Your digestive system initiates work at your mouth and goes all the way down to your rectum. In order to adequately utilize the food you eat in the body and eliminate the waste, every organ in the system must do its share of the work. When something goes wrong with this process of digestion, most people are left with a lot of discomfort that they do not know how to get rid of.
Consistent bloating, cramping, gas, or heart burn is should tell you that you have digestion problems. The digestion process can be greatly improved by a few adjustments to your diet.
The simplest step you can take is to eat a diet full of nutrients such as fiber and protein. Most foods contain nutrients that are essential to digestion in their natural state, but when they are processed for consumption this part is stripped out. Digestion of these foods is much slower, and when there are a lot of additives and chemicals the body may not know how to process them at all.
Reducing the amount of processed foods you consume and balancing them with fruits, vegetables, and plenty whole grains is very important to your digestive system.
Secondly, you should seriously reduce the amount of sugar you eat. The harmful side effects of sugar exceed the size of your thighs and high blood sugar levels. It also contributes to high levels of bacteria and yeast in the body. When excess sugar leads to high levels of yeast or bacteria in the digestive tract, digestion problems are often the result. If you decide to follow step number one and reduce your intake of processed foods, then you will moderate your sugar consumption at the same time.
The third step is to eat only when you are actually hungry. At the first signs of hunger, your body releases important enzymes which escort the food from the stomach to other parts of the digestive tract. When you eat for reasons other than hunger the food has less stimulation without these enzymes. Paying more attention to your own body than you do the time of day is a beneficial step to improving digestion.
The fourth step is to slow down while chewing your food. While in the stomach, your food mixes with saliva and starts to break down. Eating a lot of food at a fast pace makes it impossible for the saliva to do its job. Food that is not properly broken down causes discomfort later on as digestion progresses.
Finally, you should closely analyze your body’s reaction to various foods in order to improve your digestive system. Everybody’s digestive system is sensitive to different ingredients, so one person may need to eliminate dairy completely while someone else has discomfort processing starchy foods such as potatoes.
It may take a little investigative work to determine the exact cause of digestive problems, but these steps should bring fast relief for most people.