Five mealtime habits that harm your digestion.
It isn’t just the food that you eat that affects the efficiency of your digestion. We all know that stress has a marked impact on our immune systems and good sleep allows our bodies to repair, but how often do we look at anything other than what is on our plate when considering our digestion?
An optimal digestive process is essential for full absorption of nutrients and excretion of metabolic waste products, which in turn leaves you feeling satisfied, energised and in overall good health.
Lets take a look at five common mealtime habits that are detrimental to good digestion and why;
Drinking tea with your meal
Tea is full of tannins which have a number of direct impacts on digestion. Not only are tannins astringent (drying) to mucous membranes, they have an inhibitory effect on many enzymes of the digestive tract, meaning that it will be harder to break down food into its useful components. That being said, tannins can be very beneficial to the gut flora so instead of avoiding your cuppa perhaps just reconsider the timing.
Drinking too much of anything with your meal
Digestive acids and enzymes are carefully controlled by your body. The levels are optimised to ensure proper digestion. When you guzzle a huge glass of water just before or during eating you are effectively diluting these gastric juices and making it harder for them to do their work. Yes I know I often bang on about staying hydrated, but there’s a time and a place for refilling your tank - maybe between meals when you get snacky would be better? After all, hunger is commonly confused with thirst, so when you feel like reaching for the biscuits mid morning, try having a glass of water and waiting 20 minutes. You will often find that the hunger disappears.
Eating whilst adding stress
When we are stressed our body activates the sympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as ‘fight or flight’. It is the one responsible for helping us escape danger by directing blood away from the abdominal organs and toward the large muscles of the legs to help us run faster and the heart and lungs to ensure we have enough oxygen to do so. This is all great if we are running from a predator but our nervous systems react the exact same way to mental stressors, meaning that when we remain in high alert whilst eating, our body is not optimised to digest what we feed it. Try to notice any stressors creeping into your mealtimes and how it affects your digestion; maybe you watch the news, scroll through your phone, or often have heated debates at the dinner table? How could you reduce your stress levels before you eat? Try taking a few deep breaths, extending your exhale or humming a little tune to yourself as you sit down. Both of these actions stimulate the vagus nerve which is responsible for counteracting the stress response.
Chewing or eating too fast
One of the biggest causes of bloating is swallowing air while we eat. Air is not food, but swallowed air (if it doesn’t exit upwards) still needs to travel through our digestive tract in order to ‘escape’. Of course we don’t swallow air on purpose but actions such as chewing rapidly or talking whilst eating, which encourage us to breath at the same time increase the likelihood of accidentally swallowing air. Another benefit of slowing down when you eat, or concentrating more on chewing your food, is that mastication (mixing food with saliva and mechanically breaking it down) is the first important stage of digestion, so by rushing past this part you are actually making it harder for all the stages that follow. Do yourself a favour and savour the flavours!
Eating in an ineffective order
A green salad is a common starter in many cultures, and for good reason. Not only do greens such as rocket and watercress contain bitters, which stimulate the digestive process, but the act of eating raw fruits and vegetables first allows the body to begin digesting them before you add in other foods that take a little longer to break down. The main point here is that if you eat light and quickly digested foods, such as fruit, on top of a stodgy meal then they could sit on top of the stodge and begin fermenting, causing gas, bloating and pain. Whereas if you eat them first, they will enter the intestines before the stodge hits, allowing proper digestion of the protein and carbohydrates to occur in its own time. Also, many fruits are packed with compounds that speed gastric motility and when ingested moves everything through the system much faster. This is the opposite of what you want for foods that might take a little longer to break down and need that extra time for your microbiome to do its thing.
So, next time you sit down to eat, consider taking a deep breath before tucking in, having that salad first and slowing down the meal. Your gut might just thank you for it.