you care about optimizing your digestion? You really want your digestive system to function properly, especially when you have an autoimmune disease. When you have inflammation in your body, your body uses more nutrients to fight it. So you need to make sure that you are no only eating a nutrient dense diet, but that your body can effectively absorb the nutrients you are feeding it. Improving your digestion system can really help you heal, and there’s a number of easy things you can do to get it working properly.
What is Digestion?
It’s important to understand what digestion is before we jump into ways to optimize it. Digestion is the process that breaks food down into small molecules that your body can absorb. Once absorbed, these food particles supply the body with the things it needs to make energy, help cells and tissues grow and repair, and participate in hundreds of thousands of reactions. There are 5 main steps to the digestion process:
- Ingestion: Food is taken in through the mouth.
- Mechanical digestion: This starts with chewing and grinding the food in your mouth. Then, peristalsis kicks in, which moves the food down the esophagus, mixing and contracting it as it goes along.
- Chemical digestion: Enzymes and acids are secreted from various organs and glands and break down food even further. These secretions take complex macronutrients and transform them into more simpler ones so the body can absorb them.
- Absorption: Nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals) pass through the small intestinal lining and get into the bloodstream.
- Excretion: Anything that is not absorbed by the small or large intestine moves through the colon and out of the body.
Ways to Optimize Mechanical Digestion
Mechanical digestion is really the first chance to break down food. This happens in the mouth, and so many of us completely disregard this step. But, it’s super important to chew your food. Chewing food helps break down large food molecules into smaller ones. The addition of saliva as you chew helps carbohydrates break down with the help of salivary amylase.
The next time you eat, pay attention to how much you actually chew your food. I can bet it’s not a lot. Here’s where mindful eating can really help your digestion. As you chew your food, notice it. What does it taste like? How does it feel in your mouth? Is this an enjoyable experience to eat this food? You should aim to chew your food at least 30-40 times before swallowing, and it should resemble a thick paste. This also helps expose more surface area of the food to make the chemical digestion process a whole lot easier.
Ways to Optimize Chemical Digestion
Chemical digestion uses enzymes and acids to break the food down further. There’s a number of ways you can optimize chemical digestion:
First, make sure you produce enough stomach acid. Even if you have heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), you may not produce enough acid in your stomach. Hydrochloric acid, which is your stomach acid, is important for breaking down proteins and killing bacteria that you might ingest through food. Your stomach acid also helps you absorb nutrients like B12, iron, calcium and magnesium. There is a very simple baking soda test you can do to check your stomach acid amount. Mix ¼ tsp of baking soda into 4-6 oz of cold water. Drink on an empty stomach. If it takes you longer than 5 minutes to burp, you might have a stomach acid problem. If you feel like you do not produce enough acid, you can try the following:
- Take several drops of Swedish bitters before eating
- Umeboshi plums, or Japanese fermented salted apricots
- Drink a little diluted vinegar before eating
- Gentian root
Second, use digestive enzymes, especially if you feel like you are not digesting your food well. Digestive enzymes help break down the macronutrients you eat, so you can imagine what happens when you don’t produce enough of them. While stool testing is a great way to test for this, other signs and symptoms of inadequate digestive enzymes are gas, bloating, watery diarrhea, frothy stools or floating bowel movements. If you do stool testing, the test can tell you what specific enzymes you need. If you don’t, it’s best to find a product with all 3 enzymes (amylase, lipase and protease) that break down all of the macronutrients.
Other Tips for Optimizing Digestion
There are 2 other things that can help with your digestion. The first is to eat fiber. Fiber helps keep things moving in your digestive tract. You don’t want to have issues with motility, either too fast or too slow, because that leads to diarrhea and constipation, respectively. Fiber is a great way to avoid either of these issues. Fiber is undigested starches found in plants. There are plenty of benefits for eating fiber, which include:
- Helps with satiety
- Can help manage blood sugar
- Feeds the microbiome
- Keeps bowel movements regular
- Can help lower cholesterol
- Supports gut health and the immune system
The second thing you can do to optimize digestion is to keep inflammation down in your gastrointestinal tract. This means, eating nutrient dense, whole foods. The less inflammation that’s present, the better things will function. Inflammation can upset the entire balance in your gut. So while it’s important to optimize your digestion, it is equally important to eat a well balanced, mostly whole foods diet to keep your digestive system happy.
If you need help optimizing your digestion, please contact me. I love helping people feel better, especially when it is related to your diet. For more tips on living better with your autoimmune disease, you can follow me on my socials (Instagram, Facebook or YouTube).
